Four Poems: “Ode To Woody Strode”, “Removing The Obelisk”, “Parental Guidance”, and “The Permanence Of Whim To Providence”

Michael Gizzi

 

Ode to Woody Strode

 

Veteran Actor Woody Strode will appear at the 8 p.m. Saturday screening of John Ford’s “Sergeant Rutledge” at the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum’s Wells Fargo Theater.

 

–Los Angeles Times

 

Brother Ebon Noggin, Survival Bubba, persona non grata
In the peckerwood’s head, a midden of bushwah shoe-tree’d
Into a montage mob of Queeg fits. Can’t beat it
For sheer eidetic distress of 30 shitkickers with 10 toothpicks recidivism
A runaway braille trimming tremors to the quick
Gimme some skulls, man! not these
Chiropodists down with the croup, Jack, in Drumstick
Gigging like locust on the corn, humming memory loves company
Per Idaho beanfire with chili obligations as
Bronco Nagurski makes the conversion with broken horns

 

As at a theatre corpses calling curtain calls
With their entire cast of improprieties, Errol Flynn
Pinned if only for a second between a crumpet and a scone
The peak of his powers at the end of his rope
The one-eyed King Radio with a mumbling jag on –
This is the chorus of the Caresser’s song
Canoeer than Velveeta were her thighs
I thought I was standing in a movie with a leg wound
An open book of alluvial text approximating flesh
A ceiling dispensary pulled down to reveal
Halfmoons claire de luneing at the world

 

No one has a straight job, wheat snobs rule the waves
Waterbury sidles to his cardspout
Tuberculosis got the camellias. Family trees
May insert any name one chooses for the pedigree of love
Let the foreign woman come ashore, what as the talkers say
You’ll never see at home lost in the delicate rays of folklore
Its minutes recorded with his feet by the Armless Wonder
Thuggees with allergies film greenhouses, hold shining steam
To treebuds, prehensile eyes out stalking vim as if vision
Were a concubine, a rinse cycle lashed to the belly of a Raj
With buckle of swash, Flora Danica waiting in the wings

 

Professor Pretzel Wolf buttons the suit on his portrait
Of trees, an ornamental hombre in a speculum of preen
Asks, “Who’s the forest of them all?”
Why – Woody Strode! spiked with summer drone
His dome chapeau made of breeze, accent grave
Over the trees tight as a coat of Gliddens
Not without ribands or the great socko of Kilimanjaro

 

All these yahoos headed West, have they got names to be blessed?
Bring me the ho-hum, fly it up here verbatim
An eggshell carbon 12 writ in a foreign tongue
As though Johnny Vast had no idea where his howl came from
And fetch us the cretin who et my heart
That’s what makes it green, does it not?
We live in a factory of the future on the edge of a lip
With miniature cowboys banished forever
The precision of faraway herbalists spilling the beans
“Our desires expectorate dutifully” slobbers Crow Bob

 

An ol’ Yakima stuntjockey son of Cannut uproots the tree
Of reason roost, wraith of the treeshirt twinges
Until and when courage is inflated to pressure sufficiently
Pigeon balloon per square inch chest looking comical enough
To glance, getting by the smoketrees you reckon it’s only Gene
Our ofay Autry slit-eyed slimewinder triggering his getaway
Lately ghosted into Christmas while all the leaves go blind

 

Only the shine inside perception lights the street
Yours the campfire that mocks the sun
Never met anyone outside your head who didn’t shimmer fragile timber
What I mean Woody is you look swell
Like them Indian lakes in summer
Air kisses on a nudist clipboard, offbeat green tops o’ trees
Everything Ritz crackers in the polluted lake wrappers
Blue Moon mobile homes for the executive cornhuskers shimmering a song
Cigarette snorkel on fishlip puffing dawn

 

 

Removing the Obelisk

 

From immediate dictation
and against my will

 

“I”s the most embarrassing
character in the world
a deflector from antiquity
pretending to be italic

 

Just another mook on Hungry Hill

 

“I wanna got to collage
I want sun on the phone
to talk me down from here
Nice embalmer. Easy Boy!”

 

Fucks it have to do with me?
This crown ain’t small enough
for the both of us?
Gets so downright overused jellyglass
one has to laugh

 

Another thing those bones do
— make your bed

 

Lump back in on the jungle chaise
Apache horsefly
— Hi little soon to be dead buzz!

 

Later silence
the only visitor from another

 

Parental Guidance

 

Amnesia sweat the emptiness

 

composed of sponges Darryl

Adam Ahab DeGroot

petroglyphs of gringotude

a near myth childhood hovercraft

near a 16 foot insect

 
Die Meistersingerpouts so

 

stream of air might partly stroke

goldfish theories of Cliquot

 
Jugglers with a ducking movement

 

limberdemain over fruit floors

lip an osculation on the glass kisser

from the suicidal kissery, a squeegee

mops any loss of face

 
Out bunkers in addition to the standard

 

facilities provided for comfort have

cuspidors for the use of psychiatrists

strategically sick at heart, nowadays sick

 
A boy’s own wax among his bees

 

and shrapnell blowing salve

on the conjured static, spangled

auras clocked on the draw

 
Out Padres of the dormitory

 

contagion on the hour

 

The Permanence of Whim to Providence

 

Begin in Purgatory where Lamb rassles Chasm
and faults shoot halter of their fanfaronade
nixing any Vita Nuova dynamo nictate deal

 

Then rent a capsicum and travel nonpareil
through the Baboon Lancet
the equipage of a whoop anticipating sinkers
of a low-rent wagonette in a Dexter diluvium

 

Cocoon-steaming the small tales of croupiers
and piazzas yawned at the local salutation
where Brad Bibbler sucks his Beggar’s Double
quick as lily over the paddy in a strabismus off Pulp Space

 

Young Orchards of heartburn licking the salt misogamist
as you turn spangle and motor
towards Sutton, sunburn and snail
thievish as a gospel lottery heard on the racket outside Lack

 

The low rider ruin of Chickasaw Chepachets
turbo charging browsers through the ghetto streaks
damsons lit up like hooves of despite in twaddle
blue denim brooks across their chests

 

Or right here in Blackstone your everlastings
ignoring the dry bones of that stranded drench
where rain actuaries begin their lament