Marquis d'Yasusada

I Cling to the Body Sophistic

I got my body stuck in your body.
Our bodies were like a cocoon, 
Like a cellophane wrapped Lynn Lifshin twofer
Of unworldly word wacky conceits shackled in cellophane
Lying on a beach sun bathing by twilight
With mystical monkeys dancing in a delirious diadem
About my moon bleached body.
I threw my back out by way of my body becoming your body.
That turtle with two backs,
Two brilliant super novas embraced
But forgot strap on their memoirs.
We can’t stay unstuck like this 
Or I too might remain a fiction.
I will read about my frauds while frying link sausages
At the Mega Mart if it will guarantee me an audience.
With my thin portfolio  
My only hope is that despite downward harmonization
That hucksterism and Wall Street outlast all other isms
Except maybe computer pokerism and cockroachism.
The foppo Gestapo, the MFA Po Po are ubiquitous.
The APR Czar, the Partisan Revanchist, and the Prairie Pooner.
I saw those three old adorable frauds Silliman, Perelman and Bernstein today
Celebrating Ron’s 12 inch thick deep dish, thin crust
Litany of non-sequiturs, inchoate bus routes and mind melting adult ADD
On the heartburn express with extra anchovies,
And I took hope again for me.  
And those rabbit punches Charles tosses at the ‘accessible.’ Oy,
Can Billy Collins survive the blow?
Poetry loves a fraud
More than your body, more than my body.
Poetry loves a fraud.
And I can’t sell my body, this Lusitania with its cracked hull, 
Anymore than I can my poetry or your body old boy.
I quack me up. Let’s go out on the town.
Celebrity ain’t got it all sewn up though pretty much.
Adam West, that ancient has-been, writes epic language poems
In fussy calligraphy using cat’s whisker quills
But won’t do Jordan’s yap show,
So when I go on I’ll be filling in for Batman.
Any little shock of recognition,
Any little jolt to a graduate student’s head nads;
There might be a masters thesis or a news clipping in it 
About the Marquis de Yasusada.
Together our bodies barely make ends meet,
My body with its cracked frame and weird shimmy
No longer has any bluebook value
But still I would announce it from the rooftops 
If they shipped me back to Bolivia for parts. 
Pickled in fraud I tell anyone who will listen 
That parts of me may outlive my body.
But your body, however, is a goner,
As papery as a mendicant in the Four Quartets.
There is no harm in being an empty booming Barnum;
A Ponzi of puffery.
Sometimes, nowadays it smells like a step up. 
Applying another bullshit undercoat 
Scraping the bottom of the barrel or boot or boat,
The putty knife sounds a hopeful screeching note. 

The great oblate is at the plate. 
His fans is in the stands.