Park Avenue's rubber flood, its mastered
whoredom.
Hermes' passage, whose sonorous cleft
is repeated after--until its vehicular
usurpation is complete.
As if an anciently overdubbed rite.
On Oct. 4, 1986, Dan Rather was making
his way home.
His kindly signed-off face was fully
dimmed, as the American public filled in
the blanks of a broadcast.
Able to speak when spoken to.
Did he scrub off Live Makeup, or leave it
on?
Early autumn air was warmth's incorrect
remainder, intimating a tailorship that
cooly spun off Mr. Rather.
As his profile heightened, so did his
senses--beelines like rulers.
Eighties NYC was characterizing its deity, horns running up facades--Yeeping.
Dan's gentlemanly earnestness, hueing
his lips with delivery--while being stalked.
Nick-of-the-eye holograms of cityscape
intensity--a closed plan of attack that
already conquered variables.
Karma's streetless address of supposed
firsts.
Of foes, feet & frequency--homing in on
Dan, three dots about to connect.
Not that it couldn't be, but that it could &
would be--Dan was about to sweat-up his
suit.
His large eyes maintained innocence as they tried his skull like a fish on deck:
"Kenneth, what's the frequency?"
a voice asked.
Repeatedly this question was posed,
as feet & fists reached out from each word.
Mr. Rather clocked in the jaw & kicked, saught refuge in a building lobby--
"Kenneth, what's the frequency?!"
Two of Manhattan's Men in Black took turns tweaking a radio dial.
The staticky melee blipped, booped &
zipped straight out of an unfeeling
extraction of alien information.
There was CBS' voice of reason,
rained down upon by a white beam logic.
Mr. Rather's signal eventually came in
clear, as he was helped up, asking: 'Who
on earth is this Kenneth fellow, what of the frequency?'
*On Oct. 4, 1986, the news anchor Dan Rather was attacked by two men on Park Avenue. One of the men kept asking him: "Kenneth, what's the frequency?"