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Living on the Spillage
LIVING ON THE SPILLAGE
"The problem about poetry is you never know what they're talking about,
'Less some professor tells you so."
It's all art, man, you just gotta lay it where it plays.
A little slippage there on the typical urban spillage.
Don't be alarmed. It don't stain too bad. Tide'll get it out.
The mass murderer's face grins sheepishly on screen, cut to
Color stills of the family hacked to pieces. Pan.
Voiceover: They almost didn't ketch me. They 'spected to find
blood on my clothes. But I warshed 'em in Tide. Too
durn bad Tide don't make a hatchet polish, I'd steel
be own the street.
Phosphates flowed in rivers. Still do.
Why settle for a car
When you can have a religion?
Why settle for a war
When you can have a trochee, a strophe, a trophy, a catast?
We're in control of the horizontal,
But somebody get that glork, tweak the vertical hold,
And get that gut-damn graphic off the screen!
Being a writer is sexy to civilian women
If they're in a romantic phase and love
The frustration, or if you are, or can convince them you are,
On the verge of a huge or cult success.
Old ladies argue on the bus,
Jousting each other with their walkers.
I don't blame them: Was Joyce so great? Was Joyce a fraud?
Tune in next week when we say yes to everything!
I know what'll solve it! Larger logos! Small-Is-Stupid Signage!
IBM, BASF, TOSHIBA burning into a night of eyes!
A New World Order now!
That's about all the thrill I can handle. And it's been done. Very eighties.
I'm aging from the eyes out.
No BHA, no BHT preserves this.
I've heard that the latest method is rubbing Moon Pietm
Into the wrinkles.
Price you pay outing and abouting,
The hard light blasting down past what used to be ozone,
The ruins you can see lurking behind the faces of glass buildings.
I try to live on the city's waves: Electromagnetic. Shock.
The turgitation perks me up better than coffee. And it's free.
And this far west, they don't call us art-fags.
Fussy, fluffy yuppie-dog loose on 24th Street,
Trots up and noses into my crotch, breathes in the cloud of aroma.
"Bitsy, don't do thet!" the owner scolds,
Embarrassed that one of us is acting like a dog.
Lighten up, babe,
You may live in that building,
But the view of it is mine.
A virtual city, in which I may, after all, own everything.
Put it on the Trump card. Junk bondage.
Print it all up in capital letters, and if nobody likes it,
Blame the typeface.
The bartender buys me an ale because I'm a writer,
Then grumbles to his friends
"First they want a free schnapps to go with the beer,
Then they want a free beer to go with the schnapps."
Foxy writer scum.
Tuesday November 27, 1990 10:05 pm
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