Tuesday, October 18, 2016
Robert Verdon, #332, The Divine Farce
in deep miniature gardens
with willowy vertical solar farms
and lenticular basements of tasty mildew
we gobble a nacre smörgåsbord from the public snow schools of yesteryear,
full fadom five; warts gainful and nimble busybodies on a tightrope stretched
across the lacuna between Black Mountain and Mt Ainslie
above the coy felicity of Canberra,
fortune ladling maize skirts, popcorn trees and terrapin cushions
devious beanies mesmerising the purple sage
upon a stage of tambourines and cranberries,
snare drums and wire brushes and ancient recordings of Gene Krupa
playing vibraphone, mango strings and banjo
(as a child in the primary school library
I looked up Aboriginal place name meanings
like ‛Hair Growing Out of Ears’, ‛Big Bum’, and ‛Fuck Off, Gubba’)
dimwitted selvedge on a bed of twice-baked celery
snapping bridges
nibbling gnarled necks of crimson rice-paper
paper-and-comb high streets
daft badgers
Toscanini dances on a perpendicular sunbeam!
tiny and trim as a squelch button
in those lost penny-farthing summers
when we ate angler fish paté
or fish angler paté, with Jeremy Bentham, who stuffed himself,
excuses excuses in short wave Morse and a dry cummerbund
winning acres of saveloy orchard
dodgy phoenixes lick
at Ozymandias’s boot-heels
hot foot to paradise
penitents with their eyes sewed up with wire
climbing up Mt Purgatory
terrified of heights
ghastly parsley farces
green is good for you
a sunburst through gold leaf
jackets in their potatoes
wry silences
wavy machine-guns
melted ribbons in mousy hair
Acacia jibberdingensis flowering
velvet buffaloes stampeding over the high Patagonian coccyx
stamping furtively through starling rails,
high upon a stolen gale,
prizing mud, red from the jail
elbowing dribble from its tail,
he slept in jackboots with a whale,
entered Christmas empty
dinner-jacketed clouds descend
evening gowns at high tide
swords at twenty paces; at court,
unwashed varlets fester manfully in lacquer
spring aldrig efter spårvagnar
steer clear of Spanish lace
Ogden of Nashville, Tennessee
speech-impedimented and free
squinted sucked and sank at sea
gnash your razors grind your grains
sun will never shine in this lair, or roses
bloom or blow away round this fulsome cottage door.
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Bloody marvelous.
ReplyDeletewow -- that is a lot of territory!
ReplyDeleteTa — it was a torrent of verbal diarrhoea that erupted just as I despaired of being able to come up with anything yesterday! :)
ReplyDelete