WORLD OF MOUTH

I. Avenue of the Americas

Who killed the hippie prep post-paranoia
preamble program where kitchen prophets
diddled themselves to famous quotes,
humpback quotas, and honorable prices sucked off
the mainstream poisoned ingluttonous, proud to be American
pubic? Was it Delilah Day strutting around in Great Plains
of economic theory gone sour like toadstools anonymous some mediocre
Prince of Peace was fed right before bedtime,
incensed, begging for more and more frequently with gutter regards
to her thousand and one Iranian tales leaning on the elocutionist’s
thug-tight polish sausages still unkempt but at least
Europe wails on about tiny hotdog explosions
and the absence of Mr. Monroe’s lost doctrine Cuba defies, Afghanistan
survives.....oh say can you see Beirut as revelation in the flesh,
endangered pigeons dancing in the eyebrow of Khomeini like sweat on
a burning Bush left to shake down the nations,
floods of panic warriors taking to the hills to defend
k-rations and dead ideals—
no new ones available.

II. Safety First

Did every new model doff Costello Elvis eyewear, uranium flags
sewn by prisoners of groundhog conservatives composing
fly-away pinstripes and swearing off fashion
for fifteen full and pepsident minutes until the xeroxed
Andy Warhol coughed and made it ‘real raisin’
enough for all turds of all race rats and cat classes from Cleveland
to Willacoochee, from DuPont to Berkeley, from La Crosse to Corpus
Christi, from Vincennes to Window Rock, from Boise to Times
Beach, from the Columbia Pipeline stealing from the rich to give to the rich,
from dead sunglasses and bricklayer entry level pocket positions
to call on the name of our holy hardware to save us
from the Law of Spic and Span Soup Flies? Incorrigible navy buoyancy
tests failed to shock the 80’s into an alternative issue,
so a new Neo-Manic emerges for the year 1991, for a blast,
whipping out scab groin vexation, irritated fort
albino annoy boy sandles forked exchanging kickoff boot fingers
and skinhead scissors that touch the spine of every real American band, braids
for starch to scorch brotherhood hypocrisy with gangslang goulash ‘stop
on a nickel nuke.’ The cities are purple
now ripe with renaissance resistance, cool cocks for kingdom’s cum,
AIDS an irony blanket, a bingo butcher passed around like
a snooky smile baby kangaroo. NYC has pissed one more
rat factory cursed infection, harDCore Washington—
the murder capital of America where bloody black as night and black power
have merged into one long filthy look into the confusion coersive
power drips sloppily into the sludge bucket decency secretes as remnants
of thy will be done, thy will be done.…

III. Buckhead and the Symbolic Mode

Why did the FDR lock up all the yellow bodies he could smell a scandal
hidden beneath five thousand years of eating raw fish and turning
out sensual art for the masses to mourn? Was Huey Long really
the enemy of the old cripple or could Ezra Pound spell
“encyclopedia” in forty-three languages and conjure up images
sick and disgusting to Mussolini’s headwaiter, St. Elizabeth’s no
prison but just a stopping place to feed the whales,
hunter agony curling the breasts every beauty bounces beneath
the best literacy test available in nightowl zones, corporate zions
offering zany dough illusions, nimrod solutions,
virginity restoring money back operations while
the punks go off to college to crucify
everyone but themselves…who
killed off purposes? Who authorized
this moron-anarchy, capital publishing,
stay-at-home-buy-’em-in-the-bleachers Ted Turner America’s
Cup Runneth Over sold by Soho into Egyptian slavery, walk
don’t talk or stare-at-my-supple-body nurf axioms
anyway? Jack London and his klondyke
pussy widowers and northern territory aristocratic devotion
to the weak and petrified? Why do the rich get richer
and the poor get more numerous? Is this really a poem
or can this page be classified as the answer to the eternal
quiz show dilemma, do commercials really sell soap?

