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Chapter One
THE MAN WHO MARRIED HIS CHECKOUT LANE
Daily, in the supermarket where I go,
I gravitate to this one lane--the one
that's most full--you know: the busiest one.
Have I fallen in love with my checkout lane?
Well, I am male, I feel drawn to this aisle;
its openness is shameless, selfishly exciting;
the real way it squeezes my shoppingcart
and deigns to crowd me in. Oh my checkout lane
has the longest wait of any--though unlike
all these others in line, I won't leaf through the life
those tabloids provide rumors of: none of them
are beautiful as what infills me as I enter
as I am queued up for that brief orgasm
as my cash is on the counter and I am free.
ADULTERER WITH NO MOUTH AMUSES WORLD
Not having a mouth is no joke! Imagine an ax
left by somebody, sinksank into some treetrunk:
and each day you go by, the embedded ax seems
higher, higher, until finally, one day, jumping,
you're just barely able to brush the fine of the
grain of the bottom of the axhandle with your
fingertips--and yet the tree has not grown. Nor
have you shrunk. Imagine: imagine trying to
explain this to someone if you didn't have a mouth.
SONG OF BRASÍLIA
From city to city
We trailed at our heels
Smiling like a suitcase
Through the passport reels
And wasn't it
Good to find a new town
With a new round
Of stars and bars and fabulous
Stays in hotel towers
Wasn't it good to have a slow one
And hour away the hours with a glow on
And when the blush was off we could just cough
And say Well it's time to go on
We could just doff our hats
And say Sorry but I've got to catch
The next wind that's blowing
But alas
This is the last
City on old earth
We'll have to stay here until
A newer one is built
We had combed Kansas City long ago
And Bangkok was old-hat
And oh gosh Paris we can only bear
Just before or just after a guerre
Yes for us the streets were no longer rolled out
We shuddered no matter what the conductor called out
We yawned in fear
We had been everywhere that's anywhere
On this old map
Then one day we were told that
In the middle of Brazil
Completely surrounded by jungle
Is the place to which we could travel
A brand new city was beginning to be built
Yes a giant new city was being mowed out
Of the jungle
And we were saved
But all too fast
This has become the last
City on our planet
And we're trapped down here until
A newer one is somewhere built
Each day we scour the papers for skyscrapers and their kind
And we try not to think of the precincts we left behind
Cause every true traveler knows
You can't go back to those
Places you've already been
No you can't go back to them
Now this is the last city
We'll see
But one
And we'll rot down here until
The devil
Gives us the key
To that town
ADVICE FROM THE EXPERTS
I lay down in the empty street and parked
My feet against the gutter's curb while from
The building above a bunch of gawkers perched
Along its ledges urged me don't, don't jump.
MOVIE-Q'S
*
Ben Lyons was typically blunt
in I Cover the Waterfront --
his cute co-star Claudette Colbert
could have frenched it: `Ze waterfront, I co-vair.'
*
Attack of the 50 Foot Woman
is not a film appeals to everyone--
but I, I like the way it feels, I guess,
to have a whole town look up my dress.
*
Although by gorgeous Gene Tierney
he was loved, and loved sincerely,
Richard Widmark proved pretty shitty.
The flick? Night and the City.
*
Those Incredibly Strange Creatures Who
Stopped Living and Became Mixed-up Zombiesblew
my mind, man. Like wow! (--Was I crazy? Was I sick?
Maybe I shouldn't have watched it through that Thai-stick.)
*
I know Jack Nicholson played a cameo--
and Elton John played a song or so--
and Ann-Margaret played his mommy--
but who the hell else was in Tommy ?
*
It's a crime shame that that scene where
Sean Penn tied you know Madonna to a chair
and then put on her dress and licked her thighs
got like totally cut out of Shanghai Surprise .
*
How many of you gazeekoids went yumyum
Watching that transmutated geek Jeff Goldblum
Rip off his own ear and eat it? The Fly was great!
(And if he'd unzipped his fly, ripped that off, and ate?)
