by Edward Dorn
Hyattecture is all strut and stage
and a cheap high to move through.
The inner space is hollowed-out egyptian
and although the Egyptians
were not squeemish about slave labor
their engineers wouldn’t have created
a structural episode like Kansas City.
In this franchise,
the most worn-out lobbyist
drinks from the cup of absurdity
because there is Forever
one more drop of it in the cup.
A dollar bill glued to the floor
will arrest half the parade.
From that clue I take it
Dobro Dick is somewhere around
grinning through the foliage,
inside the cocktail well,
a copy of Hobo in his chaps.
A distant background audio
of blowing out of pipes and flues
spreads like gas
through the Titan scale of the lobby.
Dizzying verticalities of glass
launch themselves as from Cape Canaveral.
Single, sharper sounds penetrate
the gas, as if just arrived
from galaxies found only in The Catalogue.
Through this half-tone crescendo
debauch the footpassengers
from the Sheraton to the quartzy elevators
visible as ants bound for the Van Allen Belts,
only to return in the grip
of their ionized bagatellas
raincoats & umbrellas
shock smeared across their kissers.
Out comes the book.
The crowd stares at the bill
stuck to the floor.
Dick promises to levitate the money
and with it the floor
of the surrounding dynastic structure.
The grins tighten around the mouths
the fingers around the briefcase handles.
This audience is educated.
Dobro’s theatrically darting eyes
set the moment
when the bill rockets into his flat hand
with the stinging snap of the rubber band.
Outrageously gag-shop stupifaction
sweeps across the onlookers
followed by beach devouring
waves of disgust
as over the face of the fakir
wash oceans of smugness.
The reading from the book
itself, is a barking affair
with the index finger, right hand,
poking every fifth word
like a jack-hammer on epilepsy.
Hungry as a lexikon, no mercy,
no thinking, no rest.
Round and round the cocktail well
the ambulatory reading draws to a close.
I’ve read the story, but catch
my favorite line: “I’ll cook you
on a stick, before I let you
join my gang.” The curtain
comes down on late afternoon.
The intellectually imperative
Gerald Graff vacates the premises
and swims through the tide of Yellow Cabs.
Our boomlens now swings upward
to the lofty balcony of the Chicago Suite
and its peculiar allurements.
Dark suits, almost abstract pinstripes,
and no doubt the highest percentage
of eyeglasses in the dynastic structure.
Things are not that romantic around here
although the Green Knight himself
would likely be welcome,
if he checked his axe.
Nothing is weird here. Not even
Captain Jack’s Chaps, showing
the history of all the crawling bugs
in Idaho. The Dean actually agrees
to store the instruments in his bedroom.
Drakonian tolerance. Peanuts and Allusion,
brie and Reference, and UCLA women.
Hotel Hartley Down by the Bayou, As Dick prepares for New York And I turn my thoughts homeward.
Secure, with the rumble of Wig-Town
in the background
Secure from the rumble of breakfast
and dinner and Miss Lily
the Big Band Chinese Songbird
who could have sung for Less Blown.
Porcelain beauty, swathed in chiffon
a fresh mandate from each wave of MLAers
seeking exotic space in Sheraton outbacks.
Shut at last from miniscule administrators
and lugubrious speculation
on sweet and sour knucklebones
and the ham of harangue,
processors to be sure to eliminate themselves
though to hear them tell it
it will be everybody else.
Standing on the balcony
overlooking Main Street
I can hear Dialin’ Dick on the line
to perpetual Lost & Founds. As one can infer
a certain degree of conversation
from the evidence of the nearest conversant
his strenuous descriptions of lost instruments
reflect a disbelief in mandolinguitaraphones
on the other end of the line.
Across the Bayou the massive warehouse
which is the “campus” of University
of Houston Downtown (we never saw
the Gilleys Department) where Mr.
Goodwrench is President,
the windows are awash in the evening light.
The traffic splashes in the fine rain
cut, once in a while, by a pedestrian
hunched against Hughestown’s loaded Dice.
High tides of preoccupation . . .
it might be entertaining
to chase some mice around New York
as regards the invitation,
but then, thinking of the labor of travel,
it might not.
There is the almost audible crash
of nugation from Morktown
and the memory of the bitter mountaineers
surviving in their lofty Hel.
