like gondolieri layering lumbering songs
        in a limberly, treacly trellising jenga
propped upon lazily listing ribs of a
        knotted canal left scowling as proud as a
wallowing tick, evincing in senseless crusts
        of an oenomel, mustily rust-colored blood
those plushly redoubling chins of old LA justice
        jarred from the sodden scars of a labyrinth, firstly,
mice must thirstily thread through, fretfully
     fixed, incensed, the girth of a gormless wonton
gargling cornsilk tongues tinged green with a tepid uranium—

Barcarolle! Barcarolle! dog-toothed carnival
barkers reprising for barnacles scenes from the siege of Troy
or the garish collapse of Atlantis, Ys, the world rolled
over just so some young princely prick might, one
of some million godlings willing, contend to tetchily
oil a dipstick;
                        Barcarolle, barcarolle, damn and— Dam!
!
   what prow cracked over an idle hand,
   what shrapnel shucked from the whistling sage brush
              elbowed an ailing fit of introspection, debriding
                   bones from the bubblegum gusseted throne
                                    of a blaring and harrying oubliette—

they parody Fourth Time Around or something,
protest songs beat bluer than sagging night fruit,
stripped and fit in a lamb’s skin thong, wan throngs of
contentious kibbutzers kicking up ordnance forged
from bulimic beer cans clacked like clumsed and
clabbering scree cast, wincing, caul-caulked even,
rattling the black-eyed glass of abandoned mansions,
rickety dachas dithering deer condemned, their
gums run ruddy and white with the spotty agaric
clipped from the cowl of Father Christmas,
chained and satcheled skaters ordained, by
Dylan or Zimmerman, thorns of the advent,
horsemen sworn upon swigs from the Styx
or Boone’s Farm slugged from a styrofoam rhyton
to carve in the shins of stodgy stocks
(the pleated greaves of teetering titans) just
some symbol stripped from a stain among gym socks, streak
what wheezing birthmark borne on the tongue of impending
Apocalypse preening in time with a staticky cast of taps—

Stravinsky, with but a blissful reed, dragged Paris
                     back to the ages of mead and malice.
What could the monkeys cobble from crumbling rock
                 that just might muzzle the doomsday clock?