Oakland, CA
ph:
jack
IRISH/IRISH-AMERICAN
What does it mean to be Irish? Or, more specifically, what does it mean to be Irish-American?
To get from my house to Cornell University where I was a freshman in 1958, you drove up the hypotenuse of a right triangle. My father, who had been born in New York State farm country in 1895 and who grew up with the automobile, drove up the two sides of the triangle, thinking they were the hypotenuse. He never quite trusted that machine to get him where he wanted to go, and before any trip of consequence he would fortify himself with “a few drops of the craythur.”
As we neared Cornell, there were several small towns which regularly made money at this time of year by giving tickets to students blazing through them on their way back to school. My father never blazed anywhere, but he did accidentally turn left through a red light as we slowly made our way to our goal. Suddenly a motorcycle policeman was upon us. The policeman said—and I don’t exaggerate his brogue—“HO WHERE YA GOIN’?” My father pulled over to the side of the road and said very politely, “Gee, officer, did I go through that red light? I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. Say,” he said, “are you Irish?” The policeman flushed and said, rather testily, “Well, I’m Irish, what of it?” “Well,” said my father, “we’re Irish too. Meet the boy. We’re taking him up to his freshman year at Cornell University.”
My mother, who was Italian, said not a word.
By the time the conversation between my father and the policeman was over there was no longer any question of a ticket. The policeman was inviting us to his home for coffee and to “meet the wife.” My father politely declined and said he would “drop by on his way back.”
I have no idea whether my father even knew the name of the town whose laws he was violating, and I certainly do not. But when he heard that accent, he knew exactly how to behave. He acknowledged the policeman’s authority: “Gee, officer, did I go through that red light? I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.” But he then invoked a higher authority: “Are you Irish?”
There was a joke my father liked to tell, and perhaps its moral figured in that Irish cop’s reaction to us. The Irish maid is about to leave for the day when the master says to her, “Mary, this is terrible. Look at the dust on this table. I can write my name in the dust.” “Oh, sir,” she says, misunderstanding, “ain’t education grand!” Perhaps the thought of “education,” and particularly education for the Irish, was “grand” for that Irish cop too. “Meet the boy,” said my father proudly, “we’re taking him up to his freshman year at Cornell University.”
What does it mean to be Irish? What does it mean to be Irish-American?
__________________________________________________________
SWEENEY ADRIFT
for Ivan Arguelles
welcome to the house of failure
see these are the structural bases of the house its beams and arteries
its artificial light its hands its vast appendices
who is
not here?
the range of things
delights us welcome welcome
see there is the door it opens for us
welcome
what sweeney what
have you done and
where have you done it?
sweeney clubbed the man
not once but twice; bashed his head in, hurt
him badly. Oh,
Sweeney they’ll
not stand for that surely— cf. Buille Suibhne
surely that’s trans. J.G. O’Keefe, 1913
no way to behave— trans. Seamus Heaney, 1984
Sweeney
ended his tirade
his wild life then—
They all said, Enough, enough, Sweeney,
surely that’s
no way
for a man to behave
Sweeney
kicked his eyes out hurt him broke his ribs twisted the tongue not once but twice
bones broke, brittle for Sweeney, his trophy, taken, the life taken, the balls
bashed
the life
ended
oh Sweeney
she bespoke him sorely oh
and Sweeney repented then
turned churchman spoke vows made retreats novenas bled holy water ended his wild life
told tales made miracles believed end-
ed his wild life turned goodman churchman died of age and
soul
now surely turned—
to
heav’n.
sweeney.
SUN-
the slow turn of resolving
moved (as ever) us (as ever) if
(stay)
I go out again with
money in my pockets
click!
how many times have I
asked you—spoken your
name—in this darkness—
I have nothing to offer—
in the air—endless
variations—speech!—
Bear
turns—
open to the
light—
She stopped for a moment and looked back. It is not easy to tell. They saw each other only momentarily. It was not easy to tell.
Your book is…
a big crazy delicious effort, fundamentally great, highly interesting, jocular, kinky, lovely, magnificently nice, opulent, pretty, quick, redolent, snazzy, tricky, undoubtedly very whimsical Xmas yummy. Zounds!
