♪☺☻☺♪

Free verse was captured,
confined to a cell
by readers unraptured
in modernist hell.

And there he did languish
while chained to the wall
and desperate in anguish
gave forth a last call:

“Listen and read me—
my muse is the best!
Applaud and then feed me,
your starving guest !

Don’t fall for that beat…
Please ignore their old line.
I’m here. I’m effete.
I’m a modern divine…

I like it in prison
No, really — I’m free!”
(But his lock was awaiting
Your Readership’s key.

For the moderns all lie,
as your readership knows;
Modern poets don’t die—
they just decompose.)

Race-baiting covers for agit-prop agents
splitting white hairs in their dark distress;
with name-calling, bullying, lunch money payments
and shifting the blame for their people’s mess.

Reparations are due for your boring screed
that you scrawled at the helm of the Black Star Liner.
You owe it to those who were forced to read
your obtuse agitations (you Afro-whiner).

Poisonous shout-outs to fallen comrades:
holy Saint Michael in reaper’s hood—
endless blathering racial tirades
poor comrade—your dreams are misunderstood.

You’re obsessed with injustice. That’s nothing new.
You’re a David anointed to overthrow Saul—
(as long as he’s white and less rabid than you,
oh prophet and scribe of the activist call…)

Stay mad at the system. Revile all your foes
with raving, with preaching, with bitter bad words.
Insult all your enemies; list all your woes
as you document stink on your turds.

∅⚢☢⚧☯✰⚩✿⚥∅☢⚧☯✰⚢✿⚥☠⚩☯⚧✰

Too little and of course, too late
they spend what’s left imprudently
attempting to alleviate
the love of God’s own liberty:
The world transexual one-party state.

They think it’s normal — right for all
lost in a prideful dying fall
their lions heed the sea-horse call
attempting to transgender fate;
the devil searches for a mate
his nightly Babylonian date:
the world transexual one-party state.

They’ll legislate the Lord away
(his fundie followers as well)
their hateful heaven, holy hell
shall wither up and disappear
before redemption can draw near.
Their myths no more shall obfuscate
nor dangle such celestial bait
that underwriters overrate:
the world transexual one-party state.

Their antichrist is overpriced,
the nations, globally enticed,
now glorify the deviance
in herd-like mass obedience
surrendering to expedience:
where good is bad, and bad is great
and Christ the only one to hate,
allegiances exacerbate
the world ******* one-party state.

Parties will form and parties end
but parties can no more defend
consolidation into one
than flip a switch and dark the sun;
the Caesars left this part undone
the Muslims are just having fun
with our ******* one-party state.

Bring on the night until we see
that dark means dimming by degree
two parties? Overdone by one !
So let it bleed and let it be
till One is All and all agree
that we are doomed to hesitate
when God cannot resuscitate
the late One-World ******* State.

♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♫♪♪♪♫

I:  Lyric Line of Flight

Cavern Club / black leather / German rockers /  proto-youth culture groped its way from Liverpool / TV slowly sped up / modernity invented / flown in planes / swallowed in pills / I watch the second Kennedy funeral on the screen in shades of gray rain / warming to mid-60’s hues / into the stratosphere / a lysergic surge / retinal after-images / intensities of nostalgic color / that British courtesy in understatement / Paul’s voice a bassline / George a guru of six-armed confusion / tasteful: now a meaningless word / it was Apollonian-Dionysiac /  my childhood’s soundtrack

II:  Poem

They grooved—as our world became another

up from caverns to psychedelic flight.

They look so young in melancholic light

harmonizing black and white to color.

So distant—yet within our life’s short span

they grow apart as the hair grows longer

(The West’s resolve to expire grew stronger.)

Quadruplex visage:  young god sold to man.

I crack up beholding the mid-Sixties

lost in late-night YouTubes, I start to break.

time past: removed from the complexities

Recalling every song, the beat, the shake…

They sang the primrose path to confusion

nostalgia replacing resolution.

(A Choreopoem after Ntozake Shange)

Babbling publicly into your phone
the tragedy’s yours, and yours alone:
messages from your dysfunctional city
inflicted in Afro-eccentricity.

Turn off your phone and spare us the drama.
Look for change from the Lord (not Obama)…
Quit twitching your neckline, stop making that face
there’s nothing you merit because of your race;
no right to entitlement. Take it to God—
we hope He will change you, but spare the rod.

And we pray He does change you, put “yes” in your can;
and that change that’s left over (from Savior to man)
might enlighten your heritage, lighten your load
help you calculate more or less what you are owed
in dollars or dignity (afro-semantics)
while twittering radically militant antics.

A debt unforgiven: this claim someone owes you
some change in a can that black history shows you
your hopeful presumption is scant reparation
for ghetto entitlement fouling our nation.

Go harvest your madness and reap what you’ve sown
now that tares have sprung up as you blab on your phone
now that reapers are ready—the data-plan paid
and our melanin levels beginning to fade…

I’ll shout from your rooftop until you’ve heard
and the crackers get fed to the mockingbird.

Octosyllabic rhyme was killed.
Her epitaph I chisel here…
so face the book and feed your twit;
while I the rhythmic record clear.

The sad remains of Lyric Wit
are here interred—no more to rise
(lest poets’ brains be forced to think
and plummet from post-modern skies).

You phonies scrolling Twitter-blink
and scribblers with advanced degrees
look up, and hearken to these words
while feigning your conceited ease.

The academic gallows-birds
reviewing chap-books, high on fluff
make darker the sepulchral gloom—
as if it wasn’t dark enough.

The verdict’s in and all assume,
as measured meaning leaves the court,
he meant to **** her (Poetry).
Life sentences are written short.

The killer, grinning artlessly
in blank-verse handcuffs, void of rhyme,
composes abstract lines: the dull
memoirs of his poetic crime.

The prosecution’s notes are full
the case is made, the jury hears
his guilt made evident, at least.
The victim’s mother melts in tears

He murdered her himself, the beast.
then dumped her: a deflowered rose.
His incoherent imagery
dismembered her like slaughtered prose.

She met her end lamentably;
He did her in and cut her down
thus shortening her metered day.
(murderous, evil, free-verse clown!)

Behold her grave—where grass turns hay
as poets’ bones subside to dust;
her soul with God to reconvene
(or wander in bemused disgust).

Her grave-site paints a pastoral scene,
poetic fodder: life from death…
and calves shall fatten near her tomb.
Oh coward reader: take a breath !