"Epic Problems and Their Solutions"

     Look here, he'd fuck up a one-car funeral.

If you are out alone in the starry night, wandering
among the troops, then what brings you? If the Interior Secretary
enters, then the paper drops to the floor. If dancing
is censored, is it my fault? The statistical heart. If phallo-
centrism, then the king. If Homer comes to the lunch, open
another jar of orange marmalade. If the rhetoricians' hall of fame
calls, tell them Yeltsin is busy. If the eye is the problem,
then why not the ear, thumb, or kneecap? Cold corpus collosum.
Who came to the window? If phallocentrism, then the queen. Oh,
the goddamned dishes. If familiarity breeds contempt, then it's goodbye,
pork pie hat. If children's voices bounce off snowflakes or Albion
brick. If Kristy Odelius comes to call, the oranges are in danger. If biscuits,
then beans. If Brook Bute, then the box of frogs. If the string breaks, then
gray speckled bird is out of the question. Trial by seashore. If the clock
is beyond the light, then leaded panes and de Chirico. If it proposes
without inventing, please consult "Thought, a discussion of." If we are
talking fruit now.






"Crazy Woman with Two Cats"


They're bruising the sky again
these painters            it's not natural
           she says                                   Supernatural?

No
           stones    the bay    even palms contused
stung cheek    bled shadow
                                               flat brush drug through
purple dirt     she speaks to a rash     old skins

(broken glass sound)

_____

Myself, I've had five appearances of the Virgin. One, in the mustache of that
Kentucky state trooper, wrote me up for speeding on U.S. 60, outside Paducah. In
Nahum's book, his bag of greens. Wm Faulkner cut black paper books for his niece.
(Despite all that bourbon.) Your note. More regular in Elsie's conch pan bread.
Leavened. Always leavened.

_____

The nature of the lesions     (bizarre shapes)
may immediately suggest artificial etiology,
but it is important to rule out every possible cause and
perform a biopsy before assigning the diagnosis of
dermatosis artefacta. The condition demands
the utmost tact on the part of the physician,
who can avert a serious outcome      (i.e. suicide)
by attempting to gain enough empathy
with the patient to ascertain the cause.

_____

Picasso. He owed me money.

_____

". . .(A)nd I knew that if we were going to rescue the canvases, it was going to have to be
my ass, dangling from a rope thrown over the seacliff, sent down to get them. 'Don't
worry. I'll hold on,' Karl said. The prison doc nodded, blessed me. 'Go with God.' So,
down I started after these landscapes that somebody'd just flung into the ocean. 'Nothing
left probably!' I hollered, sounding as serious as I could, although the rocks weren't
listening. Above, Karl's voice, 'Have you really been screwing my wife?' . . ."

_____

(broken glass sound)

film winding my ankles
your hands smeared film

my feet
stretching out
world     your
skin






e-mail the poet at gcycho1@hotmail.com
info on the writer
to go back to the home page