1367

NOT NOTHING NEVER NO

Sleepy sweater wearer,
Making maximum wage for a middleman in Lodi,
Playing bass in a dive bar in Little Rock,
Baiting the contender for a bit of rope-a-dope
In Shreveport,
It is the American way to love names.
What we repeat
Teaches us rhetoric
And calls it music.
It sincerely hopes to bed us,
And maybe the beach
Will come right up to the library
With an invitation for us to grow up already.
What do you say. Up for
Some growing? The artist
Goes barrelling down a context.
He has buffed his concept to a lustre.
Mayhap you will join him at the AMF
For a few frames. Maybe he will tell you
What you are dying to hear, which is
Neither here nor there. This
Peculiar unpleasant space called poetry,
For sooth, no worse than a nightclub
And no better than a house on fire.
Ah, said the American, that cannot be helped.
Ah, said the American, we must be ruled
By the wealthy inept. It is our heritage
And birthright -- all citizens
Are entitled to feel contempt
For their leaders, and by extension,
For themselves. You too, sexy.