The night came, and a storm, and Sweeney’s misery and mania were so great that he cried out:
I who have neither another nor now
in the dim light (love)
possibly
frame (make) this (how) (love) quick
“I wrow rowe wrote chu
yesterday”—
Sweeney returns, and the lies about his son’s death have caused him to
All day, all night,
Sweeney clings
to the branch, and opens
(spreads his)
wings
He is now
“adrift”—
(spoken to—
uneasy in the night—
pressure—)
Remember this, “friend”—
hand extended—
is the problem presence?
what does it matter if we love each other?
is the problem presence?
what does it matter if we love each other?
is the problem presence?
what does it matter if we love each other?
is the problem presence?
what does it matter if we love each other?
bear
the bear-son
opes
his eyes
the “master of the mountain” is of special interest to us as he is the “master” of the bears. On the one hand he is a man, on the other, a real bear, only of unusually large size. All other bears are his fellow tribesmen…The slaughter of a bear represents the departure of the soul of the animal to its master and a subsequent return to earth is expected…It is not to the beasts themselves that offerings and prayers are made but to their “masters” or “owners”
“grandfather”… “old man”… “he”…Taking the skin off a slain bear they say, “Grandfather, owner of the earth, don’t think ill of us. we did not do this to you. The Yakut did it. Your silver bones we shall put in a special house.”
fish-dragon
blind and eyeless
naked as a
human finger
Sweeney
pueblo—bridge—creek—
cameras
clicking—old woman—looking—
eyes: thinking—
“We’re going to have lunch with the guy who published Nailed to the Coffin of Life. His name is Loss Glazier.”
“His name is Loss?”
“Yes.” “Lunch With Loss”
“We’re going to have lunch with Loss?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve been having Lunch with Loss for most of my life.”
the bear has always been the weather prophet because he presages by his emergence the
return of spring
to the
wintry
world
Juan, Juan el Oso, Juan del Oso, Ivanko the Bear’s son—
Since matter itself is in a state of flux and is deprived of that form through which it takes shape and is made manifest, they took the dampness and humidity of caves, their darkness, and, as the poet says, their “murkiness,” as an appropriate symbol for the properties of the cosmos
the Persian mystagogues initiate their candidate by explaining to him the downward journey of souls and their subsequent return, and they call the place where this occurs a “cave”—
descending paralysis
bull
lord of genesis
sun—
shadow—
there is
blood on my face—
fuck it you know that fuckin cocksucker you know what that fucker said to me
Sweeney picked himself up off the hardbitterdesolatefrozen ground.
Again.
“Mother, would you please answer the door. I’ve been standing here for fifteen minutes.”
“Couldn’t be helped. I was on the shitter.” —neighborhood music
what does it mean to use the word fuck?
“Sleep a little, love,
for thou needst nor fear the least”—
“I am Sweeney alas!
my wretched body is utterly dead—
A year have I been on the mountain
without music, without sleep—
Madman
am I—”
John Anson wrote a hundred rounds
As I have written only one.
O listen as his name resounds:
John Anson.
My little round might be the sun.
The planets in their daily rounds around the roundel
Must circle it in unison.
His trope might be the separate gowns
Of long-dead ladies now at one.
These separated, joining sounds:
John—
Ann’s son.
how many times have I
asked you—spoken your
name—in this darkness—
I have nothing to offer—
in the air—endless
variations—speech—
It was night. The heat was still glutinous and no wind stirred. The whirling “deedees” died away to the east as the glowing orange orb of the sun drifted to the west in a purple miasma. (A narrative of ideas not of events.)
And, Orpheus, will you bring your mother with you?—
field piece violence cob decoration porcupine brogan finch zeppelin permeate convent artifact behemoth climax ranger pin mens rea brand convent jitter own as bell man scatter which saddle strange blend peace orphan spatch poll boing infant such enter hone savor claim once ping
Rhea—
—Why have you followed me here? (Here the Hag speaketh with Sweeney
—Yes. and telleth him
—What have you come to tell me? nothing.)
—Yes.
