I NEVER META-POEM
Someone please help me…I was in LA having my
left testicle cryogenically frozen while walking on
hot coals singing “Battle Hymn of the Republic”
on the second Thursday after a full moon,
the latest lactose-free remedy for erectile dysfunction—
when, I don’t know, it happened so fast… I was pounced
upon, pummeled by Paris Review storm troopers sent by
the High Priestess of Poetry(whoever she is)
or it’s possible I simply fell into the rubbish bin of New
Formalism(whatever that is) and am now being recycled,
or maybe I bumped my head on the ceiling of cluttered
comprehensability trying to read Wallace Stevens-
but suddenly it was no longer clear if I was metaphorically
drinking urine rather than beer or you know what instead
of hot chocolate but regardless and damn the redundancies,
I’m scared shitless, peeing rhymes in my pants
and have absolutely no idea where I am: Is this a catechism
class for lobotomized lyricists, a 12-step AIliterative Illiterates
meeting or a convention of MFA’s who have never been
published; strange but
I always thought MFA stood for Mo—-r Fu——g As——e but
now I see that dual memberships are no big deal. Anyway,
the Charles Manson, James Jones or TS Eliot of this little
circus/circle/cult is an eloquent
but definitely not elegant symphony conductor or MMA
impresario type,part swan part peacock wearing turquoise
granny glasses and matching mustard-colored slacks,
socks and shoes, a man—
it’s hellish how much he does relish every chance to embellish
his own self-esteem— brandishing a venomous verbal cattle
prod sadistically triggered every time he hears the word
“narrative” or any adverb at all,
his second in command an overly Red Bull-ed gospel
diva lobbing literary self-help f-bombs to dumb down
the discriminatory disconnect between her brilliance
and her blackness, the preposition “like” her
laughing gas pellet gun against camouflaged class
prejudice, then there’s the red-bearded vegan bartender,
quite possibly an operative embedded by Mike Pence or
Steve Mnuchin, face hidden beneath a tented baseball cap
furtively staring through binocular-like tortoise shell specs at his
top secret block-lettered quatrain scribblings—or maybe it’s just
sudoku—never saying a word as he lewdly licks his lips, while
beside him a mild-mannered, pink-cheeked,
Rudolph-nosed Scottish academic with a rubbery ruby-lipped
smile cemented or stupored onto his face labours through his
hourly regimen of curling goblets of merlot— up down swallow
breathe– possibly a futile effort to become as chiseled
as the Michelangelo-tattooed Jamaican poet in a snake helmet
yodeling Caribbean haikus through a conch shell; he picked
poetry over bobsledding because it’s less “reggaelated” and
he’s having a “Marleyvous” time flirting
with Marian the Librarian, olive contact lenses, grey steel wool
hair, army fatigues and black sneakers, her six pencils neatly
aligned on the upper right edge of her notebook, a metronome
to entreat her feet to stay on the beat, she’s obsessed with
writing the perfect dissonant dirge in double dactyl with Dewey
Decimal declension, her life anal and banal but a bacchanal
compared with the guy the storm troopers have dragged
gagged and straitjacketed in the corner, a babbling brain-dead
surfer dude in his dotage who had the audacity to wear a “Metonymy
Is My Enemy” t-shirt—he probably thought it was a dope name for a
heavy metal band or a cancer-causing carbohydrate excommunicated
from the Ketogenic Church— but what’s
gonna happen to me: hanging, guillotine, the rack? I’m being
dragged across the floor, why didn’t I wear my Lakers jersey…
instead of this “Only Pricks Hate Limericks” hoodie. They’re
pulling my pants off, OMG my tattoo— “Villanelles Can Go To Hell…”
Dumpster Fire Press 