by Edward Dorn
Recette Economique
I’ve always found much
to recommend
in the slogan “Soak the Rich”
but I’ve never found
much discussion regarding
the uses of that marinade.
I have one modest proposal:
feed them to the poor.
September, 1984
Armalite Resolution
I’m not going to be
a martyr to politeness anymore.
When I see someone with a slight cold
it’s the other direction for me.
October 1984
Americano Style
Self Criticism
I accept the present emperium
for my own, individual good.
I have been striving to become miserly
in all I think and do so that I,
and those few who look to me
for their protection, shall not
be alienated through my recalcitrance.
And I will not be tempted to consider avariciousness wretched,
I shall not wince or shudder
at happy talk, for even as I know it is vapid
and inane, still it is better that its users
be spared the dark tribulations
which might otherwise occupy their consciences
and distract them from their self-righteousness.
And I promise not to consider self-righteousness
in the old, aloof and superior way
which was formerly my wont.
I know that abortion is wrong
and should be shunned
and I shall banish from my mind
the scenes of infanticide
which are condoned the world over
for the good of subject states.
But those questions, again,
I will make myself reluctant to contemplate.
I will approve of genocide in Central America
because it is proprietary
and conforms with our government’s policy.
I approve of the reluctant delivery of food
to Ethiopia’s starving millions
because that country has a Marxist government
and I agree that magnanimity
in such a situation would be mistaken.
But above all, I am in agreement
with all my government does
because to think otherwise
would be to make of myself an enemy of the state.
When concertina wire is strung along my street
I shall not object, nor will it disturb me
because I am now convinced
that what I formerly took to be
a restriction of my spirit
is in reality, for my salvation,
if salvation is in my future,
but even that doubt is a sign of my humility.
November 12, 1984
It Could be Anyone
It is total nonsense
that if it looks like a duck
walks like a duck,
talks like a duck
swims like a duck
fucks like a duck
it is a duck.
It could be the guy next door.
November 13, 1984
The Price is Right: A Torture Wheel of Fortune
The show did not start off
auspiciously, the contestants
were nervous and kept fiddling
with the wires attached
to their privates, the men
being especially anxious
over the question of balls.
The women were more querulous.
The first question, a medical subject,
was why had the anti-abortionists
not mentioned, let alone commented on,
the Baboon Heart transplant?
One terrified contestant guessed
it was because the moral majority’s
nervous concern with evolution
precluded their bringing it up.
That hopeful contestant’s face
reflected the malicious light
in the eyes of the host who
immediately threw the switch.
A powerful surge shot through
the wires and both sexes screamed
and writhed, to the delight of
the vast viewership, estimated
at 100 million, all of whom,
presumably, were delighted
not to be on the show,
because not one in a million
knew the answer.
April, 1985
Another Springtime in the Rockies
(for P.M.
I called up to see
If I could make a citizen’s
Arrest on the telephone—
There were about a thousand people
I wanted to arrest that day.
The answer was No Dice.
Then I called up to see if
I could get arrested on the telephone
For demonstrating against
The C.I.A. because I didn’t
have time to go down
to get printed & mugged.
The answer was No Way.
How’s that for freedom
And what does it say about
Our highly touted & deregulated
Communications system?
December, 1985
From Denison
I like a Busy View
Framed in the french doors
shut tight against
the anti-therms
evaporate the cuttlebone snows.
Along the barrel of Broadway
rifle compact cars
the next-to-the-next-to-the-last dashboard,
new master of destiny—
the program that
stands in for the tube
during the commute.
Across that perilous divide
the Greeks in their big tatty houses
hold endless tupperware orgies
with soft punk junk.
Quivering over it all, the Great
up-tilted permian slabs
who measure Travel Time in aeons
who consider carbon mono
just a passing gas, and ozone holes
letting the sunshine in.
February, 1986
Lackey stacked upon lackey
The one red leaf, the last of its clan
sails across the crusted snow.
The afternoon is mild, water fallen weeks ago
runs in sparks under the new sun.
There’s nothing to do with Valentine’s day
but observe a moment of screaming
for all the love that was of no account
and all the misleading feeling.
Feb., ’86
An Exception for Courtroom Behavior
In Sparks, Nevada
people should be allowed
to show up drunk.
15 March 1986
I’m Clean, how about you?
I never ordered a general
into Central America
although there are those who did.
I never dumped any dioxin
at Times Beach, although
somebody must have.
I never made any money in Lebanon,
although I guess some people musta done.
I never put engine oil in salad dressing
but you know it happens
all the time in Algeria.
I never shot anybody,
but people do it all the time
and as far as I’m concerned,
they’re shooting the wrong people.
I’ve saved a few lives in my time
just by dispensing some good advice,
but that doesn’t count
and anyway, it’s the wrong direction
because this world cries for death
and practically nothing else.
In that respect, I’ve missed
all the big events:
I never fed any lions in the Roman Arena
I never massacred any Protestants in France
I never gassed any Jews
I never owned any Slaves
I never scalped any Indians
I never spread syphilis in Tahiti
I never macheted any joggers.
In fact, I’m an exemplary non-entity.
1 May, 1986
Harvesting Organs: On the Head-Injury Death of a 24 Year Old Boy in Vermont
Several Specialists “flew” in from Pittsburgh.
Please pardon the anthropomorphism there.
I don’t mean to suggest raptors—
they’re just carrion birds.
Whereupon they tore the fucker apart,
called him Skin & Bones.