THE DEEP AND ABIDING MISERY OF THE MAD!
it was all sorrows love’s seeking
in a bloodless ending still steeping
Sorrow, be neither stow(n)e nor still
it was blunt weeping
—The fly
Augusta
, the little imp
teases your nose and your forehead.
When one is a fly one is not an eagle
but one knows how to walk on the ceiling.
Pierre Febvre…Yes, Pierre Febvre. Why should I think of him, and wonder what my spirit will
make of him, feeling as I now do. His face—
O obstinate mysteries
innocent animality!
You, simple house-fly
and you—foxes, crows, panthers,
creatures in whom the impulse to bite exuberates—
But I understand now how it is possible to muse upon the outline of a nostril
or the curve of a lip for hour upon hour and never be satisfied.
Ha! Ha! Ha! Difference of sex makes for clear-sightedness, eh?
The street was dark; the Square was deserted;
the morning sun was still
and did not rise. “Sweeney—?”
Nevertheless I spent less time on the opening caresses in order to get to the concluding ones with which we had just become acquainted.
I lie upon the grass and see the sky. Her dress
billowed in the wind.
He sits for hours staring at the sea.
The way your breasts move as you move—the strangeness of it
It is the woman’s part
to touch the
hand
to let you know she wishes to be touched—
August-
a thrives in the summer’s carrion—
The relationship
between the self-discovering mind and the world, between the self-discovering mind and others, is one of analogy. I can “find” myself not by looking inward but by looking outward (invidia, envy, mania)
He stared upon the table on which a knife a fork and a spoon had been carefully arranged
There are, uh, times I forget
I meant to
to forget
times I do not want to
to
remember
“It’s possible he has another reason for acting as he does. It’s possible he genuinely has something to hide.”
Dawn light
mechanical and
human figures
catch the light
Think not, revolted Spirit, thy shape the same,
Or undiminisht brightness, to be known
As when thou stood’st in Heav’n upright and pure (thrives in the summer’s carrion)
sunlight? here? through a single
shaft
What are the names of the Seven Dwarfs? —loneliness at the
Slothful, Envious, Lustful, Wrathful, Shameless… shopping mall
contradictions explanations
you who turn the wheel—
…an immense Being who alone remains eternal amidst the continual change and ceaseless transformation of all that constitutes him…
are you as good at sex as you are at literature?
For he whose mind is fixed upon true being has surely no time to look down upon the affairs of earth or to be filled with malice and envy, contending against men; his eye is ever directed towards things fixed and immutable, which he sees neither injuring nor injured by one another, but all in order moving according to reason; these he imitates, and to these he will, as far as he can, conform himself.
—you complain about “obscurity”
and assert that my poetry
is overly “intellectual.”
You assume in saying this
that however complicated
“intellectual”
matters may be, in matters of
“emotion”
you stand with the poet
on common ground.
But is it not possible
that the poet has
felt something which you have not yet
felt
or have not yet recognized as
feeling
that it is an emotional
not an intellectual
“obscurity”
to which you object?
And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened. Imagine mankind living in a cave with a long entrance open to the light; in this they have been since childhood.
A “friend” is a relative. To “have right” expresses an obligation. About half the families have horse-drawn mowing machines. Those who have them mow their own meadows, working from earliest morning as long as light holds. They work with the aid of their sons and of boys from the families which have no machines. At each stage of the process a boy not a member of the family gives his labour and takes his place at meals during the day.
