The cigarette, The ballad of Dean Reed & from Illennium
by John Goodby
[ poetry - november 03 ]
The cigarette
(after Laforgue)
for Chris Wigginton
This world's pretty naff: the next one stinks.
I putter along, resigned to life's third degree
But - to kill time, attending the Big E, -
I smoke the odd one under the noses of the gods.
The rest of you skulls-in-waiting, carry on.
For me, the blue twine that lazily wends
its way skywards is awesome. To ascend
with the dying scents of a thousand joss-sticks -
Caned, I'm able to find this Eden and rehearse
sharp, bright dreams in which strange waltzes quicken
to rutting elephants and mosquito-choirs -
and then the downer; thinking about my verse,
to contemplate (having tamed my heart's desires)
my belovéd thumb, as brown now as roast chicken...
The ballad of Dean Reed
In that twilight zone between Cuba and Ruby
Communism equalled Soviet power plus
electric guitar. Why not unplug, and go East?
Saints James and John translate you Saint Cyril
Awopbopaloobop; from Alma-Ata
to Brno Pioneers will swoon as you scrub
My Lai gore from Old Glory in a bucket.
Engelbert of Engelsstadt! Leader of the Pact!
Karloff-brows forgave the Mash Potato,
the muzhik's cow twisted, kicked its half-full pail
and red suede shoes twist the New Kid on the Bloc.
Che and Chuck Berry kiss on a dacha wall
in moonlight! The 'Human Face' beams a No
to Novocherassk. The Progressive Camp!
Red Elvis, Jack London of rock 'n' roll, you
were sold out everywhere - The King was dead,
but in more films than the King you rode
in blini Easterns, from Little Big Horn
to Little Big Horn, Sitting Bull for Red Indian
Bulgar Sioux. And when the mooncalf glistened
like Tannebaum, pointless, in the acid rain,
you'd swansung already with Don, glasnost
glasnost, like Johnny Rose's call from Loveland,
Colorado. Nate hisses 'Love Land? Rose. Was...?'
Comebacks? Like any barb removed, this one howls
for chameleon blood, you slash your left arm
useless, it's no good. Charred Trabis mark the road
to Babelsberg, through woods. The path turns
down to a small lake. The thick grass D.A.'d
under the red Harley so flagrantly at rest.
from Illennium
Naturally enough I turn to.
Some things are reversible, some.
You don't have that choice.
I'm going to Jo's for.
Bob Perelman, 'Chronic meanings'
What do you know
of Love?
Know? Nada, if I knew it
It couldn't be Love.
Even a mortal knows that.
Ed Dorn, Gunslinger
A young girl, who was blown out to sea on a set of inflatable teeth, was rescued by a man on an inflatable lobster. A coastguard spokesman commented: 'This sort of thing is all too common these days.'
The Times, 1998
I.
Whitehead is gone, & the New Steady Statesman is kaput,
whose theory I loved as a child.
As ghosts of beard and belly, they went bang.
Could this never have not-been? He felt
as if he would dearly like to smack this unpredictable
America, as a carp accomplishes the size of its pool -
Now sure pandemonium hits the square fan.
So? Cut up's corny; but that's what I am
While plagiarism is required. Cut up I mean
Progress implies it. That succumbers
the raining spectacle (down here in the South-Wet)
a naff dialectic - and even if you're wrong you're right -
yet 'Formidable, affable, durable' lovely
his hubristic self-summery just months before he died
II.
He sees through me as if I was America
which grew a culture of his death under glass
Ian Duhig
He sees through me as if I was America
were our faces at the centre of it, side to smiling side!
Stan, Chris, Donna, Sarah, Ivan (about to
urghh!) Dear Lou: from the salt-stinging estuary from
It is 3:17 p.m., Laugharne, steps down from the Boathouse -
24 August 1998. Sunday grey sea-smirr, the usual
But not the Greenways. You and me (still
a screwdriver the key to the ty bach door
in hand you helped me, up the hill - ancient
Avengers cruise the streets in sunlight
to respect the trust involved in a relationship.
- you can guess the West
wet inside and out Drenched in the as yet 'that'
which grew a culture of his death under glass.
