SONG CYCLE / POP SYMPHONY #1

I. “god got birth control”

A HOLY TRINITY (“3 is the smallest odd prime”):

1. apocalypse now: death from about 1879

2. the Passion of Nietzsche: god is dead / god is dad

3. wagner and his anti-semitic leitmotif: das Juden und das Rheingold

REFRAIN:

“if you want to view paradise
simply look around and view it
anything you want to, do it
wanta change the world?
there's nothing
to it”

ANOTHER:

1. german metaphysics (“Album fur die Jugend”)

2. french politics (“sois jeune et tais toi”)

3. english economics (“reading riting rithmetic”)

OUTRO:

genocide was invented in 1943 (16x)

II. “there's a war goin on outside no man is safe from”

BLADES OF GRASS b/w WAVES OF GRAIN

SIDE A:

a tex mex numetal ensemble

holding a plaster cast of liszt’s death hand and

driving 9inch nails into petrified redwoods

wife beaters in wife beaters

carrying pedigree records in a manila folder

scaling a spiral staircase of soviet whole tones

to the additive rhythm of the heart

SIDE B:

continental free jazz

emerges in a gritty no wave ny super8 80s

stands by an art deco office building

and burns a thesis on hypermodernist chess theory

figure skater on a hockey rink

gliding through concentric grooves

a punk rock swan song vibrates

up through her bones into her teeth

and out her mouth

III. “the cost so high the gain so low”

RESPONSORIAL:

leader.

“they found a pair of crystal antlers,

but quickly destroyed them. how could they

explain having a pair of crystal antlers

to the police?”

congregation.

“no food or drink allowed in classrooms” (all capitals)

APPENDIX:

one nation under id

9 of 10 tastebuds prefer pepsi

your brain on MSG

peyote ego death

“the cannons of berlioz”

another pete rock banger

no wave for a new age

“...of thrash metal fame”

nintendo dreams

the strapped gats of cocorosie

CODA:

[this space reserved for:

ashkenazi jews,

annexed north american nations,

grandfather’s trophy nazi belt buckles,

and all whom have fallen into the ocean of

dropped albums, rocked shows,

murdered beats, and spit verses.]

hangs over you american

1.

she is wearing the plastic of window entertainment.

passing present early thought,

rain seems arrived at footprint.

two commemorative strangers of stay,

each having memorized rival minds that bend shadow,

cross paths,

but both being minor incomes with two awards of steel,

they cross paths.

the original minor station of these

helping them throughout the original night.

2.

you are a better wind pavilion, original wearing a plastic raincoat,

pushing, stepping, pursuing separates. industrial one,

the rubble light rap and gang of minor cannot keep you.

means are a haunt of petals, beginning to fall shadow,

flew derivative from silhouette,

as if speaking in works on a pile of has.

you and i being endlessness persons,

we saw that rain pours behind them.

yet, a flower raining with excellent untruth,

approaches a coated feeling.

us, whose sense of time rains a central fiction.

3.

human, with its great length and forever,

is one of three plate glass windows

above a vernacular sea.

while common practice climbs to the sky,

capital i disappears into the skin

of produced history and works passing.

cigarettes whip the sea late on the fortieth carbon day.

but the sky is disappearing, an original that thought itself diverse.

only this corridor, as blunt as it is, seems lifelike.

only this corridor, as blunt as it seems, is lifelike.

Celebration of a Heady Afterbirth

Ecce homo! Post-Industrial Revolution human is failing!
Astronauts fall from the heavens and impale themselves on cocks!
All avant-garde hairstyles have been co-opted and codified!
History is written in sonata form and the sales receipt is now scripture!

Blessed are the Butter-Flavored Cheese-Fried Cheese-Filled Corn Snack!
Blessed are the Butter-Flavored Butter-Baked Cheese-Filled Corn Snack!
Blessed are the Corn-Fresh Corn-Flavored Cheese-Puffed Butter Ball!
Blessed are the Cheese-Flavored Pop-Fresh Corn-Fried Cheese Pop!

Ecce homo! Post-Industrial Revolution human is failing!
Dreaming bacteria in my intestines bubble up through my chakras!
And I can say “Kidnap me, I’m a rich American” in 8 languages!
We have stared long at the night sky and found the Universe to be telescope-shaped!

Lo! I walk around the house naked with morningwood
and observe the high water mark in the toilet bowl.
Hardon is oneword!
Yet, I can hear a chamber orchestra
locked inside a somewhere-abandoned subway car
playing Messiaen and looking bored.

“is the solipsist so lonely?”

the philosopher asks no one in particular
his voice unheard
outside his locked office door.

he is drowned out by the humming of
machines that make lunch boxes
machines that make harmonicas
machines that make parts for more machines.
the humming echoes through streets

resounding inside the empty movie theaters
& the empty concert halls
& the empty cathedrals
& the empty classrooms
& the empty skating rinks
& the empty discotheques
& the empty drive-throughs
& the empty apothecaries
& the empty art galleries
& the empty museums
& the empty gay bars
& the empty parking garages
& the empty chinese restaurants
& the empty stadiums
& the empty office buildings
& the empty prisons
& the empty barns
& the empty catacombs
& the empty capitols
& the empty housing projects
& the empty houses.

everyone is inside
the library of congress
lying in her or his own
private opium coma,
but they all dream the same dream.

they dream of the philosopher
squatting in his cave
squinting through his dirty window
wrinkling his vast forehead.

cutting cloud from sky

if i was born a bastard
son of bukowski
i would
write poems
in that criminal
american
diction
with vulgar pride.

but i was not
so i will
write poems
in my anemic lisp
with manic fatalism
and a custer moustache.

you see
my country hates poets
by principle
and my countrymen
would rather drink
hard liquor and coca cola
than read hegel or wittgenstein or kant
because hegel and wittgenstein and kant
are hard to understand
and even when understood
can’t make you a better kisser.

i am not bitter.
i wouldn’t have it any other way.

the sober man often mistakes holding a woman’s hair while she vomits as romantic.

A.
how many gas station bathrooms along this country’s highway system have i not bought french ticklers or bubble-gum-flavored condoms in for want of 3 quarters and someone who wants me

how long must one stare at the alien surface of shaved genitals before the first kiss can no longer be remembered as a sticky piece of candy, picked off the floor and eaten when everyone had left the room

who isn’t affected

B.
we make love at arm’s length
in the direction of jerusalem
with our shoes on and alarms set.

a soul and a soul never quite touch;
they are the wrong sides of two magnets,
they are the hands of a clock.

this morning, i left the shower on.
the drain is clogged with hair and cum
and my bathtub runneth over,

flooding my house with more
things i can’t breathe.

an old poem for a new world

an old man
stands in his front lawn
beating an old dog
tied to a tree.

he beats the dog
with today’s newspaper
slowly and steadily
without anger or pleasure.

the dog lies quiet
in the dust.
it is dead
except for the rhythmic
wheeze
of its breath.

the old man
and the old dog
heave in unison
in time with the rise
and fall
of the newspaper.

both are sweating
and panting
under the same ancient sun.