Mark Ducharme

The Eager

Don't get even, get down
In aerial overlay to Turneresque,
Multi-channel environment.

Physicalities of "inertia" or "insertion" (I forget which)
All you have to do is jiggle & it slips away
Like Johnny Cash on acid
It's no worse than a blind date

Singing "Mojo for Marjorie," or
"Stuck Inside of Jersey"
With coolants, on the spread eagle

But the world's gone skimpy
In a downward
Punch
Of nightly, exterior hard drives

& The other, longish bore
Excitedly fell through.
It was a gimme, in retrospect
Done deal (dumbfounded tiny screams)

The plumb line is inexact,
Therefore hard to get.
Strenuous inaction is its own
Reward, or not. I forgot

Not to be picky about such
Details-
Yes, we're wired, but it's snapped;

Like cracks in a hairline surface or circuses
Could whip up a headline delimiter
Petering out like frightened
Swimmers
In their demonic nightshirts.

Still, the late ones are all best
In their iconic
Pick-me-up. Slathering, inexact nodal punting
Like replicant headhunters
In search of glum
Babes, the crazy ones who date garage door salesmen

You couldn't comment on that, except that the sluice does follow
The money, & everything's glam-o-rific.
Want a kiwi? I'll wait

Amid cubicles, in the stacks & bathhouses
Of Rotterdam (aptly named).

Here the altitude's palpable
As a wraith, but I've seen
It before, trying not to

Remember who coined
The term "Official
Verse Culture"- but poetry's the culture

Of the impermissible. Unofficiated
In your nightmare wallhangings.
Overheard at reading: "What do you
Teach?" "Chaos
Theory." "Oh, I love chaos."

It lingered, in a forlorn
Exterior
Where the drydocks singed.
The detective grew testy at a piecemeal
Clampdown. No joke: site plans of interactive pealing

Bum the cognoscenti.
It was wicked fun:
A continuity stuffed with birds
Not counted on by colleagues.

The redundant stockholders mucked up the wallhangings.
I slept or grew testy as conventioneers.
But the end of history's stuffed into suitcases
In total composure, for
You send me

Up the street, for breadcrumbs & vodka
Or just vodka, but daylight hurts
My eyes, & I can't throttle
It.
The rest of the world blows up

Well maybe, but we have the sweltering
Sub-specific flower

To bulge, then slip
Away
Into a mild heat

Or "predicaments." What still dissolves

Will burn incessantly
Then wrestle with this disclaimer

Called escapism- after a few

Shallow years transfixed:

Like one of those classics that makes me
Pudgy-
Sententiously outmoded.

Okay, what have we learned
So far? That you can go there, here

Or there, I forget which.
Foreseeing is another

End-result- like the eager

Note on my door that wouldn't

Let you slip away.

 

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