pappy’s natty hootenanny
a reconfiguration based on Little Gruntpack’s cd “Lurking”
for rupert
my new pants are growing evil, pappy,
evil like stockhausen, or a blowjob in
a potato bin while a clarinet plays off
in the distance like a bathtub barber
waiting for the suspicious to tumor
like the crack of the clam dip’s ass.
your academics never could triangulate
a virus, but the goblin of marx shocked
our cells back to gravity & the magic
pancake passed out motel urine. spiky,
i wrestled the shirts from doctor connie
like a codeine surfboard in a steakhouse
& took a back road to baltimore so i’d
miss the chickens glistening in the terry
cloth sky. i was growing a pair of samba
pants, inflamed, like some rooftop gothic
trailer park whose ex-love was clutching
a tarmac queen w/a darkness rolling on in.
vo-tech
some apostates from the trappist barber school
are living out their days of shame in the briars
behind the barn & what w/the haze of barbasol
i can barely spot my margarita before i squeeze
myself into the blanket chest & make like i’m
the last slice of bread left to ankara - tuesday -
it must be tuesday - the stink of midweek hangs
like the sound of a school bell in the air & after
i’m convinced that i’ve created a cheese danish
from the base matter of my spine i swing open
the door & i’m facing that woman who speaks
into a tomato as if it were a telephone, reaching
deep into her duffel bag she pulls out an abacus
& for a minute or so everything is clear, i know
just what it is that i’ll be doing in twenty years
& better yet i even know why, it’s like a seraphic
drop cloth is buzzing away beneath me & i’m no
longer terrified of squirrels, i wrap a bedspread
around my waist & sprint to the briars but when
i get back to the bivouac they’re gone, fire rings
the only remnants of a people in perennial exile,
moving to keep to moving to keep from moving
any more, absent a kick-mule i haven’t a chance,
the ashes telling of tangles of what also was when.
how it is from here
for carter monroe
come saturday i been changed. wearing a two dollar
suit of roots & a crabgrass grin w/an empty fishhook
& a claw. i’m thinking bingo, i’m thinking rye. one
shot shy of the saratoga ascension ernie goes wobble
like a fettuccini tall boy & beggars me for another no.
i’m on a boat, the blundered kind they ditched to rub
on clinch mountain by that shaft where henry said he
found his sound. tonight it’s about making the walls
spin blue, about tracking down the town’s only valve
trombone & setting my teeth on fire. the church that
keeps the corner has a sinister curl of stairs & if i cut
my eyes so that the steps seem like they’re ponding i
can see why sundays always make me think of twine.
ernie’s dressing the floorboards & there’s a buckle to
the air, a spikier chunk of snow cloud & the waitings
that ride a sleeper when the one turn is never enough.
