FOUR POEMS by MICHAEL GIZZI Postmodern Culture v.4 n.2 (January, 1994) pmc@unity.ncsu.edu Copyright (c) 1994 by Michael Gizzi, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that the editors are notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the consent of the author and the notification of the publisher, Oxford University Press. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I. ODE TO WOODY STRODE Veteran Actor Woody Strode will appear at the 8 p.m. Saturday screening of John Ford's "Sergeant Rutledge" at the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum's Wells Fargo Theater. Los Angeles Times Brother Ebon Noggin, Survival Bubba, persona non grata In the peckerwood's head, a midden of bushwah shoe-tree'd Into a montage mob of Queeg fits. Can't beat it For sheer eidetic distress of 30 shitkickers with 10 toothpicks recidivism A runaway braille trimming tremors to the quick Gimme some skulls, man! not these Chiropodists down with the croup, Jack, in Drumstick Gigging like locust on the corn, humming %memory loves company% Per Idaho beanfire with chili obligations as Bronco Nagurski makes the conversion with broken horns As at a theatre corpses calling curtain calls With their entire cast of improprieties, Errol Flynn Pinned if only for a second between a crumpet and a scone The peak of his powers at the end of his rope The one-eyed King Radio with a mumbling jag on - This is the chorus of the Caresser's song %Canoeer than Velveeta were her thighs% I thought I was standing in a movie with a leg wound An open book of alluvial text approximating flesh A ceiling dispensary pulled down to reveal Halfmoons claire de luneing at the world No one has a straight job, wheat snobs rule the waves Waterbury sidles to his cardspout Tuberculosis got the camellias. Family trees May insert any name one chooses for the pedigree of love Let the foreign woman come ashore, what as the talkers say You'll never see at home lost in the delicate rays of folklore Its minutes recorded with his feet by the Armless Wonder Thuggees with allergies film greenhouses, hold shining steam To treebuds, prehensile eyes out stalking vim as if vision Were a concubine, a rinse cycle lashed to the belly of a Raj With a buckle of swash, Flora Danica waiting in the wings Professor Pretzel Wolf buttons the suit on his portrait Of trees, an ornamental hombre in a speculum of preen Asks, "Who's the forest of them all?" Why - Woody Strode! spiked with summer drone His dome chapeau made of breeze, accent grave Over the trees tight as a coat of Gliddens Not without ribands or the great socko of Kilimanjaro All these yahoos headed West, have they got names to be blessed? Bring me the ho-hum, fly it up here verbatim An eggshell carbon 12 writ in a foreign tongue As though Johnny Vast had no idea where his howl came from And fetch us the cretin who et my heart That's what makes it green, does it not? We live in a factory of the future on the edge of a lip With miniature cowboys banished forever The precision of faraway herbalists spilling the beans "Our desires expectorate dutifully" slobbers Crow Bob An ol' Yakima stuntjockey son of Cannut uproots the tree Of reason roost, wraith of the treeshirt twinges Until and when courage is inflated to pressure sufficiently Pigeon balloon per square inch chest looking comical enough To glance, getting by the smoketrees you reckon it's only Gene Our ofay Autry slit-eyed slimewinder triggering his getaway Lately ghosted into Christmas while all the leaves go blind Only the shine inside perception lights the street Yours the campfire that mocks the sun Never met anyone outside your head who didn't shimmer fragile timber What I mean Woody is you look swell Like them Indian lakes in summer Air kisses on a nudist clipboard, offbeat green tops o' trees Everything Ritz crackers in the polluted lake wrappers Blue Moon mobile homes for executive cornhuskers shimmering a song Cigarette snorkel on fishlip puffing dawn ------------------------------------------------------------------------ II. REMOVING THE OBELISK From immediate dictation and against my will "I"s the most embarrassing character in the world a deflector from antiquity pretending to be italic Just another mook on Hungry Hill "I wanna got to collage I want sun on the phone to talk me down from here Nice embalmer. Easy Boy!" Fucks it have to do with %me%? This crown ain't small enough for the both of us? Gets so downright overused jellyglass one has to laugh Another thing those bones do -- make your bed Lump back in on the jungle chaise Apache horsefly -- Hi little soon to be dead buzz! Later silence the only visitor from another noise ------------------------------------------------------------------------ III. PARENTAL GUIDANCE Amnesia sweat the emptiness composed of sponges Darryl Adam Ahab DeGroot petroglyphs of gringotude a near myth childhood hovercraft near a 16 foot insect Die Meistersinger pouts so stream of air might partly stroke goldfish theories of Cliquot Jugglers with a ducking movement limberdemain over fruit floors lip an osculation on the glass kisser from the suicidal kissery, a squeegee mops any loss of face Our bunkers in addition to the standard facilities provided for comfort have cuspidors for the use of psychiatrists strategically sick at heart, nowadays sick A boy's own wax among his bees and shrapnell blowing salve on the conjured static, spangled auras clocked on the draw Out Padres of the dormitory contagion on the hour ------------------------------------------------------------------------ IV. THE PERMANENCE OF WHIM TO PROVIDENCE Begin in Purgatory where Lamb rassles Chasm and faults shoot halter of their fanfaronade nixing any Vita Nuova dynamo nictate deal Then rent a capsicum and travel nonpareil through the Baboon Lancet the equipage of a whoop anticipating sinkers of a low-rent wagonette in a Dexter diluvium Cocoon-steaming the small tales of croupiers and piazzas yawned at the local salutation where Brad Bibbler sucks his Beggar's Double quick as lily over the paddy in a strabismus off Pulp Space Young Orchards of heartburn licking the salt misogamist as you turn spangle and motor towards Sutton, sunburn and snail thievish as a gospel lottery heard on the racket outside Lack The low rider ruin of Chickasaw Chepachets turbo charging browsers through the ghetto streaks damsons lit up like hooves of despite in twaddle blue denim brooks across their chests Or right here in Blackstone your everlastings ignoring the dry bones of that stranded drench