SIGNIFYING NOTHING
(A burlesque of a certain type of modern verse)
Legions on legions of azure remonstrances,
terminal outset and oceans between.
demons of difference in regions of consonance
pester a resident dean.
Snow meekly falling in islands of doggerel
scatters the velvet of germinal rain:
the bevy of minds with atonement commensurate:
series, apostrophe, strain.
All inner gains burn in vessels polygonal,
cradled in oak, vendors vetting the goods,
while furtive originals sob and then masticate,
bowling reverberant woods.
Disconsolate snobs juxtaposed in exclusiveness,
echoing catacombs, wails of the wise:
sweet in their heyday the crestfallen opulent;
motives discordant arise.
Miniscule bottlers are marshalled immaculate,
the greensward in hillocks is ready to roar
and midnight’s monstrosity menaces mendicants
with technological law.
Where can descending arboreal niceties
render sonorous articulate vowels?
will they in corpulent pages octagonal
Meet scattered ruminant fowls?
Haste, metaphorical motors elliptical;
murmuring forests all vibrant and terse
reach for the remnant of yesterday’s avalanche
silence profound to rehearse.
Hear the psychotic’s itinerant arsenal
resonant always, ephemeral, rare:
saintly delinquents for ever deliberate
non-escalating despair.
Lastly the men, full of verbose senility,
measure the astronauts going to town:
lunacies mingled with conscious fatuity
oscillate sideways and down.
February 1970