137. I TRIED TO START YOU BUT I COULDN'T REACH

I TRIED TO START YOU

BUT I COULDN'T REACH:

..(a farce)..
There was nothing going backwards but words
and the cage, and I'd already tired of that,
so I attempted putting you in the picture frame
by the random window but quickly realized you'd never fit.
And we had flowers in the flower pot and some orchids
by the window west - nomenclature had failed us
as I recall on the Twelfth of Never (it was once called) -
which is different from 'it once was called' in a conditional way -
and it ended up not mattering anyway because
the pilfered lampshade had come tumbling down
and the air-fighter-pilot with the message-jacketed lightning rod
had just started talking and the curtain rang with sound.
Lights, camera, action was all the rage;
while the astronaut in the diaper was the current image
of the newest art to be seen : five men in a red sedan,
three corner dogs in false tiaras barking with a smile,

(yes the dogs not the tiaras), and someone was

heard to say 'let's run to Jersey City',
while another person grimaced at all the bother -
for it's easier to ride anywhere like that than to run -
and Journal Square holds nothing anymore anyway,
any dollar store you want, any Aztec two-step mongoloid,
any Asian rip-rap food-frenzy mama
holding out her loins for all to see -
but they went anyway in a fifty-seven

Ford Fairlane of the sort never seen,

like some dental assistant's car
all pink and white - reminding me of gums or

bleeding gums anyway and breaking the
speed limit - always an impossibility in that heap -
though never an option still sounded like a good idea
or what's the turnpike for? And I watched from some
obscure hilltop nearby as they crested the Elizabeth
crescent and bent over Bayonne's hump to land right
there on Sip Avenue and come up to the city
from the bottom (legendary great idea); but the cymbals
were clashing or the symbols were crashing (I never

knew which), while the church on the hillside, ablaze

and afire, was burning its Mexican clergy (Jesu Maria Mon

Dieu and all the rest) Father Diego Carmellano Miranda

Lopez Diaz himself - clapping hands with the Devil,

singing songs in a trance while blessing
the bosoms of mothers and aunts,
put the crucifix down into Don Carlos' pants -
but it was ALWAYS like that in this Paradise

to come, this locus of the plain, this kingdom

of fun; and no one could speak

any faster than that -

whether for loss or for gain

or the Cardinal's red hat.