And I think of Tom Clark far to the West
at the bottom of the Pacific Rim
and whose post card I have in my pocket.
Bicycle grease smeared on his impatient face,
his hair matted with chain oil
his eyes locked like tracta beams
on the slack little SoCalers
and the bane of their immorality.
The only keeper between us
and Mr. Sarcophagous.
The Inventor of the Eighties,
the first man to copyright a decade.
The formulator of the great, post
Einsteinian equation of radical non-entity,
ESH = MASS
And Dialin’ Dick dials on,
again to New York and Montana,
a conference call of stuttering sublimity.
My brain is like jelly,
all I need is some toast to go with it.
Tomorrow morning I’m going home.
If I don’t cast myself away
I’ve got a fair chance of getting there.
FROM ABHORRENCES A CHRONICLE OF THE EIGHTIES
•
one bullet
is worth
a thousand bulletins
The Protestant View:
that eternal dissent
and the ravages of
faction are preferable
to the voluntary
servitude of blind
obedience.
While You’re at it
As long as you’re closing The Window of Vulnerability
would you mind shutting that door of paranoia
And while you’re at it, would you mind
sweeping the carpet of disdain.
And then there’s the container of trash to carry o
ut
When you’re finished with that
you might go to the kitchen where you’ll find
the skillet of rashness. Uh,
just throw in a few slices of the bacon of compatibility
and fry well.
January 1983
Wait Till the Christians Hear About This!
In his effort to get prayer into the schools
President Reagan reminded us
that the ancient Romans and Greeks fell
when they abandoned their gods:
students needn’t “pray” exactly,
for instance, they might “think”
for a while before school starts.
If he means that, Thought could get
the biggest boost it’s had for years.
Maybe they could think about some greek myths.
And what about sacrifices?
I wouldn’t mind seeing Cap Weinberger on a spit.
Maybe they could consider the Aztecs—
I wouldn’t mind at all
seeing Jeanne Kirkpatrick’s frosty heart
raised to the heathen skies.
1 November 1983
Flatland
People make a lot of fun
of the Flat Earthers,
but the fact is,
in a lot of places
the earth is flat.
December 22, ’83
“On the Interstate,” with R. “Dobro” D. Paycheck strip, south of South Pass. Shortbeds, longbeds, hotbeds, waterbeds, close shavers, coupon savers. “The only good martyr’s a dead one . . .”
Raymond Obermayr
Rough Passage on I-80
We are travelling through the country
where “Thank you Oh Lord
for the deal I’m about to receive”
is chiselled into the blacktop
like a crow’s incantation.
It’s minus 3 degrees
on the Count Fahrenheit scale.
It would be Boraxo country
except there ain’t no Boraxo.
And no mule teams. Here the mules drive.
Those rolling hills out there
are full of coal and oel and moly
a lota moly, that’s lybdenum
the kind of denum the cowboys
around here wear. Around here everybody’s
a cowboy with no cows
and every cow is without boys.
The boys have all gone to Rock Springs
to drill and to get shot.
Low trailers hunkered in the Winde,
the big snau-blower. Scrap rock, like deinosaur fins
strung along the saurian freeway. Ah,
to endeavor to gain what another endeavors
to gain at the same time—competition!
eight barrelled, sharp clawed!
The graft is longbed style, Shot the Sheriff
fur shure, plus some shot the D.A. types,
they’re all here. Tractor hat Stranglers,
Drive-up Drinkers, Mobile Snorters,
Pass on the Right Siders—mega rednek,
and for good reason—they’ve lynched all the Lavender Neks.
More dangerous than Beirut.
They don’t take hostages,
they don’t take anything alive.
White rock faces, Four-Wheelers,
Big Dealers, Slim Jim Peelers,
Teased Hair Squealers! YaaHoo!
beller the Yahoos, it’s where
they make the springs rock—
they don’t call it Rock Springs for nothin’.
RADIO: White Christmas scrap,
Der Bingle baritone in motheaten night-cap.
We see through the landscape:
black rubbermaid crows
sail past a turquoise trailer, cold aluminum
hunched under the guns of the winde.
Inside the sleeping resident turns
on a couch of budweiser cans
lips frozen turquoise, wrenched,
limbs on the pike to gangrene.
RADIO MUSAK: Gordon Lightleg!
dulcimerland, vests on pennywhistles,
Folkak, Blusak, Rucksak Rock.
