Peter Henry
SYNDICATION (TASER, WITH LOVE)
Arrest. Error. Heir. My home-twenty? My
domain? My mine?
Over & out. My joint's purloined. My demesne's deep-sixed. I mean,
My crib, it was, well, curbed. My dormer's now, well, dormant.
I mean: Breaker, breaker, read me now. I've a sore forming.
It conforms to my caul. It claims my informant.
Arrest. Error. Heir. On the flip-flop: cinquefoil, fivefold faded.
On the short-short: salvation, as my deliverance is, alas, abated.
Arrest. Error. Heir. My hammerdown? As if steampower & fission
mated.
Arrest. Error. Heir. Suffused with features, the truce is sutured.
The future's fused at the hip to the past. The now? Neutered.
All's pawned, all's gone, all's drained & drawn-on. Missionaries even
repo'd my mystic.
Arrest. Error. Heir. My emissary? Dismissed. My discharge? I miss
it.
Ditto my deathmask, ditto the coffin money. All I've left: the holy
statistic.
Breaker, breaker: problem, boss. My handle unravels, looters jack my
disease -
Aswim in know-how, once. Cold-out hard, this. What to dis? What to
disbelieve?
Arrest. Error. Heir. Am I the most precocious crone? The oldest
ephebe?
Arrest. Error. Heir. The portent, porter, stat. My overthrow up &
went.
My press kit & pep pills, stepchild, to the beatdown culminant.
My broadcast yields to donnybrook. My stylo yields to farrago.
In the crosshairs, with a G-note, a hero caresses his impresario.
Arrest. Error. Heir. My asylum's asunder. My mute's in stereo.
Arrest. Error. Heir. Begins my parole in the parlor. In the
bibliopole, my alibis.
A whisper, a vesper, a cyborg, a sister - what am I if not synthesized?
My flatbed's jackknifed. My windfall's shanghaied. My proud bride's
disguised.
Arrest. Error. Heir. Is this heist, this rip-off, clip & clean, but
bordell, abased?
My cargo a node of nothing, my payload ghosted posthaste -
Breaker: my big rig begat my bugbear. Breaker: my plunder begins to
itch.
Bedrash-bedighted, all I've left is to powwow with the scion & the
snitch.
Breaker, breaker: analog seizures scrimmage against digital fits.
O my rein, o my ruin, o my - the midway sockdologer macks on the cenotaph
cop -
Arrest. Error. Heir. My soiler of linens, my burner of
crops -
Arrest. Error. Heir. My semaphore, my signal & stigma: stop.
SYNDICATION (LE MARTEAU SANS MAITRE OUTSIDE SAN MATEO)
Char. Shard. Charred. My fix, o nimblest simp? My
jones, reticent sentinel?
Corporeal loans & cadaver cash, to divvy up the
steadfast from the ephemeral.
Char. Shard. Charred. Be null, my translation, but
benumb -
Eidetic indictor, perfect pitch complainant: to give
suck or succor or succumb?
Why can't I cajole my shill to buy? What keeps my mime
so mum?
What word coldcocks the sidekicks, what word leaves all
the heroes hobbled?
What's both goad & go-between, both fodder & fantast,
regnum & rubble -
Char. Shard. Charred. Both cauldron & cause, both
bludgeon & bauble?
Char. Shard. Charred. My knock, ginger-haired
hanger-on? My hankering?
A pageant of opiates & a killswitch once the plague
starts its blanketing.
Commence the rushes, commence the rashes. Is it
end-time again?
Aslant in a sleeper hold, aswim in imposters, I'm cashed out as soon as I
can.
Char. Shard. Charred. What does a taser augur? An
exit wound portend?
Someone's undertipped my motorcade, someone's bid my
aubade goodbye.
Someone's dystopic, someone's dyspeptic, someone's
deposed & despised -
Char. Shard. Charred. Someone, someone: the lost kite
skulks in the sky.
Char. Shard. Charred. Gone's the beyond, all my
ghosts outsourced with wraiths.
The beatdown anemics meted me out? Bumped up to "downfall" from "disgrace."
Cranked to the knell, my fill's in abeyance & my pill's
dolled all up,
Primping like a lozenge gone agog. To duty, to duty,
some balm's called up -
Char. Shard. Charred. O, the cyst of ill repute, o,
the fallen polyp -
The afterlife's a loss. Stockcars here explode in
lockstep & hermits here seethe in tandem.
Char. Shard. Charred. The jumpsuit of the infidel - is
there no quainter ransom?
Belly up to the abyss, baller, & buy this abstainer
abandon.
Char. Shard. Charred. Popped in the dream-box,
gytched by gandy-dancers,
Is there no end to my end? Tender pundit: drop us
some answers.
Char. Shard. Charred. With the slow snow comes the
lepers' descent.
By the decree of the founders, by the underground
edict, by the pariah's defense,
This winze is what I warrant. Burliest of coquettes:
cough up the evidence.
Punctured by the archer, tinctured by the Birchers,
abandoned by the kinglet,
Soon vanish my souvenirs: daybreak, the void's
keepsake, nightfall, nothing's trinket -
Char. Shard. Charred. The grift, holy co-star, it's
up: floss the ermined ingot.
