You Did Say Abbott and Costello, Didn't You?

“That person”, that demonstrative impersonal 

Third person singular who’s lost

. 

His identity, why would anybody speak 

Of himself like that? 

. 

In the first place, you might ask 

Who is going to answer? 

. 

In the second—man oh man forget it— 

Here comes the Babe 

. 

Who’s just cleaned the bases and is now

Rounding third, headed for home! 

Common Ground

Muse, I’m at a loss for words— 

Each step I take towards you, 

You take one back—please, 

Don’t be so mean—like everyone else, 

I too wonder what all this artful dodging means. 

Cupid's Arrow, Deflected

You said you were going 

To show me how 

Much you needed me. And me? 

I turned away and missed 

Your point completely. 

Hamming It Up at Grauman's Chinese Theater

After hands-down performance, 

head temporarily in firmament— 

feat soon to be cast 

permanently in cement.

Gesture

unmistakable 

streaming unerring beck 

a song 

birds call. 

Et Leviathan Ego

I swear if I were God, I’d tear a hole 

In the heavens to hide myself, 

Knowing full well that blasphemy 

And evil so dark 

The universe would rend itself asunder to know. 

On I-90 in Big Sky Country, 1976

A below zero morning somewhere between 

Bozeman and Billings, a small blue-colored bird 

On a wire fence with the road ice keeping us moving along 

Slow enough to see its breath another cumulus cloud forming. 

Haunt

Time to get a move on, ghostbusters— 

Though the soda jerk’s a jack-off 

In spotless white, Pop’s soda fountain’s still 

A dark threat waiting round the corner, 

His Wurlitzer bubbles wet dreams 

Of youthful effervescence, it’s now or never— 

The old gang’s dying to get back there. 

Universal Poetic Aspirations

These galaxies keep spiraling 

Towards an infinite number 

Of impenetrable black holes— 

Don’t they know 

They can only go in so deep. 

Eating out of Our Hands

No matter where

They may be hiding

In the wilderness,

Every once in a great while

Little creatures venture out

And make us feel very small. 

Felled

Forget about that conundrum— 

Nothing sounds 

As clear-cut 

As a voice crashing 

In the wilderness. 

Reverberations

Cicadas? 

Long after you stop wondering 

Where they’ve gone, the air’s still 

Thrumming underground. 

Step Lightly All the Way

           
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Passing Glance in a Mirror

Once a child, always 

A child they say but how 

Was it when you saw that 

Boy growing into a man 

You didn’t stop to ask. 

Timeworn

Sick to death—maudlin enough 

A phrase and oh too common— 

But how many suffer 

To live through it. 

Take It or Leave It

Lethe bound, I’d rather give 

The shirt off my back to bring back 

Those remnants of memory 

Than be dressed to kill 

And leave it at that.

Gone with the Wind

O most aery spirit 

Of the vaunted avant-garde mooning 

Around your emanations, amass 

Enough asses about and soon 

You’ll be at the rear swooning 

Over their moons too.

Fallen Leaves Redux

Eve? Plain as day— 

Something about her 

Nature made me want 

To swirl round her ankles 

So she could sweep me away. 

Up the Down Staircase on the Stairway to Heaven

There I was in the back of a tiny delicatessen in an aisle jammed between racks of Italian pasta when the front door opened and an old man went up to the counter where the owner greeted him with a Hiya buddy, what’ll you have? The old man asked Where’re the stairs? What stairs, buddy? Why, the ones that go upstairs, the old man answered indignantly. There’s no upstairs, Pop, there’s only this one floor, the owner shot back condescendingly, then turned his back on the old man, who though standing motionless, now looked like he was descending some great unfathomable abyss. 

NB: Edited notebook entry, Seattle 1976.

Autopsy

Bones, 

Not enough evidence here, I’m afraid 

We’ll have to go back to where 

We last saw our bodies 

Alive and kicking. 

Ceremony of Succesion

Before the celebrated 

Rape scene, Mammon dressed 

As a swan, proceeds 

To preen his feathers 

Before offering all 

His overweening pride 

To his coming, 

Gilded offspring— 

Let us toast the occasion. 

Crickets in Bluegrass Country, 1959

Oh, I got that bug about colors— 

Blue’s one of my sweeties, 

Green too and I love hearing them 

Rocking and rolling 

On my back on the grass 

On my way to school—so 

No ding-dong bell for me,

Buddy, I’m gonna be cool 

Just like you.

Flagellant

I know 

It hurts, trying 

To be so 

Smart only to find 

Even a pachyderm 

Can whip you at that. 

Prostituting One's Self

As I sd 

to my friend, John I sd, 

because he wasn’t

buying, how come 

when we want 

to sell 

words, they always 

pimp us to do 

the trick.

Huuklyeand Cinquor on the MO of Underground Poets

Surreptitiously 

Erase each step, better 

Still, don’t move at all. 

Moderator’s comment: The Apotheosis of the Absurd? At first glance, it might appear so to readers unfamiliar with Cinquor’s modus operandi and who might be thinking he’s being a bit facetious here; on the contrary, if we dig a bit deeper, we’ll see he’s earnestly but very carefully exploring new levels of meaning vis-à-vis the creative urge underlying the so-called school of Underground Poetry. 

Unlike his archaeologically pioneering European antipode Heinrich Schliemann—who, in his great haste to find Ancient Troy, dug right through it without realizing it—Cinquor here posits a daring New World approach in which he proposes that poets who wish to explore ancient subterranean passages leading to Hades, and who wish to do so without the fear of being detected and therefore ratted on by weasels or moles, should do nothing but stand perfectly still—a quintessential move on Cinquor’s part, if you ask me.