WHAT WOULD SEEM
As the accusations come
Kings, it has to be said, forsake kingdoms.
Men crowned by glory feel in the blood,
Hidden thorns. Some splintered raft
In the flood of a false dream of power
Careening fast through disasters
That leave the countries of self warped
And torn. In the abandoned palaces
Men and those much less than men
Kiss the shadow. Obstructed light
Becomes daggers as pillars conceal
What goes on. Where the privileged once
Reclined, there is now rebellion from
The cellar. It is storming the gates
And blood spilling. It is bending the end
Of each song. Sex is presidential perhaps
Making every victim fresh subject
To those weighed and wasted
By an unwavering need to belong.
And yet no man is king.
Their reign can last but a moment.
Some indulge just to taste it;
A sense of royalty constructed
From a form of descent and dead tongue.
THE UNITED STATES OF NORTH KOREA
The dream starts first with fire, then ice.
The source of the fire is clear, stemming
From this new devastation in which an orange man
Fights the yellow he so implicitly sees at each call.
This does not refer to the tint that so engenders
The racist, as it does the perception of the bullying breed
With tamed balls. Strangled by whores, their stopped love
Transmutes itself into chaos. By focusing on threat’s
Masturbation their empty release damns us all.
In their fat bellied swarm, fatal stings pierce our softness
As irradiated blood lends its colour to the enveloping skies’
Warp and fall. The ice that forms will be black
And carbon primed; Death’s true diamond,
Fed and made by that fire as the sores of breath tumour forth.
Two mad children at play with all of the things we call adult.
Two well fed fat faces who in gorging on heat, seal cold’s curse.
TO LENNY BRUCE
Lenny,
Shut tight, your eyes are like a dry flower, aching.
Your face is spent, yet still steady,
A sloppily formed sex like grin.
And wet, on your lips, the mixture of blood, dust
And sputum, is the cake of love, crumpled, heady
That forms the gathering stone in your guts.
Hey, Lenny, Hey, gone! So long to you now
From the starlight! From the chime of the strippers garters,
From floorboards, and from the lipstick stuck ‘breasty’ smells.
Goodbye to the wise, and to that special burn
They call wisdom. The perfect structure for insight.
The stuttering “yeah”,the “Uh Huh’s..”
Emmis to you, in your puffy, fat Jewish heaven.
To the chance for love and the promise of Christmas Snowballs
And sperm. To the whiteness of eyes and the gathering smiles
Fixed at Hubert’s. To the precious freaks, and museum,
The triple heads, eyes and hearts. To the Catholic Church
And to Jesus H! And prevention! To Lena Horne, Bridget Bardot
And the punim tight H. Harlowe! To you in your words,
And your dirty dust, and whatevers;
To the sad calls which greet you on the tightening rack
They call grief. Let it rock. Let it ring.
Your sputtering dreams are all frozen.
And yet there is a heat calling, Lenny.
There is heat enough in old scars.
So we send to you, loud,
In unsung words, in forgiveness,
You have that special drug we still reach for:
Spread it around.
Break the stars.
C. David Erdos, March 2018
