Poem of the Subterranean Buddah

I.

& they tore off my wings& they threw down my crown& my leather was no more.

      last night the poet was down      at the faux french cafe    laughing her head offat her male counterparts.

      "listen to me! listen to me!"          she staggers about          in her hiked skirt,"theeeze poets, i tell ya, are crazy!theze poets are dead & wild-eyed& think they screw god every night.theze poets are all anal retentive,                repressed,      always bichin' about zen            death erotics;              ol' vagina              envious              suppressed              kept down                tied up

              quelled              quashed              spanked          poetzzz . . ."

II.

          & they tore off my wings        & they threw down my crown          & my leather was no more.the poet howled at the passing students  heading off for ancient precalculus,            intro. to western arts,            bodhisattvas & zygotes.        they blankly stare at this paper            goddess—not the male                pseudonym.

          tomorrow the poet says we            should march outside                  up                down          the italian embassy              in protest,          "cuz' they won't let            can't let            cicciolina          over for the latterday            sex holidays."              jive ass              soft flesh            subterranean              buddah

III.

            "& they tore off my wings          & they threw down my crown           & my leather was no more,"

        muttered the poet in her rusty tone          as we walked through the rain            & over grey cobblestones

            that led to swarrny cafes—          —the halfnote, the underground,            the mod hatter's poetry party.

yokahuna says that bad luck comes in threes;  the poet's work returns from the publishers  unmarked, not even folded right, someone    reading each during lunch with one ear    screwed to the phone, her finest dreams            sent out into the void & not

      one "sentimental" scrawled in red.            tonight the venus in furs      seems like a pale, sleepless thing.

      her hair is suddenly asymmetrical.        while her head is still shaved      from her depression, the left side

      blooms again, a cascade of black      down to her ass, onto the street                & away. away.

      i do not think she can discover            america in her dreams.  she mutters female eroticism is dead.

      you can only write so many poems        of your excess—so many words      covering your junki past . . . finding

your sartori between your second finger        & clitoris, years of cheap wine      & yesterdays pipe smoke. yes, she

      did have the power of the wyrd once      & on her jacket she wrote her poems    floating in cowhide abstractions                    &        her wings shouted steel +    visions, yes, her eyes were so clear          that it made her words

            strange & delicious.