Verse and Worse: Selected and New Poems of Steve McCaffery 1989-2009

A Few Donuts from an Hommagiste or: Bad Modernism

A Few Donuts from an Hommagiste or: Bad Modernism Pizza the cage next Torre Ugolino meaning ghosts know a double-plot. Terza, vespa, terza Dantescan [insert a phrase in Greek] & my highest compliments to Mrs. Sea Yelp’s vast whisper. And Chung Lang brought it beer from the keg [insert Chinese ideogram then a passage in Italian] through lilacs and prufrocks high bramble the stagger [insert Chinese ideogram] And Lang Po thought this dissonance [insert a phrase in Greek] and ordered dysjunction [insert Chinese ideogram] which is ole Joe Stalin’s way as a linguist [insert a passage in Russian] as when in Ravenna [insert a passage in Italian] they marked stones in a unison. Hast ’ou topic to try ye? Slant mind to thy gibbet? Hast ’ou cradle-wind snatched to saddle up anti-sound? [Insert long phrase in Norwegian] air powered barbarous pewter. Selected and New Poems of Steve McCaffery 1989–2009 / 23 [Insert very large Chinese ideogram] And Kung Fu spoke and saw the limp Cuban from McFingal’s [insert phrase in Gaelic ] which is [insert phrase in Spanish] high five his false teeth for [insert a passage in Italian] for [insert a passage in Latin] meaning [insert a passage in Greek] to papa Hesiod which means that the Musso’s crime lab’s under water again yielding to the [insert passage in French]. And Kung said to Hu Flung Dung “it does not cohere” [insert a word in Greek followed by corresponding word in Latin] then “never fall in love with your theories, just go find that missing head.” And Jefferson thought it all through at Flaming Wash: “don’t be admonitory, kiss it up the arse as that bastard Churrrc…heeell told you to” but Ben Musso still resolves [insert phrase in Italian] to put his bank in order meaning at 1.3 per “fu**ing” annum we could all be meeelionaires too dee cosmic debree. Aetatis above alla breve And yet Eddington admits there’s a “little too much albumin in the aldrian alembics, makes the Aldine aleatory spin off its axis, causing …. [insert a passage in Anglo Saxon] And Ole Possum informs he’ll do his laundry next Friday at Mrs. Faber’s swa-ray causing E.P. to unterrrogate “when will I be paid for those wartime speechuz and in which currency lire or denarius?” But Marcel Duchamp insists we keep it naked coz litritcher is nudes that stay nudes. 24 / Verse and Worse 2 Hang it all, John Ashbery, there can be but the one Flow Chart. But Flow Chart, and my Flow Chart? Ask Camoens: [insert a passage in Portuguese]. “Twang!” “Positron!” “Terpsichore!” Pink flowers in power-point, cool breeze from Sienna touching cobwebs and fingerling. But Dr. Dingbat opines it could all be arranged “throo zee Maarsh – all Plan for those starving chinks in H.K.” And A. L. P. agrees the P. M. and H. C. E. don’t consummate a sewer rat’s fortune [insert a passage in Latin, followed by a passage in Japanese] Concrete on wedding-plans. No-show in Norwegian. [insert passage in Runic] which is to say [insert a passage in Phoenician] All this, while that S. O. B. Lord Alf**d D**gl*s thinks it’s fun to be b*m f*ckd by O. W. Oh [insert Greek letters for AMOR]!! Oh [insert Greek word for sodomy]! Burnt cinders by faggots, but Francesco Lionetti made it by hand passing the fast train on his pogo stick. Selected and New Poems of Steve McCaffery 1989–2009 / 25 ...