“I am patriotic and it may be a bad thing to say but I think that the school system they have now is bad and that the teaching of Irish is bad. In my day and before, a man might go to school when he could—maybe for only three months in the year. But he would know more then than they get now when they go to school all the time. The old people learned more then too. When a child finished school he would be expected to read a newspaper to the old people or to write a letter for them or to do sums. And he would do it well.” …a system which to his mind makes no provision for the mutuality between young and old…
and when one of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of what in his former state he had seen only as shadows
Things are “cast adrift,” more or less like one another without any of them being able to claim the privileged status of “model” for all the rest—
Sweeney moved amongst the branches making a tremendous sound in the / head which listens—
How is talk measured, love— Beyond the obvious—
“stained” words—
restrained—
heart’s clue
spoken
“Continual changes…are…every instant…occurring…to every…man”
*
epi-logos
…I would never have by myself undertaken the task of establishing such a collection and, grateful as I am to Bill Germano for his initiative, I confess that I still look back upon it with some misgivings. Such massive evidence of the failure to make the various individual readings coalesce is a somewhat melancholy spectacle. The fragmentary aspect of the whole is made more obvious still by the hypotactic manner that prevails in each of the essays taken in isolation, by the continued attempt, however ironized, to present a closed and linear argument. This apparent coherence within each essay is not matched by a corresponding coherence between them. Laid out diachronically in a roughly chronological sequence, they do not evolve in a manner that easily allows for dialectical progression or, ultimately, for historical totalization. Rather, it seems that they always start again from scratch and that their conclusions fail to add up to anything. If some secret principle of summation is at work here, I do not feel qualified to articulate it and, as far as the general question of romanticism is concerned, I must leave the task of its historical definition to others. I have myself taken refuge in more theoretical inquiries into the problems of figural language. Not that I believe that such a historical enterprise, in the case of romanticism, is doomed from the start: one is all too easily tempted to rationalize personal shortcoming as theoretical impossibility and, especially among younger scholars, there is ample evidence that the historical study of romanticism is being successfully pursued. But it certainly has become a far from easy task. One feels at times envious of those who can continue to do literary history as if nothing had happened in the sphere of theory, but one cannot help but feel somewhat suspicious of their optimism. The Rhetoric of Romanticism should at least help to document some of the difficulties it fails to resolve…. (Paul de Man, 1983)
Los Angeles,
by its absence
dominates everything—
Sharp-eyed lynxes
watch us: Goyim?
How can one
begin
To think of you I
move
“Hello, Tiny”
In the evening, in the rain—
of birds
a harvest-
wealth-
NOTES
This poem is a fantasia based on a medieval Irish poem called Buile Suibhne. Buile Suibhne was translated first by J.G. O’Keefe in 1913 as Sweeney the Mad and then by Seamus Heaney in 1984 as Sweeney Astray. My poem is not a translation, but I do use the Irish poem as the basis for themes and variations of my own. John Anson is a friend of mine who published a sequence of a hundred roundels, Sessions and Surroundings: A Centuriy of Roundels. I responded to his sequence with my one. My proper name is "John," and my mother's name was a variant of "Ann," so I am in a sense "John, Ann's son."
__________________________________________________________________
BRIDGET, PRONOUNCED "BREED"
—from the look of her not too good but I expect she’ll recover
it was like walking with the sun
who are you
to tell me
what to do?
(night falling)
strange aims
strangeness
nothing
to speak of
hot
night
endless—
it was
hard
it was
hard
for a very
long
time—
feelings which are
settled
no longer
settled
why don’t you just
take the car?
I wish I could
speak
I no longer feel
as though my feelings—
“Much past experience convinces me that my capacity for self-delusion in these matters
is strictly speaking: boundless”
When I took her home she stayed very close to me as we walked as we walked.
Her sheer presence was dazzling, wonderful. It was like walking with the sun.
What do we read
as we read—
books unread—barely regarded—
Thinking is still contained in perceiving. Perceiving is still a thinking of the senses.
Thinking is—Thinking—
“To overcome the world means to behold the world as it was before it became dead in us”
During the months before the first menstruation, and for some time immediately afterwards,
girls are often passive, seem sleepy, and withdraw into themselves
“I guess the aleatory look of the spattered paper is supposed to play off the rigid deliberation
of the ruled lines, but the results are consistently boring.”
“Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society. Who shall say that this is not the age
of mutual trust, of unlimited reliance on human promises?”
lotus-bearer
lord of the world
lord of what we
see—
is also a timid man, this violence is never expressed physically but only verbally
in the manner of certain painters who paint the same painting over and over
again, writes the same poem over and over again. Form is not at /
issue
The beloved
speaks, softly, out of a
machine, her voice
broken with
sorrow
I can barely
listen to y-
ou I
fall in love
whenever
I hear
you
speak
She is: beautiful blue-eyed red-haired self-destructive
She is: dark, with gray in her hair
what does it mean to love
it is a kind of fiction
an agreement to be deceived
it is a
word, spoken, in haste,
powerful with
fiction
The link in my mind between self-consciousness and religion. Religion is a
mode of self-consciousness which doesn’t admit to its own bases. A mode of
“self-remembering” which continually manifests itself in an effort to forget. But
“imagination” = self-consciousness
that guiding point to which we can
re-
turn (thought’s tower)
There are all these women. Which of them do you want?
You.
Thanks for the drink and the conversation. I’d like more of both.
secret looks—charms—
words meant only for—
“With his thing out.”
“With his thing out.”
“With cum on his thing.”
“With cum on his thing.”
“And the cum is soiled.”
“Well,” said the little girl in the tree, “some people call me Mother Elderberry;
others call me the dryad; but my real name is Memory. I sit in the tree that
grows and grows; I can remember everything and therefore
I tell
stories”
R’s fear that if she analyzes it it will “go away” (the child’s fear of thought; the
association of thought with death and growth); her “I’m a big girl now”; her
fascination with/fear of death—all these suggest that she has reached a
transitional point in her life but that she lacks the resources to make the leap.
At her age (34) she is getting rather desperate. Prescription: NO love affairs,
women’s groups for at least six months—
Had you followed your impulses here you might have arrived at something approaching
“understanding.” But no, you chose to remain the critic, the judge, the expert.
“‘What Is’...remains elusive.”
You can’t name them because the power is too direct. But you can refer to them
indirectly.
They are called The Shining Ones—ones who inhabit any body.
At the
slipping (shopping)
center it is
warm—a warm breeze
(not
enough)
I
close
my
eyes
She looked at me the way any man wants a woman to look at him. She looked:
radiant, beautiful. She was all the women I had ever desired. She told me she
was about to throw up.
your body—endless—time
sweeps everything (wait and
and see) In the field the children “dance.” I wish.
My son
“chases”
the
ball.
Time fixes everything—in the sense of
affixes, immobilizes it—
light
covers everything, touches it
deeply
as I
touch
you
or would
touch
you
(eyes—
!—) It was the good crossing guard, Mary Foley. She stood in the
path of a runaway car and pushed seven children to safety. “My first thought
was that a child had been hit,” said Sister Charlotte Ann, “but no, it was Mary.
We heard brakes screech and children scream.” The kindly granny had helped
youngsters survive the busy intersection near St. Mary’s Grammar School in
, for 10 years before her final act of love ended in tragedy. “The
outstanding thing about Mary was her giving character,” said the Rev. John Finn,
pastor of St. Mary’s. “There was not one selfish thing about her. She gave her life
to the children.”
How does love
linger in us—how does it
“speak”—how does it
“rise”
again—
what is the source of this
“connection”?
A strong ascetic element was present in Irish monasticism from the beginning,
based on that of some of the early fathers who lived far from civilization in the
desert; so that in remote and practically inaccessible places we find not only
provisions for solitary hermits, but also small monasteries with two or three cells
that might better be called “communal hermitages.”
And so, just as from the Fancy’s image, taken from the body, there arises in the
appetite of sense a love inclined toward the senses, so from the intellect’s
universal species or Reason, which is entirely remote from the body, there arises
in the Will Another Sort of Love
Stunned
in this
wretchedness
of silence—
im-pression ex-pression de-pression pressure—
what is it, love? speech!—
—it is therefore supposed
—the lion continues
—destruction of structures
—means eye and foundation
—jeered at as men
—superficial appearances
—are transmutations
—on this account
—to the path of Gimel
—subconscious level
—was patroness,
a curve, which could,
the history of Poetry
is a History
of Loss—
It is necessary
to put fresh flowers
on her grave— Thin, beautiful body. Her
father photographs, loving, but there is an edge to his voice, a sharpness. Rita,
listen. Not for long now.
