Age of Quarantine

“In the last two thousand years mankind has covered a long way from God being tortured and dying on the government order to save mankind to a guy lying under the order of his government at home on the couch to save both himself and mankind.”

Bohemian Hermit

Another day of quarantine
Empty streets.
And fear

through one’s eyes

and mouth and ears.

People’ve gone home

to save one another

from each other

through the eyes

and mouths and ears.

For this disease

did not know

or didn’t have the memo

that one was supposed

to stay in ICUs

only for a day or two,

and not for weeks two or three

in this brave new world of ours

where all’s been put—on speed dial

for all the fast men

and even faster women

meant to live for one hundred years,

except of course

for all the suicides

and those dying of hunger

and all the seasonal dead

because of the flu

or all those killed en mass

in the wars of choice

for a retrospective error

or some little lie—

Even the local drug dealers

got and are wearing now

gloves and masks

on their eyes

and mouths and ears

in the age where your face

and fingerprints

ought to certify

your life and presence

to the state and business.

Every second of your time+,

just as two no ones

are walking now across the bridge

of sullen, silent Brooklyn—

One of them—essential,

but the other isn’t.

For no one’s eyes

or mouth or ears.

Three recent poems of mine quickly banned by Facebook and Zkuckerberg's censors

New Theognidea

When one drinks

and does too deep,

then one takes on a

role and look of God.

For through his eyes

adrift—lost in alcohol

he starts to make

things come alive,

once his splashing cup,

as it decants and empties,

suddenly chants and talks

in brassy, burbling tongues.

And the objects void before

of sense and breath or mind

take on piglets’ faces, asses’

ears and quite dirty mouths.

And the room, once firm

and stable, is now going

round and round—and

prances on the double

and then wobbles in

as his shapely supplicant

planting down a petition

on his divine, doughty knees.

To finish his new Pantheon

and his reform of the world—

Thus the drunkard got to peep

into the secret of God’s making

when the idols too got smashed.

Commentary on Priapeum No. 21

When it comes to Priapeum 21,

one has no way of telling

who is speaking

to the cloven

Goat-cum-God—

whether it’s a priest,

a landmaster, a thief,

or a whore—the one

who has been ruined

by having too many—

way too much to count

or to know to care—

For the wealthiest of all

must be he who has it all

and into whose folds all

must someday pass.

And that could be death

or a busy courtesan

or a priest whose faith

has grown cosmically sized.

But if one’s mouth

is as large as the maw

at the bottom of Dante’s

Divine Comedy—

then much gets in

and much—gets out

unless one’s a balloon

meant to burst and blast.

For such is the rule of quantity

that when it is too much,

then it turns fast into mess

where “all is cows, and all

the cows become the same.”

Whether it’s a farmer or a priest,

a crook or a hooker selling-ass.

Or a bulging god who’s horny—

beastly goatish—from both ends.

Or the one who buys one’s plenty

from dames’ gardens and ripe grapes

or from the benches on the Sacred Way.