Max Blagg

I want this poem to become as curvy
as the hottentot Venus’s posterior
I hope it’s worthy of your serious survey
you can see I’m rather nervé, nervous in the service
but tonight I discard my corona fears
so open your ears for this trail of tears…..

A thousand flighty syllabiscuits filled with blood
blood of a wig or something better than good
can the can there is no mystery man your history
cannot deplete/ fleet feet already lemming
over the precipice erasing social dilemmas
amping up the dance, a corona tarantella…
observed from the sky above by wiser eyes
raptor or velociraptor supersonic dinosaur
I placed your hand on his razor claw
his blood feels warm his beak is sharp,
this bird was banned from Noah’s Ark.
When God give Noah the rainbow sign
he told that flying beak “Come by next time.
there will be fire it will be good,
guaranteed, there will be blood.”

sounds of liquor pouring down
that sound no longer turns me round
amber liquid on clinky ice sounds so nice
water tastes better keep the brain sound
the joint still rockin’ going round and round.
On the rhyming wagon the bells of Rhymney
start to sounding cracked and flimsy
mere padding for my long enjambé lines
feel like I could fly just like Yves Klein
who landed with a bang of knees
on a hard French street laid by Calabrese masons
or was it early Photoshop made him look like flying
when in real life he was close to dying.
1966 was a magic year, Blonde on Blonde
exploded in my ears right after Highway 61
I was lost in the rain in Retford Notts
I was real real gone
this was more rich gravy for the soul
right after Christine Keeler
every boy at school was dying to feel her
or someone like her who’d pose in a chair
wearing nothing but her shining hair
intimate details in the News of the World
made our tiny wieners curl
and spring as if to sing sing sing.
There’s a viscount up front and a doctor at the back
Every peer of the realm wants a crack at that crack
and Mandy Rice D. was Christine’s constant witness,
perfect partner for that funny business
flawless smiles as they sashayed into court
bent old judge already sold and bought
their pimp he died the prince he lied Profumo cried
when he heard the Russian too had screwed her…
oh my misspent youth inspired by such naughty English girls
truly rubies without price, shining pearls!

now we take our leave of those mouths like caverns
fleshy envelopes open to bright pink heaven
Above ancient avenues dirty streets and lanes
spread on white sheets at the Hotel Jane
as the boats go by, corona cruise ships with no safe harbor
fireboats and tugs dodging barges and bugs
that jump ten feet from one vic to the next
Calling all Wiccans remove this hex!
‘Cos Fauci is slouching on the Bethlehem road
and Birx is bending double for the orange toad.

*

That was Wednesday this is Thursday
a new day underway just like the last day
all our yesterdays gone tomorrow
like Kurtz up the river we have seen the horror
Each dawn is lovely that’s not your last
but that final sun has already past for many.
(60 thousand and counting)

Tomorrow’s Mayday another gray day
Fridays early I really usta like
sipping fresh coffee at Gotan with Mike,
an outside table as morning unfolded
shoes freshly polished trousers not yet rolled,
nailing the pretentious to the literary cross
dissing the anointed and their verbal froth
hoisting them with petards they have sewn themselves
judging and condemning those scrabbling elves.

It was fun while it lasted but the bell has rung
this airborne virus wants to nest in your lungs
facemasks and rubber gloves now part of your charm
to knock on any door use elbow and arm
and the jobs disappear like diamonds down the drain
nothing gonna wake us from this tumourous pain
this daydream is real, unfolding slow
graphic reveal of our dog&pony show
our gov/dot/fuckyou in all its moneygrubbing horror
and so much dying who can measure the sorrow
air is life and the virus steals it
need something solid that can seal it
there are no leaders that can heal us.
bury it deep like Chernobyl
but there is no shining city on a hill
just that numbskull scum in Washington
and their endless, mindless, bullshit jive
why do such maggots still live and thrive ?

One day maybe who knows baby
we won’t be locked in this frozen place
and there will be a new kind of human race
sweet as the dew on the green green lawn
and all good people saved from harm..
Dream on my brother, (or wake up, rather)
reasoned discourse is out of season
best keep cracking wise in the gods’ own hive…
keep begging them to chill it, make it still,
‘cease upon the midnight/shut it down at noon,
block this wet-market monkey’s fatal hit
is it on my shoe is it in your spit,
is it wafting through the streets
like a breeze from the Pit?

CODA
I have no more fucks to give
All I want to do is Love, and live….
my threescore & ten already elapsed
my seventieth is in the past!
but Lord please oblige me let me drive
at least until I hit, say 85?
Yes that number sounds just great
but what might work even better
before you read out my death letter
could you dear Lord please ensure
the candles on my cake number 94?

–Max Blagg NYC lockdown town 4.30.20

 

Poetry