The abstracting by which she is able to make her points is also true of the
magazine as a whole. What McLuhan calls a “galaxy or constellation of events” is
absent from her work. Despite the attempt at variety among the articles. Love =
power = “imagination”
The gods of the North have suffered two eclipses—first by the advent of
Christianity, which destroyed their shrines and condemned their stories, and
then by the Classical Renaissance, which as early as the 12th century gave
a repertoire of Greek and Roman myths which almost completely
annihilated the Germanic—
—seeing at once too many people and too few—having the wrong
relationship
to people—
What I call the “auditory imagination” is the feeling for syllable and rhythm,
penetrating far below the conscious levels of thought and feeling, invigorating
every word; sinking to the most primitive and forgotten, returning to the origin
and bringing something back,
seeking
the beginning
and
the end—
eyes—
elusive—
distanced— polytropon— voyager—
(that man
that came out
of the sea)
“I don’t know what to do. My editor hated the book. She cut out all of the
history, all of the anthropology, and left me with just a few insights and a bunch
of sex stories.”
“I know what to do! Cut the insights.”
Sam Spade looked up as Brigid O’Shaughnessy popped another pill. “You don’t know
what the fuck you’re talking about.”
I am the wind on the sea
I am a wave of the ocean
I am the roar of the sea
FIERY—
BURNING—
RED-HEADED—
WOMAN—
Bridget is the ancient Irish goddess of fire, poetry, fertility, household arts, smithcraft, etc. Christianized, she became one of the patron (in this case, matron) saints of
ON HEARING FRANK PATTERSON SING "THE FIELDS OF ATHENRY"
“A beautiful, pure, sweet, mellow English tenor,” said Aunt Kate with enthusiasm.
James Joyce, “The Dead”
“Low lie the fields of Athenry”—Why are we always forgetting
the sounds of vowels until we hear them sung
by someone with a voice like Patterson’s—
“a beautiful, pure, sweet Irish tenor.” Singing
that alters us with sudden “images”
which hold us in their sweetness as they touch.
I think of the vivid unknown presences
that grace my father’s scrapbook, how they lurched
into my heart, unwilling as it was.
“Phoebe—1917”—what end for her?
She burns across these nearly ninety years.
And Laura Wood, once graceful as a bird.
It makes no sense to greet them with my tears.
They tear at memory, but their tongue’s awry.
I see them in the fields of Athenry.
FOR KEVIN REILLY
d. 9/7/04
Among the Irish, charm is how we face
The “troubles” that afflict us year by year:
The bitter day, the losing of the race,
And even death, which makes its way apace.
Despite the wormy residue of fear,
Among the Irish, charm is how we face
The little daily poisons that we taste.
We make a joke and take another beer.
The bitter day, the losing of the race
Seem quieter, and less of a disgrace.
Drink can make a clown a chevalier.
Among the Irish, charm is how we face
The energy depleted from its place
Of courage in our hearts, which see and hear
The bitter day, the losing of the race.
And Kevin, how I loved to see your face
Aflame with courage, passionate and clear.
Among the Irish, charm is how we face
The blighted hope, the losing of the race.
CATECHISM: ARGUELLES TO FOLEY
from Saint James
What are imaginary girlfriends? That’s what I say.
Are they the ones that stick like glue to the inside of your pants? Yes. Hence Pantsograph. Requiring a “press.”
Can you name any? Amy, Henrietta, whatever. They’re imaginary, you can name them anything you like.
Have you ever had one? I have “had” all of them.
If so, what did you do with her? Yes…
Did she react to your bristles? Only when I asked her to. I also reacted to hers.
Did she have any kind of a past? She had every kind of a past.
Was she always there when you needed her? She was always here when I needed her.
Did you ever “need” her? I do nothing but “need” her.
Were you on your knees for her? Naturally. How else can you clean the floor?
Did she knead you, but hard? Oh, hardly!
Did Mom and Dad faint when they met her?
They didn’t but I did.
Was she worth trashing after a while? Sure.
Did she come back to haunt you in dreams? She never leaves my dreams.
Would you ever write a poem about her? Always do.
What kind of poem would “that” be? “That” poem.
Would you call it “Release me and let me love again”?
