Vox
"The point," said Feiffer, "is to make them *buy
your *withdrawal." Read St. Jerome
carefully, you'll realize he had a
corps of acolytes
in the cave with him, taking down
his crap. Somebody had to feed them.
Bernini saw him:
long weak face
of a scholar, an antiquarian;
doctrine, unreason so immensely
relaxing, eternal sabbatical -
the bloody stone with which
he beats himself a small price to pay.
My cave is convenient
to Aspen. CNN, Fox,
C-Span set up
on a rubbled ledge, and litter
the slope. (I have been offered millions
to install a webcam. Won't.)
They wait
for the floor-show, my Temptations:
penitent airheads and yobs of various sorts.
The powerful seeking goodness, the trivial meaning.
I wheel and moan in anguish
as pleading midriffs stroke
my beard. Apply my mouth
to brutal tattoos and bite them from the flesh,
then wave my hands and mumble
blessings that stop the spurting blood.
Have no idea if I alone
am the show, or if the media see
my apparitions,
or put them there,
or plan to edit them in
later, for the biopic.
The absence of determinate moral content
in my starved ravings
troubles me, but not, apparently, the producers.
Things fall apart; some patchwork
prophecy is being fulfilled.
Will there be time, I wonder,
to be called forth and hailed
as first poet of the Empire?
Marvelous Market
I like to think that after
the pyroclastic flows
submerge our suburbs, a new,
kindly race (evolved
from escaped gerbils) will carefully,
reverently unearth
this franchise. And though the sheetrock
and plastic seats flamed
in the first instant, I imagine,
somehow, they didn't. The espresso machine
is dusted and hammered into shape,
the faux-rustic hangings
restored, and our replacements
sit (the chairs are altered) as if privileged,
no longer discussing war
or the aporia "authentic"/"inauthentic."
It will be like today,
with sesame sticks available to be dipped
in pesto; crumbs of poundcake
awaiting, each in turn, the line at the counter;
on the sidewalk,
the sun and tables out, umbrellas up. There,
a former twenty-something millionaire
attacks his laptop. Once he crunched
his own numbers, now
a client's; but youth and frenzy still
assiduously enter
the same funnel. At the next
table, shuffling and sorting
the pages of her hopeless grant
proposal, a woman sighs
and edits. Some clinic or theater.
The sun travels;
when I pass by again, they are still there.
She's blond, he isn't.
Surges in the gene-pool.
Hopefully, though signs are doubtful, they will meet.
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