KLUCK

My name is Gabriel Thy,
and I am the last of that sorry generation
which begat muster hanging from a tree.

I just want to be a diamond
or a tadpole analyzing the science of absorption.

“I believe in Glenn. I believe in what he’s trying to do.”
(Helen Miller of her husband)
But beyond sanitized philosohical crumbs, I require
two minutes of God talk, said a child from Africa
writing to ask the hand of Dana Plato
in marriage. It looks like they shot
the goose. There goes the neighborhood, and yet
at bottom, she was overly sensitive,
ripe to a sense of failure and doubting the bet
forcing her to conclude a test of her courage.

To the east there appeared an unsightly
evolution of punk buildings,
loathsome in their uniform size and raiment. Scars
of unmanicured lawns and maimed rose bushes
perpetuated the myth that all landscapes
are, if not created equal in the eyes
of the juke box next to a young woman,
return to the star-infested dust upon
which they were erected.

Equation Needed: a child dies, goes to heaven
almost automatically. Most adults go straight
to hell chasing choices in a very uncatholic fashion. The dilemma
of growing old, more sinful—what percentage, no,
what are the odds that child A will reach full maturity,
even middle age, and still retain the gift of God? Child B?
Child C?

“Sounds like a John Candy flick,” smiled Charlemagne,
wet between the ears. Old McDonnell Douglas
and his flying machine is dying with the words
“only two elephants to a bunk.”
I used to be a preacher on fish sticks. Now I’m just
a golden calf muscle, a disposable literary
technique reeking of the after-effects of a gorgeous
feast, crapping in the diaper of the damned.
Some friend you are, with your ceiling fan
broken. “Vile Geezers, Ode to Benny Hill!”
snaps Wilcox, the Greek exhibit
stranded with the white girl in yellow
pumps on the hood of my blue
‘76 Camaro.

The Perpetual Fan says, “I sweat. I am nano nano
perspiration machine. I sweat eating
vanilla ice cream, and the psychic
rendering of memory, one man per invasion,
because whatever choices you make are bound
to become wrong choices after a while,
over and over. Curious bump on the back of the head
no matter whom she slept with because the global anatomy
sounds like a broken record never to fade from the language
any more than hitching your wagon to a falling star,
an exploding star, a star with humongous tits,
fairy dust wits, a star collapsed in upon itself
like a furious black hole Momma—

everybody reminds me of somebody.

[ 1995, Washington DC ]