Christopher Mulrooney, US

 

 

Free Verse   new city men   I come to the shills these hills who would so like to boff your wife have so much to offer why don't you give them all your money well after all we can't all be funny     general repetition   I rehearse you all in the various repetitive measures we have all grown used to not that I'm all that used to it ah no sweltering discuses the long tape measures scarcely interest me I like refinement a quietly worldling air what I can buy isn't all that much no not really it's not on the scale of some large-scale banks and property owners however high the organization reaches I'm a middling self-expressive mall rat as the saying is but I can buy the view that's unexampled for example here's the vista out my bay window oriel hawthorn fir tree hedges palisade hillsides mountaintop blue and clouds and then the other voice asks personally as I ask against all such hope for a whiskbroom out of hand in the office my blistering hope is for all the most able every man Jack in the whole bunch to squeeze me out some dues of all that's most paid in all the life that's lived paying           dues like the library book you've never read and don't dare return and then we subscribe to a paying order of gents and/or ladies with a parsimonious aide handing out the printed materials that register this on a dime a thin dime ready for the slot   I key to the city   with a city map an aerial view in your mitts do not ask for forgiveness but make your explorations Cocky Locky pretending to his throne the great Applegate meandering to his'n up the purgatorial coasts by dusty streets in the way these things go stop those callers who come to the thick of the fray with nothing much to say here is your reward a continual heckling never a laugh a fart nor so much as an order for drinks I thank you says the speaker now one to his right looks to his left and shouts at another on his left who shouts back over the speaker at the top of their voices here's your Stanley on Urals question do I presume? or was it long anyway afterwards the cup passed to me out of hand? or the otherwheres that dictate to the poet how his plainness should be that of water     glazed donut   the glance full of possibility falls across the stage here is the lecturer mesdames et messieurs will you have done at my bequest for I give you all I have nothing left only your eyes upon me here and here and here and here slowly moving across the stage you have only to look at me to know me I am the empty purse the sad sack the fertile ground left fallow for good reason how you burn to know me better though you see right through me all the time and admire me for taking the light just so