Canto VI

var plasma

what are these wheels that PB sprouts

from stripped trees

as though hell hath no fury

as a wagon scorned

but sprung from branches and twigs

these wheels

witness deformities and hazards

unspewed since Bosch

risque notes not a list

of soldiers on this Festos Disk

linear A or B or Z—

who’s to know it’s not alacrity’s

thallos

sweet lips wedded

small pecks

sealed with a kiss

then pressed into clay

before the cataclysm of 1628 BCE—

so as Elaine sd/ “What am I supposed to do?

Be a shrinking violet?”

or as my Liebling sd/ “Cynicism is often the shamefaced

product of inexperience”

var gas

Earth and air their order keep

And everlasting stars wheel on their way

Unchanged, may peace profound brood o'er

Vultures who wheel eddying round

Rowing with oars of wings

When they recovered their breath from the battle

And gazed in amazement at the water

The bones spake gator shi shi, baby

The bones spake crok shi shi, say

Da ima not play wit you no mo

Say leave the bones on the sand, baby

Leave the kayno kadeenyay, baby, say

Da ima not play wit you no mo

Daughters in Shakespeare have fools for fathers

My father’s inflections on my daughter’s face

Sufficient unto the day the evil thereof

Mycenaean Linear Script B

now was linked to the calendar

to the eternally rolling wheel of Time

var liquid

suppose one must make

story from life

rather lines too pressed

like aspic or duck at Elaine’s

rather lives too quiet

like neck face or beer man

: Medici Boy in 1942-52

JC appropriates B’s Medici Princess in 1948

then the Medici Prince in 1952—

oil water whether will shill for water oil

rotation invented 5500 years ago

rotary motion bip bip

potter’s wheel thrown 3300 BCE

spinning spindle play

shaft and socket open

circles

cue theme music

var elastomer

really the trees denuded

that PB hangs with cartwheels look more

than a little like bones forking up from hills

like whales beached on Acheron’s shore

misbegotten

as though through the lens of Roger Fenton

the mind of Tennyson, the idiocy of war

not limited to Crimea but into present

Indochine and Mesopotamia—

: confusion fear

terror confusion—

abhorred by the god

all of us abandoned

to our own machines

joyless

swinging hung

from trestles as a warning to those

who would occupy any land

: as Hecuba can lose so can she thrill—

so can she curse blind Polymestor

urging on his children DEAD

so that even Euripides will bend to pity

our god’s machine

var glass

And now it becomes death preserved as class—

The ostentations of vehicular

Prowess versus an auto-da-fé of sass—

Bad tires, worse chassis, tempered particulars,

Worthless roofs, sad CAFE, enfilading

Leases, fleet depreciation, mylar

Car coats because the thing won’t be fitting

In the garage, all wheel drive masquerades

As traction control wicked ice skating—

Name it Cayenne, Escape, or Lemonade,

The price points are taller than the axle

Height: much far above average put paids

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11 11 keeps recurring but one musn’t pay

too much attention otherwise they tie you to a telephone pole

and shoot you full of arrows like St. Sebastian

then who’ll be there to pull the shafts

and for fuck’s sake don’t go prancing back to the Emperor

bragging that he can’t kill shit where you’re concerned

or he’ll toss you off a cliff or something

even PB knew not to make such a big thing

but bury it all in the background

like St. Paul’s conversion where you can barely see him

fallen off his horse surrounded by these guys wearing

conquistador’s helmets—

it pays not to send

youths to the deli for pastrami

they’ll never appreciate it

better to give them burgers or wieners

: the freezer has it Chan used to say

: Golden Cadillac lens and a machine gun

both can shoot but only one gives the portrait—

Alfred and his fettuccine

var B-E Condensate

does the boson have the Buddha nature?

mu—

breath supercooled

words fall in like US Marines at 8^th and I

words line up

march right into Henry’s paragraphs

thicken

stall English garden

shut gate politesse

but no Ambassadors

nothing if not desultory

perfunctory phrases not in the cards

so to speak

not through this hedgerow

BARREL MAGIC