On the surface of things
where most of us skate around the Christmas tree
called Capital, full with presence and candles
in the dark, lit up, like at a Dylan concert
before the flood,
it's a wonderful thing to see
the lesser of two evils contest
held every four years in America
finally present a Black woman for president
buxom as a taunt to St. Grobian
smile as bright as a lotus on the Ganges liver.
.
Probably there'll be a revolution
in the autumn when the New England trees
stop being so arrogantly white
and begin to show some color
(I've always liked the colored leaves best:
waxed sandwich bags maple leaf pressed between)
Revolution for the hell of it,
gorgeous Abbie said, Nah-Nah.
Revolutions
left or right, not like The Who song,
but the toilet, depending on the hemisphere
but all of it swirlingly wasted and gone,
down it goes, round and round:
The System Is the Solution.
.
At the Rockefeller Center,
if you're not too strong I'll hold you up
and whisper you should lay off the peppermint schnapps,
and probably male-gazing like a regular bum
I'll cop a feel, vut da heil, du vill nicht rememmah,
my lower Pinocchio testifying
of my love for you
around the Christmas tree, mit lit bulbs,
where strangers mount steeds
to charge off in quixotic dream journeys
full of Wagnerian Lohengrin prelude violin keening
so sentimental in an elite crybaby vay,
poor mad King Ludwig, wah,
ivorycastlehood, wah
and I call an Umlaut to see you home
safely, I promise
and you respond with vomis
Oy
vair ist saint thomas
ven du kneed him?
Oy
#####
* St. Grobian, depicted first in a 1549 edition of Ship of Fools, known today as the patron saint of p*ssy-grabbers.