[lit-ideas] Re: Sunday Poem

returned home from watching belgium in a movie
with ralph fiennes
this week i've assembled a few short thoughts
as in a speech
for rotary
little more than strakes in space
which since this is now early on sunday
and i've a fundraising car wash to organize later
without use of phosphates
this draft must lie
waiting and disassembled
like the beginning of a craft project
a sky boat perhaps
sung
later to be celebrated
at a party
when the laminated covering skin
is no longer missing without

so
to begin
a new plastic surgery center will go into
the sparkling office building at the entrance to our neighborhood
it's called waldorf
unlike the latest thing downtown
which is a restaurant with yoga facilities
and green market electricity
so i'm wondering if maybe the new surgery center will offer not only facial botulism 
but also bumpy salads
served by energetic kids
with patient parents

next subject
my current reading
the world for a shilling
quotes one colonel sibthorp
who wanted preserving elms in hyde park
to be sufficient reason to stop the great exhibition of 1851
he feared foreigners
particularly albert
queen victoria's husband
whose allowance he and chums in parliament cut from fifty to thirty thousand pounds 
however once they named the crystal palace
there was no way sibthorp
could restrict international and heavenly industrial dreams
with mere trees

suddenly i'm enjoying kenneth branagh saying on tv
netted round with villainies
and i'm asking silently in my head
what on earth paul nash meant by eft
(there's no obvious connection except venom and ire)

it turns out an eft is a kind of newt
charles bukowski said he preferred a drunken plumber or a drunk sleeping in a deserted doorway or a mailman telling a dirty joke to a poet 
which is to say that he thought most poets were far more unreal than say
buildings
or newts
or queen victoria's husband
or any foreign thing
or salads
or botox

this now then
or even back then
in belgium or here
is this
and that
location and time not defined or uncertain
is that
and until someone comes along
to think things through
professionally
or otherwise interrupt the fun
everything carries on

so let's please
all fervently hope
they've fixed the banks on monday
that's all i have to say

David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon

------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html

Other related posts: