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.