i
involucral envy
even to the knife
invades me evasive
I avoid veniality
and vapors vacate
vacillating I vent
prevaricating and aver
television avoid like
elevator shoes in
Lilliputian savannahs
under the moving mower
ii
o winsome kid
they false honesty's
kind as glass
in a diamond ring
even certificated
by laser
digit on digit
for the firm festival
iii
the last gratuitous sin
crosses my desk
the publisher says
I print it why not
says he why not
out in Los Angeles
they'll never know the difference
and New York covers all bets
iv
o owner of transmissions
call thy prostitute
for an honest reading
of your business mail
answer this she says
let that one wait
don't answer that
in three neat piles
pointed out with nail polish
v
here is the void
at long last considered
in the total spectrum
of available wavelengths
that is free or
unencumbered
and not kept in fee
the baldric is the mainstay
of the zodiac
from the creeper pains stay
to the Kodiak
figuration nice
the chute drops and
they fall
ornamental snowmen
of disasters
hitting the silk
of temerarious response
do they reside
and bide
the ever-receding osculation of the tide
the old song
the good old marital
conundrum
spills other days
afore my forecourt
my supplicants enter and whine
enter and whine
Dis was my biddy
and Dis biddy ate my raisin plum cake
and Dis widdershins
but you get my picture
life in the big
city
it's a lean-to
against the kitsch
makeover
the headless horseman
amid the droppings
of his steed
discourse of a
plantation man
my screed-gifts
magnanimous
enlarge the plantation
by a various plenteous
device of incantation
it stands for me
I placard it
soberly staidly mightily
it figures me
like an old scarecrow
it adds up for me
me it adds up to
monumental as the dry day
when no-one spits
to see the addendum on a will
a codicil of no devising
naming my expectorations
valid on the bottom line
so that the partridge hens lay their eggs
in the sassafras tea
beside my pillow
and I read the muck in the cup's bottom