IV. Creative Loafing And Other Tax Deductible Weather Patterns

Boho is dead! Poetry is dead! Ditto the poets!
…their mouths are full of boiled salted peanuts, ears of cob-roasted corn
stuffed in auto-eroticistic voices in from mainland factories,
broken excuses the sparing questions stiff, pockets in handle—
carry on Jack Nimble, piss
your unfettered mind away in cheap detective stories about man and god and war,
piss your unbuttered ambition away to rewrite the bible for MTV, piss
your Nielsen numbers away and tarry with the Ramones
in marchfest thimble standards, refusing to party hardy
with Il Dulce and Sicky Wifebeater where Mentorism
is rampant in the minds of the mindless, dark ages, and neon cages,
John Cage, John Cave, Nick Cave, and no cave, living
for the bookstore; Henry Miller! my old dusty friend! the stomach’s
losing out and I can’t seem to borrow, the new craving for passion pit
panache prize yarns and cystic fibrosis cushions my latest act
of imaginary sedition beggars not worth the cotton I’m wearing,
but then I read a fortune cookie yesterday that said I would never
think another thought without first counting the cost
orgasm brings to the homeless who steal a glance at the White House, but
then we all can’t be married to our work & know better than they (the safe),
the passive worth of strangers who serve
and will be served on a silver platter plateau
than those who steal zero from itself. First silence, then the flood of agents,
then postmarked bodyguards for the worthy famous filibuster sleeves
populating the risk of record vinyl, oy
Patti Smith, Jim Carroll, hip Corso
“where have all the visions gone
long time America?…”
slip it in dear—
part it here, don’t forget the mustard, erase words
ugly pimplexiproblematicist in heavenly heat quacking
candid fear of fornication offering complications by proxy
or pale comparison to last night’s doubt
and the cruisers
who snatch their talk boxes
and pump them half-full to fool talent
scouts from the Bronx, pretty
pink tourists carrying the card & earring vendorships
laughing in high bank notes left in grandfather’s will be done
and attaché unions of the newly post-Kerouac free,
the wise and sexless. Author’s Note: What I mean is—
that special creature who sees neither male nor female,
nor considers the game itself a matter of faith.

V. Aging Where Exposed to Temporary Eye

across the sober horny husk of Jersey night
sour rhythms snap a vulgar breath in two on orders from my feet
and I recant the last mile of hard nail poetries—
there is no breeze catacombs offer
to return the gesture & who is there
to remind me of social stares? Finally the fix of friendship
buries its own in the same hole seabreeze whores love a token chance
in the midst of a crowd of strangers petrified green too cold to bark
enema grips or nothingness sores plucking their lungs
from fairy tales great and grim
left in our daily bread paychecks and variety packs
of wolves and fanny plantations, oh Ginsberg go home!
eat a damn spicy onion from Georgia, not the sweet one all
have been waiting for, for those days are tucked away for now¬—
our feet hang on a line
a quote we commit as our own salvationary process
no new innovations can caress
no new insights into kaddish are made available
by the tiny presses
that liken us as to their own,
furnaces well-stoked with mindworker autojerk crowds
lip their motives
and I bow in recognition yet move circulatory
on past open doors closed to drafts, because!I refuse to confer, blood…
blood, blood, blood cells attacking
hair fashion pugalists
hung out on a dare
missing major poet tripping Denver says Rothschild, his mammon-saint,
this holy August. I hitchhiked all the fucking way
to Big Apple Momma Sucka My Explanation cos I am punk
just to chat seriously about coping
with this emerging generation of wild-haired cats
hung out on a bet, not yours but you know who…yep
who took all our Jobs and spoke to us in whale! Holy granoli
Americo-Russo whale!


VI. I Am—Pronoun City

no new purposes in this wertimer clan
the old issues not stale enough to use
as newspaper headlining spunk
fishwrapper glorified shipwiper stunt & punt quarters
no new intellectualisms
junkies or jeepsters, clunkers or keepsters
death rates by opulent characters
hung out to lie cockstill but hardly sure
to sacred students
crab telephone users
resisting another strike against him and her
mayhem in fashion-wave restaurants
bills toppling yet another pay t.v. eros
rights to America banned
episodes fragile famous poet busy
tired removed costly insiders only
need apply
necessary credentials shaved & groomable beards know
who I’m complaining about
with American
Express card you baffle me
now that you knocked off a few salaried
positions, gave speeches to the adoring zealots
now you don’t have to but you do, so don’t
tell me you’ve done it all when all you’ve done is
crack parking zones with Chrysler
imperialism.

[ 1983, Washington DC ]