Ronald Palmer – 75: Co: lons: for A: R: Am: mons

Ronald Palmer

75: Co: lons: for A: R: Am: mons

Awa:      king with the world:        seve:        red emb:              almed: I settle into my no:
              thing:      a silky mar:        gin of my gen:      e-ration is dead:                or dying:

before I gene:      rate a mess:        of el: ation.          Let me be fair:

her af: fair with May infe: cted                    the en:   tire medi: tation:

especially stanzas X through XX:                you get ele:        cted                    by name:
              this gene:                ration is all the same.        We’ve been brain—

—scrubbed to belie:          ve that we can be another Plath another Blake: another me.

After reading Hopkins:   I pictured all the nuns praying into the waves:       siltlike sedi:
              mentation after the sharks:              fed on their terrified heads:

Heads dreaming down down be:              low mur:              kiness:  O Dreaded death by
sea: see:              my mind can’t make out the sorrow:

Sometimes horrific floods crept in:            kept filling the ocean in

with abs: tract furn:        iture                    which never de: scribes itself:    O John
Ashbery            go in:    vent      another car:          ica:        ture of the lingua:universe.

I’m nonplused:  yet im-pressed:  obsessed more with sex:y Black Rappers:
sweaty in gold                    telling us who’s bought and who’s s:      old.

I’m non-flexed in my orange leather recliner: dreaming of a better body than now:
prettier abs to help me lure and fuck a younger me.

There were better bodies flashing on the telescreen: although I muted
              the non commercials. Eric Blair was so correct: you can dim it but it’s always
there.

In de: vou: ring the bodies I felt dim: (ini: shed and un): fit.
I muted my body with a prayer: I want to be elated. I want to be correct
which floods the brain with an: other        sh©ock of death:

My particular stars above the towering pines are too exact for swirling:
              and power as we know finds its own level of swirling:      they may be correct:

but still I bet:        they too get con: fused at times:
how lovely: that I agree with myself: running out under the con: stella: tions:
for a green box of dish washing det:              erg          ent: drama:            turgid

in my pursuit of you:        Archie:                you infected me:              more than Rich and
more than Woolf:            and more than Joyce:      it was you Archie you: who drove me

crazy with colons:            who daz:                     zled me:
with your dazz:               ling colons.

return to SHAMPOO 5