Progressed beyond them to
Sony
Westinghouse
Cousin Brucie
the Doors
and do I dare
mention Sonny and Cher ?
I remember Mickey Rooney
as Pretty Boy Floyd
and he was the shortest Pretty Boy Floyd
on record
coughing his enthusiastic
guts out in the last
reel.
We have not spilt the blood.
They have spilt the blood.
A little girl lies dead
On the hopscotch grid
No matter
- Can you do it?
She asked shrewdly
With her Playtex living bra
cuddling breasts
softer than a handful of wet Fig Newtons.
Old enough to bleed
Old enough to slaughter
The old farmer said
And grinned at the white
Haystack sky
With sweaty teeth
(radiation radiation
your grandchildren will be monsters)
I remember a skeleton
In Death Valley
A cow in the sunbleached throes of antiseptic death
and someone said:
- Someday there will be skeletons
on the median strip of the Hollywood Freeway
staring up at exhaust-sooty pigeons
amidst the flapping ruins of
Botany 500
call me Ishmael.
I am a semen.
- Can you do it?
She asked shrewdly
When the worms begin
their midnight creep
and the dew has sunk white to
milk the grass...
