POEM THAT CHEATED ITSELF
Rubber band snaps person of interest to attention.
Sturdy conflagration the way we like it. Athena
wades the hyacinths of my thoughts—severe &
naked as a sunbeam tattooing the waxy leaves
of imagination. Athena buys the neighborhood,
rec center & all.
Asbestos fibers dye the vinyl rope supporting
this reptile weapon known as the final meal—
last buffet, gravy spooned by god himself, stringy
beard & cargo shorts just to influence the weather.
Larvae the size of helmets that pried Occupy
off the lines of decency.
Overwhelming odor of outhouses haunts the
republic but its festival of chrome shopping carts
reversing on cue before their veterans of foreign
wars~~~~~how many wars on US terra firma,
occasional Russian sub but not much else.
Face shattered into war paint, ochre & thick lemon
slicing hope from the herd, plus restless vermilion
like lovers addicted to being addicted.
Blinding cotton comes with a price.
Torches tracing creosote fingers across limestone caves
left no doubt that skyscrapers would follow—antelope
groomed in drawing class, mammoth assuming its
rightful place in anthropological lectures, saber tooth
deities crushed by skyscrapers—we could've been
contenders, we could've been everything we could've
been.
Toads in pearl trench coats spin
Grand Central gates’ stainless blades
inside the VitaMix 5000, refurbished
but trailing Secretariat by a mere
length & a quarter—not bad
considering how Big Red
embarrassed the competition.
Like a Vegas coin pumped into just about everything
we own or thought we owned, pelican wings arrive
like trumpets on stumps bleached white by digested
sardines & migrating hummers. Lunch crowd tosses
bones from red plastic robots spitting digits like
there's always tomorrow.
Pelican knows best, so I trust his instincts like they
were the Roberts sisters saving me from a potbellied
furnace broiling one December Indiana A-Frame,
folding chairs lining two azalea-covered walls.
I could've been scalded during infancy by a fascination
with Impressionist blue, plus astral energy spitting the illusion
of heaven embossed in heat, without ice & without consequences.
Spanish beet checkered into burro blanket
waltzes me through the center of town,
past homeless saints & desperate Romas
exchanging blue collar nightmares for dreams
not worth dreaming.
No urgency.
Get animal control to eradicate those bastards
lost inside the vagina of the 10th Commandment
who believe the sun rises over them!
Some urgency.
EVOLUTION
The leisure class that enabled Mallarmé, Breton, Bonnefoy,
in pretty much said order but ushered in or gushered
through clogged arteries feeding the brain's garden———
imagination. The leisure class got away with plenty before
they faded, well, at least some leisures bruised & battered
took Blake seriously, shivered before Goya & gasped at
Francis Bacon's savagery! Some even fell overboard, bodies
missing to this day but otherwise MIA. A bone here, a bone
there but not much else.
.
.
.
breed of leisures roams the halls: ones with gills, amphibians
traveling backwards through the slime, primordial religions
guzzling guilt, fanning the fire, yet surviving on faith much
like our ancient ancestors but this time evolving with a
peculiar twist in DNA thus allowing for a new species of
genocides to survive the blinking barbed tips of neon fishing
hooks trolling the midnight waters for bigger game—a prize
just about the size of you & me.
***
Alan Britt served as judge for the 2013 The Bitter Oleander Press Library of Poetry Book Award. He read poetry and presented the “Modern Trends in U.S. Poetry” at the VII International Writers’ Festival in Val-David, Canada, May 2013. He read poetry for the 6x3 Exhibition at the Jadite Gallery in Hell’s Kitchen/Manhattan in December 2014. Also, sponsored by LaRuche Arts Contemporary Consortium (LRACC) he read poetry at the Union City Museum of Art/William V. Musto Cultural Center in Union City, NJ in May, 2014. His interview at The Library of Congress for The Poet and the Poem aired on Pacifica Radio, January 2013. A new interview for Lake City Lights is available at
http://lakecitypoets.com/AlanBritt.html. His latest books include Lost Among the Hours: 2015, Parabola Dreams (with Silvia Scheibli): 2013 and Alone with the Terrible Universe: 2011. He teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University.
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