Note: I don't know if the Movie-Q constitutes a form per se, but I made up
some
rules for it: the complete name of the film must appear in a quatrain rhymed
AABB. The Movie-Q must try to be funny, or piquant, or pointed. Etc., etc.,
though actually I can't think of any more rules.
TO MY PLANETARY CO-OCCUPANTS
How would you prefer to meet your fate--
by Nature or Culture?
(Nature: snakebites lightningstrikes cliffslides etc.)
(Culture: nukebreaks pesticidisms ethniccleansings etc.)
--If an alligator swallowed you
would you consider that demise purer
than if freedom fighters blew up
your commuter flight?
Or would you go vindicated re your belief in
human sovereignty
when a virus broadcast by the the CIA
got you (maybe it already has)--
If it were up to me, I would take
centuries/eons in deciding this question,
but since it isn't, since it's a question of since,
and since the number of options in
the category of Nature
seem to be getting extincter and extincter,
I ask you again to choose--
In fact, I beg you to make your choice
and make it quickly,
especially if it is to die via me.
THE RUINS-READER
I-beams uphold that wall
You-beams bolster me: guess
Which one is going to fall.
UNSPEAKABLE
A comma is a period which leaks.
MY FAVORITE WORD
"Attentionspan" is my favorite word
because I can never finish
reading it all the way through.
FRAMEPOEM
First, make a 100 minute movie. Then take the 1
million 440 thousand frames, or stills: take each
frame, blow it up, print it, put a frame around it,
then take all 1 million 440 thousand pictures, hang
them in a gallery, consecutively in a line so that
the first frame of the movie is the first picture
inside the door and the last, last: you get the
idea. Then have the people who come in RUN past
the 1 million 440 thousand pictures, so that in
this way they become both spectator and projector.
SONG
When my shadow falls off of me
I yell "So long!"
But when I fall off my shadow
It cries "Long so!"
It seems obvious
That one of us
Is either falling wrong
Or calling wrong.
DEATH AND THE MOUNTAIN
"There is no theme for old age
but death and the mountain."
--Arab proverb
You should see the treeline on
that mountain
of update bulletin news;
no avalanche can blacklist me--
The twigline on the tree
said: You should see him on talkshows
sandpapering his
mug off totempoles, carved
of old, of pine--
Just past the christline
on that cross is
one sitcom one summit of this; scarred
as a skyline of thorns it grew
up, imperious, pious.... To
blindfold the precipice
before leaping
from it, okay; but try keeping
a straight face
when the punchline comes "kersplat"--
There, old skin-quilt,
saint peacock hedge! Feverchart
that wedges the door shut.
I see it
he said. I see my mountain's peak-sized fate.
BEDDYBYE
Just hope that when you lie down your toes are a firing-squad
3 A.M.
Time to pare down, pull in, simplify;
--I'll buy a dark coat, move my lips when I read
the bestseller lists....
ANOTHER COLD WAR POEM
So what if you lived only
One second longer
Than we
Did: to us
You will always be known as the Survivor.
AT THE MUSEUM THIS WEEK
Poland Through The Centuries a touring
Exhibition of maps drawn
By German and Russian cartographers reveals
There never was a Poland.
MYOPIA
I know that blinking lubricates
the sight and keeps it safe--
but did this World-Eye really
need the lid of my brief life?
ESCAPE PLAN
I examine
my skin
searching for
the pore
with EXIT
over it
THE DAILY ROUNDS
I keep a TV monitor on my chest
so that all who approach me
can see themselves
and respond appropriately.
QUICKIE
Poetry
is
like
sex
on
quicksand
viz
foreplay
should
be
kept
at
a
minimum
MORE USELESS ENVY
When I imagine the cameras of fame
homing in on me for a closeup,
I back away, my back pressed against
my eyes nose mouth: the reign of the same.
Failure has surrounded me with flesh,
with human-remaining-human features--
Which is no consolation--Which does
not make up for all the psychic scars
those glitter-gifted faces inflict upon
the crowd wherein I'm crammed
trying to be as inconspicuous as I am!
Daily I watch the famous zoom past.
God, I wish I could persuade some void
to synopsize its emptiness with this.
Copyright © 2000 Bill Knott. All rights reserved.