On to Rollins and Riggins.
Steel mosquitoes probe an oel poule.
Deinosaur blood, black and crude,
the awful, devious oleo-olfactory
death odour, atomic weight 32, low and volatile,
driven by the pistons of hell,
the transfusion of the red roadmap,
where those stumping bags of the autoperiod
were once given to roam. Out the window
the Prontosauris Oil Company
sits next to the Horny-toed Boot Factory,
Overthrust Belt getting looser and looser now
after the gas these “Big Boys with popcorn teeth”
sucked out of the mantle.
On the asphalt cinch, rolling along,
kidneybelts tightened, the Kenworth Tractorsaurus
stampede into Wamsutter, Lusk, Dittlebone
and other such turquoise-eye-shadow towns.
The Wamsutter Hotel is totally electric.
Gas, permanent vacancy,
Conoco, Amoco, nowhere to go.
That Big Trailer over there
is where the Mayor lives,
pole light on all night,
prowling dogs, cringe and slobber
for an ankle to crush—not the friend of Everyman.
All this would be on a hill but there ain’t none.
Gay Johnson installations
on both sides of the Strip.
The Howard Johnson of the High West.
A woman built like a stack of tires
fills up her coupé—SIGN
“Gay Johnsons, Buses Invited, Tobacco.”
On second thought, Howard Johnson
doesn’t deserve
to be the Gay Johnson of Wyoming.
Roadkill scattered like throwrugs
on blacktop. All the groundrunners
are either smart (located elsewhere)
or dead at the wheels of the heavy hitters.
Speedy schools of pickup trucks
scatter ahead of hunter packs of tractorsaurus,
Terribledactyl birds,
ghosts of old clavichord players
swoop with heavy grecian wings
to snatch up flat rabbit fleeces
from the altar of the tar, Wyoming crêpes
dredged in pea-gravel crude.
RADIO: Governor of Wyoming Safety Bulletin:
Recommends strapping skis bottomup
on roof-rack in case of flip-over.
Woman held in tract house by unidentified
Gillette Krak Dealer—across town six onlookers
killed when police check out false report
and man rains lead on the unpaved avenue.
State Trooper ahead between the strips,
coffee thermos in officer’s fist.
His police shield doubles as Rad Badge of Courage.
Snow fences, like arthritic twigs of protozoa
vanish into the vale of snow—the world is getting colder
as the transmitted propaganda says it is getting warmer.
TRANSMISSION FROM GILLETTE: The Razor City.
Serious roadkill this time—they’re digging with backhoes
and throwing the victims in.
Gillette: people have been known
to go there just to have their throats cut.
AD: “Trucker’s Mistress,”
a truckstop item hooked to cigarette lighter
with concertina wire stretching to vitals
for over-the-road Mechanical Head—
available in truckstop gift shops
with Chain Wallets and Turquoise Buckles—
“A real herpie saver.”
Laramie exits flash by like marked cards.
University of Wyo. What do they teachem the
re?
Nothin’ works with ranchin’ anyhay these days.
There they go, canterin’ to the subcafeteria
in search of teflon heffers. Say!
What do you do when a Wyoming Cowboy
throws you a pin? Run like Hell!
because the grenade in his mouth
is about to go off!
Willie’s on again . . .
all the truckertops and lesser heavy hitters
singing along under parts-shop, feedstore web hats,
the houseflies washed out in the strenuous amphetewake.
“On the Rode Again. . . .”
Three Hundred pound Choir Boys
with eyes like strawberry-coconut donuts.
Crawling to Little America in Cheyenne.
Twenty-six degrees below Count Fahrenheit.
The transmission from Gillette fallen silent.
Cut off by the authorities no doubt. Somebody asks
how interesting can a town afford to be?
The soft, reasonable talk of Denver
supplants the airwaves, the jittery compromise of the city
crowds out the spontaneous stix.
A yellow ivory ball of pollution
hangs above Cheyenne’s fibreglass air.
The Santa Claus-bright Gettysaurus Reks Refinery
is strewn along our approach, blowing
not so symbolic mushrooms, MX Missile Burgers,
the biggest meat in Strip Town.
Martyrs are a dime a dozen around here.
The best ones have been dead a long time.
15 September 1984