“and let me lust agayn”
Would you rather go to a monastery and study Thomism? I’d rather go to a monastery and study Madonna.
Do you still feel it was worth it?
I mean this imaginary life you call poetry?
Imaginary? Life?
After catechism, confession and release. Transformation. O Whoolly Fatermutt, ringding my renaissance, it’s been yares since the last and maybe niver a gain, maybe only WARDS in thir foibleness is all that ere exploded in this vacumm of mine headset. Crusts for the cranium. Bliss me.
*
FOLEY: JOYCESPEAK, NEAR BAUDELAIRE'S BIRTHDAY
from Saint James
Och, and the times they were
It’s the law of arrearages, I say
And that Germ’s Choice,
we’re all his gangsters
in our verbilious ruckmaking swayways
What bloods
What bodies
What histories
of sister Eve’s
What bodes with Baddyloosely?
“My infant my sister
I will be your mister
quick! down that alley where nothing’s except ordure and looks”
and there shea is, that booty,
slipping her ringtongue round your dingdong—shhhhhhhh
What just desserts are here?
What slurps?
Why, it’s nothing more than we’d do for the presquedent
if you’d believe them that tells
(bad cess to them all and sundry)
shea is whur shea is or shea isn’t!
glimmerglam shivvershoes on her
and a shopping lust that’s more than the two of us
Two died I say?
Twoo?
One we ayre
or is that wan?
No different than Tick from Tock
Look up
Log on
Shea’s still the shame
Hadn’t I told you
Didn’t I tell you
Didn’t I?
It’s the Baddy Lairs
and the Bold old leery lusters
upchucking varses in drag
in the hinter regions
of the inter Knot
what sextrammeters!
what nudes of nuggets
what passover flyploys
what oyster messengers
(did I see a WING there
duck under
give it a gander
Bland blind St. Goosey is what a site!)
We goes on babblin and brooklyn
will we never seas the day
or the seasoning
oh ho there she goes with her drawers adroop
her panties a pied
(and me haven’t peed for an hour
what air ya holdin it in for
is it the Second Cummings you’re waiting for?)
Have we flayed the peacock yet?
I could use a feather, a quill (I will)
My Smile is my Simile
and I lost my—head—for Semele
beep beep are you waiting still
In the dank tarn I rant (my dank tarn rant)
My hair will cost me, Vera
See it fall
Is that all
Bal
d bald
like a sweet young thing before puberty
(my tarn rant is tart!)
A true tail: I farted the other day
and the wife said:
“What did you say dear?”
It must have been a remark
of unusual
intelligence
for Sunday
beep
and is there lightning out?
or is it lightening?
quick quick
you’ll never get well if you swell
tumescence is turbulence sure
(that’s my tokology)
Out with it!
Light! Light!
Out with it! Out with the
Liiiiiiiiiiiigggggggghhhhhhhhhtttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt
ELI, ELI
“It would be bad enough if I were the next-door neighbor. But this is like God doing it. Jesus doing it.”
-- “First Person: The Confession of Father X”
Father O’Fondle comes to town
Hoping that your pants are down
What’s your sport, me lad, says he
Can you sit upon me knee
(I have sport enow for thee!)
Let me look upon your dangle
Try Confession from THIS angle
What I beat is not a drum
Who put the “cum” in “Vobiscum”?
(Which of you dare call me “scum”?)
Bishop, Bishop, though I’m lacking
I know you will send me packing
To another parish bright
Where I’m sure I’ll do all right
I'll bring “God” to them and theirs
And they’ll remember in their prayers
In the night when dreams are wet
They will see me smiling yet
Holding out God’s helping hand‑‑
There’s a sweet and sacred band!
Till Hell turns to ice and freezes
You’ll make Love to me--and Jesus
I’ll apply the priestly arts
To your troubled private parts
Here, my lad, ’s a welcome solace
Let me touch your throbbing phallus
Hear the Sacred Choir thrumming
As I prepare my Second Coming!
Father O’Fondle, troubled man
Needing love, and under ban
In such desire for the Son,
Would I have done as you have done?
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Copyright 2010 Poetry Biz. All rights reserved.
Oakland, CA
ph:
jack