They freezedried his butt,
chilled his skin. Somebody else
is wearing it now—who is wearing it now?
Probably some lawyer in Topeka.
Or maybe a wag in Wichita.
The fat from his posterior
now fills out an anorexic gal in Scranton.
The heart went to Houston as usual.
There is sense in this—
Houston needs all the heart it can get.
The boy’s eyes went to Denver
a place as plain as the nose on your face
in dire need of vision.
And what did Pittsburgh get?
The most perishable goods, the liver
and maybe the spleen—
whichever, you can bet Pittsburgh can use it.
Look at its history, think of its past—
it has always been a big consumer of organs.
All the other parts, right down
to the toes, all the way out to the branch banks
to someone in need of a new set of knuckles,
the boy’s parts were scattered through
the vast black market of the medical abattoir,
thrifty now as the Hormel slaughterhouses
of Austin Minnesota. Yet very few, if any,
of the “recipients” would be black.
Note: the very first attempts to put
the hearts of baboons in the human breast
occurred in South Africa—the surgical anxiety
to find a primate substitute
for the scandal of the obvious.
Ah well, even as we repose here
studying the ramifications
of this cryogenic express,
they’re out there, under the flashy lights,
gleaning the fallen fruit, the strange fruit—
and this time it’s the bourgeoisie who are gathered.
After all, they run around the most,
they are the fittest.
4 July, 1986
Ode on the Facelifting of the “statue” of Liberty
America is inconceivable without drugs
and always has been. One of the first acts
was to dump the tea. The drug that furnished
the mansions of Virginia was tobacco,
a drug now in much disrepute.
Sassafras, a cure-all, is what they came for
and they dealt it by the bale altho it
was only a diaphoretic to make you perspire—
people were so simple in those days.
The Civil War saw the isolation of morphine
making amputation a pleasure and making
the block of wood between the teeth,
which was no drug, obsolete. Morphinism
was soon widespread among doctors and patients.
At this date interns, the reports tell us,
are among the premier drug ab/users
of said moralistic nation. “Rock” stars
(who notoriously “have” doctors)
consume drugs by the metric ton
even as they urge teenagers to Say No.
The undercurrent of American history
has been the running aches and pains
of the worn path to the door of the apothecary
to fetch cannabis and cocaine elixirs
by the gallon. It has been all prone
all seeking Florida, Ponce de León
was just the beginning of a statistical curve
whose only satisfaction would be total vertigo.
His eager search for youth has become our
frantic tilt with death and boredom,
in fact we are farming death in Florida
with far greater profit than we are
farming food in Iowa—elixirs are as multiform
as the life-style frauds we implore,
a cultural patchwork fit for a fool
in the only country in the world
with a shop called the Drug Store.
5 November ’86
America the Buick
A smouldering red light—
in front of me a Buick
with only the U I remaining
on its cracked white paint job.
The roof lining hangs
with tattered effrontery
and could harbor bats.
Coils of patched flex
bounce and twist in the backseat
like hollow pythons who have adapted
to a diet of carbon monoxide.
It all creeps off then
to yet another useless, low-scandal,
shady, local destination.
It’s not a compact, it’s not a mid-size.
It’s stretched alright,
but the work
wasn’t done in a body shop.
13 May, ’87
A time to buy and a time to cry
These are the official symptoms
of cocaine use:
weight loss, insomnia,
nausea, anxiety,
radical alcohol
and tobacco intake,
chronic irritation,
helpless involuntary verbalism,
possibly leading
to fulminant dementia—
Wait a minute!
except for weight loss,
those are just the pathologies
of an afternoon
spent at the shopping mall.
30 August 1987
a little aria
Martyrs Opera
It’s all way behind California here—
not much satanism to speak of,
the big sacrifices are to Impatience
and the sufferance of the routinely insufferable:
a too long queque into Full Metal Jaquette,
too few Xtians with too small bullhorns
at the opening of the celluloid
temptation of the Lord
almost reconverts the neo-nonsmokers.
But they don’t need it—the smoke
still smoulders in their overcooked brains,
and melts the aloe on their malevolent lips.
Gaudy, laminated portraits of themselves
hang from their necks
not the image of some fearsome mullah,
not even close—they have so little neck
and no stiff devotion. When they break
their coffee grinders
they blow off their retarded dogs
with lawn darts assembled in Ciudad Juarez,
and do not think twice.
But that’s good—the fact that
they think once is the horror of it.
15 November, 1987
the hazards of a later era: variation on a theme
I would like to thank you
for the plums that were
in the ice-box, but
I’m afraid I just can’t
do it—in the first place
it’s not an ice-box, and the plums
having come from California
are a mix of over-ripe
and hard-as-rocks,
both undesirable states,
no doubt shot through
with systemic chemicals.
Add to all that
the fact that I put
them there myself
and you have
the whole sorry picture.
Early March, ’88
Recollections of Advice to Whiteguys
Be observant of people around you;
Anyone could be a terrorist.
Avoid piles of luggage or unattended bags.
If you hear gunfire,
Which sounds like catspit,
Or an explosion, fall flat on the ground
But remember, if you do this involuntarily,
You’re already dead and everything
you see is just a re-run.
Never sit near windows
or any kind of glass, never go near glass.
Always sit with your back to windows,
Things have changed a lot
Since Bill Hickok’s day.
Never let a bellhop take your bags,
Do anything, a karate chop, a sharp
kick in the groin—but even better,
Never have any bags. And never
Attend unscheduled meetings,
But to any meeting always take along
An armed witness.