To begin ...

As the twentieth century fades out
the nineteenth begins
.......................................again
it is as if nothing happened
though those who lived it thought
that everything was happening
enough to name a world for & a time
to hold it in your hand
unlimited.......the last delusion
like the perfect mask of death

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Uncollected Poems (7): “zygotes zonked zigzagging, zealfully zapped”


Axe and animal, all able
but bleeding by blunt barbarisms
creep cowering cunningly, craggily cancelled:
death does dutiful debts, defers
even evening’s edges. Eleven eagles
fly furiously. Four foxes, furred,
gorgeously groomed, grow grandiose, groan
however hard. Headstrong hedonists, hairy
islanders in Italy, idiot inmates,
jeer Jewish jugglers, judicious Jainists,
Kantian killers, kowtowing krazy kat
lawyers, lesbian ladies, lowborn, lamenting,
mad mothers made masculine, mammals
no nereids nuzzle, not nymphs
or oracles, only on oceans
pretending. Passengers plumb plangent prows,
quote quaint quintessences, quarreling, queezy,
religious reformers return. Russian rabbis,
some sinister, sample smoked salmons.
Travelers, too tawdry, telegraph testaments,
upload unnatural utterances. Useless utopians
vilify violent videos, volatile, vain
with whatever webmails we waken:
x-rays, xerography, xanadus, xenophobes x-ed.
Yet you yearn, youthful yammerers,
zygotes zonked zigzagging, zealfully zapped.

c. 1978/2008

[A portion of this poem was recovered, along with numerous others, for a volume of Uncollected Poems to be published by Mark Weiss and Junction Press. The lines in italics were subsequently added.]

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very surreal -

Anonymous said...

Lionel Ziprin has a brilliant poem along these lines from the 1950s (it appears in his "Almost All Lies Are Pocket Size"). It begins:

A is the aether that anchors the ark

and ends:

Y is the yoga that yonis the yen
Z is the zygote that zooids the zen

Anonymous said...

Thanks for sharing...
___________________
Julie
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