Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Celebrity Canto

This poem was originally posted here, but I submit it for review at the new literary canon over here.



Let’s take a walk thru history with an American icon.
Sure! He collects rare shards of colored glass from Turkey & Italy,

And he’s written a lot of books, but who has found time to read his last one?


Now he pauses on the Piazza, but there he goes, he runs like a century.
He ascends a mountain of fine light, it’s all been done before in particles.

Historians will disagree about whether he was depressed at this time or pretty happy.


Meanwhile, he’s already thinking about a poem he’ll write about this walk of dangling participles.

He has a brief adventure involving batrachian nepotism & a gutterful of shit.

Compared to the trials of Hercules he admits that he is no Hercules.


The mainstream media licks its lips thinking about every step of it.

He considers this when he considers every step he takes.
Then, losing himself, he does a gay little dance & slips into a gooey pit.


The media quickly sidetracks & reports that his mother died in those earthquakes.

There is an eruption of sympathy & he finds time to masturbate to an old John Ford movie.

Hark! thumps, claps, deafening huzzas! The gospel trombone & his mother awakes.


Scholars think that his imminent divorce was preoccupying his psyche,

But I know & you know that he was always focused on his public characterization.

He knows he looks good in that suede suit, but it’s out of style by the time he gets to the Louvre.

His wife actually was just raising a big stink about House-Elf Emancipation.
He was trying to bide his time by walking around the block again,
But the mainstream media realized they could sell more papers by popular music democratization.

The Chancellor of Germany sent her condolences, but sent it at the wrong time on the wrong train.

A small press illegally publishes his letters to his mistress, & he sues them into bankruptcy:

They were just being opportunistic, but no need to explain.

His wife leaves him like a free radio blitzkrieg, but her breasts have gotten flopsy.

Now his mistress is in every magazine, but he loses her & finds ten more corseted supermodels.

He converts to Mormonism! He jumps up & down in J. Edgar Hoover’s stilettos for all the world to see.

The Celebrity His Aria: I’ll condemn you all to the Ninth Circle, every last one of you pundit assholes!

My memoirs will be impenetrable, I’ll admit to raping half of the penitentiary!

How many volumes can even my most devoted enthusiast stomach? Remember the earlier puddles?


But it’s all given me some space to breathe. My ex-wife’s face was the crime of the century.
Your televisions are all pointed North. The penguins are finally safe from your scrutiny.

The British National Dish may be curry, but mine has gone home in a flurry.


House Arrest! There have been worse fates for Saloth Sar & the late Sheriff’s Deputy.

I can finally database my shard collection, & the historians can rot in my impunity.

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