SYNDICATION (STEPHEN KRAMP, THAT BRAINY GIAOUR)
Disinter. Dissenter. Decenter. Huzzah to the
signoff, huzzah to the sign,
Huzzah my homuncular thugs, huzzah their tiny, tiny
crimes -
Bedizened by ice & courtesy-keeled, my conscript's
seized my mien:
My gadfly? Gone. My gladhandler? Gone. My god. Gone,
gone, the proxy unseen -
The damoscene's addenda, the carny's codicil, the
baglady's lien.
Disinter. Dissenter. Decenter. O where, o where, o
wherewithal askew,
O my sleight-of-heart, o my blur-at-arms, o my
aide-des-yeux -
Disinter. Dissenter. Decenter. Oh my. I'm trying to
explain to you -
Disinter. Dissenter. Decenter. I'm trying to explain
my descent from -
My dissent from - My decent firm - My missent form?
Disinter. Dissenter. Decenter. Disinter, disappear,
collapse. Blindsided & banjaxed,
Ambushed & hushmoneyed, I am. I am the leech the
bloodlettor lacks.
Deuteranope, a memo: call down the assassin who cc'ed
the attacks.
Meantime, moonlight, enforce order. Lesions, adjust
your lepers loud.
Bedheaded dearth-heart, my threadbare hairshirt. Ergo,
ogre, my shroud.
O my maunderers, o my drymen, tell me: am I the
sellout or the crowd?
Disinter. Dissenter. Decenter. I'm trying to emerge
unscathed,
To salve the velvet levee & pawn the earthquake lathe.
The queues unfurl, the spires resign. To wit: the
pater noster in the clear.
To wit: the hamfisted firebrand, the unsigned ensign,
the cornerstore bombardier.
To wit: the blight-me-not. To wit: the blight. To
wit, tonight: the untoward meer.
Nixed by the dockyard, keened by the bloodthrall, I
only want to say this:
Disinter. Dissenter. Decenter. To wit: the
callboy's palsy, the breakout of the caliph,
The patrician, the fever, & the dream. To wit: the
stillborn A-list -
Disinter. Dissenter. Decenter. The entire priory
throws up its hands.
The wastrels pass back plunder. Pedants renounce
exams.
Nether-girdled concierge, slurry me my heresy.
Loam-mouthed yeoman, the melodeum. Oracle, the
kerosene.
Breaker, breaker: your ears're on. Aleph, your twenty
harrows me.
Disinter. Dissenter. Decenter. O nostrum, o
ne'er-do-nil, honest:
On the post-plague beachhead, the scorched albino's
blondest.
Here's apostasy, the hydroptique hideout; here's heavy
water, the sudden jaundice -
SYNDICATION (TRULY, MADLY, KWANG LEE)
Anomie. Enemy. Mnemonic. Angels - hundreds
- on
powerlines perched
Or nested under eaves or hovering, hungry, circling the
unchurched.
Unman me, Masons, it's over. All's cold out but
cadaver cash -
All's fell in - not a jinx nor a G-joint peripheral,
everything's everlast
Dead center. Dead center, the thaumaturge, dead
center, the feverpatch,
Dead center: the blank tape, seared with crimes of the
mute confessor.
Anomie. Enemy. Mnemonic. Crypto-Bishop, here's your
proto-vesper:
Anomie. Enemy. Mnemonic. My phantom limb? Caught in
the phantom thresher.
Anomie. Enemy. Mnemonic. On grave hooves, the
gluepot infantry advances.
To the fantast, drop-money, stat. Faith, attend your
boils. Doubt, collect your lances.
Anomie. Enemy. Mnemonic. Hoboes bleat, the circus
bleeds, cicadas fail.
The faithful conjugate in tongues. The bats skywrite
in Braille.
Hands up for the shakedown, grammarian. Cough up an
argot I can flense & flail.
Amiss, my starpower. A mess, my stanza. A mystery, my
steez: envied or in vain?
Along the causeway children surge, peonies smolder,
penitents feign.
Anomie. Enemy. Mnemonic. The underground orisons?
They surface after heavy rain.
Anomie. Enemy. Mnemonic. My name? Mais non. Fasten
your sheath to the hilt.
By the power vested in me, Morse-code troubadour, you
may kiss the semaphore jilt.
Bags of brace, bags of swank, defend the postcard kiosk
from the Baedeker raid.
Win this war at once, fierce docent, & curate the
victory parade.
Aubades a problem, brawler of the dawn? O là : Leave the
nights unspayed.
Anomie. Enemy. Mnemonic. Nevermind my brokendown
clone & totaled robot.
True my exposé, true my pasquinade. Rue my puma.
Cherish my ocelot.
Anomie. Enemy. Mnemonic. Who is he who highposts
here? What's this dimestore polyglot?
Anomie. Enemy. Mnemonic. Witness this once,
third-string destroyer:
The flames, the floods, the fallen - into this world I
burst to loiter.
Christmas at you, Abacus. Angels, unbandage your
wounds.
Hush, hush, poor planet - the Junior League's handing out
moons.
Anomie. Enemy. Mnemonic. Nibelung graffiti kids spray
paint in runes.
Gather, gather, meine taggers, at the chairbacker's
bier, beneath the encyclical kite.
Cadgers, clamp your glasiers. Comptroller, stop.
Industry, turn out the light.
Anomie. Enemy. Mnemonic. Nomenclator, kick it.
Industry, kiss me goodnight.