THE CATERPILLAR’S CALIPERS by Jake Sheff
THE CATERPILLAR’S CALIPERS
by Jake Sheff
I.
So much depends upon the muse’s invocation,
Glazed with white feathers all abandoned at
The rainy entry; signs of fire are present:
Cain and tar. A self-made song to justify
The ways of death to kings, or justify
The river’s way to Earth is inappropriate.
A bitter CPR, or effigy at Heaven’s gate
On fire, to assume the muse is great,
And would suffice. My hope – that king
Of feathers up against that thing with fathers –
Is to sing the roster of a nation: uppercut
And jab to spill the blood of now
On yesterday (the quickest death in nature
Is by man, of metal tooth and claw
That booms); a sandalwood or chamomile
As petrichor. And for a chicken sandwich
Ellis Island whips a calloused notion into
View: freedom on all planes: the center of
The world for trading barbs; peripheries
Of time and fomites; delusions of blandeur
And My Sharona. “The clenched buttcheeks
Of time withhold the ripest rhyme. It’s
Wrong, but time is not like other boys,”
The caveman said; “So put that in your song
And smoke it!” I heard the sleeping breath
Of children, holy as the roll of hill and lull
Of wave through ocean, light and mankind’s
Grave; I heard it down the avenue called
“S.” The caterpillars dancing, dead
And deeply on a dusky disc, threw me
A noisy look as from a nosey brook:
Our sinuous consensus wants you gone!
The ways of people bruised by fear, a planet
By the day’s endeavors, was afoot.
A single caterpillar spoke in my
Defense: “My friends, life on earth is serious
And indescribable, but remember Neely, who
Could jump and love like an immortal idea
Having fun; friendship doesn’t die with friends.”
His message was both antiwar and justifiably
Sarcastic. “I knew Neely, his way is not Neely’s,”
Another said of me. “My friend, you’re like
The water that admires its reflecting. Come,
This hatred is the devil’s laugh and livid
Fall; it fuels the godly engine in us all. Let’s
Hear him out. Sir,” he turned to me, “Please utter us
Your antidote.” “Ha! Let’s hear this uterus of
Tartarus and dust his udders off!” To justify
Myself I said, “Men seldom wear kilts while
They walk upon stilts.” And I was spared. “Why
Are they scared?” I asked my caterpillar friend.
“Because our recent population study, The Newt
Estimate, was subtitled, More Bad News. Plus,
That sign said ‘Ave S’: you start to see yourself as
Food that’s asking for it. So, we changed the sign
To ‘S Ave.’” An RPG flew overhead. I bit a fig.
II.
The wrestling match that pitted Badland Bill
Against Mt. Rushmore ended badly for
Buzz Aldrin. “Vegetarian planet, this
Vestigial, vague vagina…” First, the swan
Of South Dakota mounted Lincoln, very
God-like, breaking off unleaded deals.
Habeas Corpus shouted from the cheap seats:
“Pity Badland Bill, his macho struggle
With the dead, white egrets and their living,
Lost regrets… Break this bitch’s labor!
Grind the prayers and wishes it excretes
Into a pull-up in his faces!” “Winter’s pension:
Paltry,” the caterpillar mumbled. “Summer’s
Noose is longer than its lease,” he said
To me and grinned. Then Teddy Roosevelt
Unpinned the reservation’s past, which sent it sadly
Wandering through garden ruins, buzzing like
A flyboy. Deadwood kept on changing corners:
“Mop the floor with his esprit de corps!
That Black Hills mamma jamma has a perfect
Butte!” The vendors hawked gold rush ambitions
To the dads and missile silos nursing nukes
That wanted nothing more. The Dust Bowl,
In the stench of dying faith and buzz of
Babies growing, said, “I thirst”; vestigial news
To Biff. At 9.8 punches per second per second
Thomas Jefferson rained blows! “This head-to-
Head’s hydraulic,” Noah joked familiarly to
The rainbow leaning on the ropes with outstretched
Particles of hand. Invisibly, the market taunted
Bill: “I float like a bloated fish and sing like
The expired pond!” An advertisement swan
Alighted in the ring; a southern coda did resound:
“A seed was planted on the sun, it grew
Democracy!” Prospectors mined the ring for
Nuggets of unconditional love, but forgot
Leave-in conditioner; the ring girl’s faux
Lament: “…to pair dramatic beef with feeble
Wine.” The caterpillar pulled his calipers
To mete out frankincense enough to out-meat
Frankenstein! “The image of a democratic
Death,” he’d have me buy. The herbal plot of
Man we screwed together wasn’t having it;
He ran off on a trail of sutured tears. A scalp
Was beneficial on our hunt; his torn off hairpiece
Swung from the branch of government called
Wounded Tree. “That tree cannot stop lying!”
Washington yelled, breaking the fourth wall and
Presidential seal. “It cherry-picks the facts.”
“Recalcitrant, the eaves shuffle off their mortal
Leaves,” announced Old Bill atop the post,
And tapping on his elbow, jumped. His move,
The Cantilever’s Chronic Chanticleer, landed
Square on the Great Society in the round, sent it
Riding roughly to a thrombocytic destination.
The nosebleeds had binoculars and hope.
III.
The doorbell rang (this was no knock-knock joke);
A high-toned Christian canyon opened up
Her spiritual gates. The boys walked in like serotonin
Yoked to karma, vagabonds in simple ties
And starch; a Gemini, with bearded interludes
And jasmine voices, tasked with innocence.
A niceness strung like tinsel on their faces
Petrified the air; a chicken crossed the road
For genuine persuasion. Kismet closed and lowballed
Questions feared by love. “Good evening, ma’am.
You never really wanted to be real, am I
Correct?” The gaping woman smiled: “Retired
Dead ends and cavernous friendships are real enough –
Andy Warhol got his fifteen facsimiles of black
And blue minutes…” The moment herniated. “…But
The years persist with self-abuse and righteousness.”
The sorrel room had walked on stage. “The resurrection
Is a footprint taking shape without a medium or
Foot…” (“I’ve got to mold it in her heart…”)
The other added: “Nothing is more vile than
Autumn’s rank-and-file.” On her divan a Cheshire cat
Was dying with a dying smile. Malarial, the moon
Rose to pour a glass of milk and timor mortis
In the room. A transcendental portal raised
A barn symmetrical as cemetery power
Outlets; electric salty air began to swim around
The walled-in circumstance. “You boys consider
That cork tree epicurean? But real art is
Always at risk of execution or exile. The label
Genius is a form of amnesty.” The problem
Factory’s hairy past and flaming teeth let loose
Per vias rectas: “Render unto basalt what is
Leisure’s, and Martinize the yeomen into
Reconstruction money.” “You boys, with all your
Digital meridians and soupy know-how…” The sky
Outside was old; it dribbled birds and bled an
Undistinguished red in nurses’ hands and razor towns.
The caterpillar sought confederates to test and
Unify the face of theory. “Just hold still!” he yelled
At Generals Lee and Custer as he plucked the winter’s
Scheherazade from out their tongues. And Disney
Basked with Sinbad back inside. “We offer jobs
And gates to anyone with ears. This fluid doesn’t
Freeze or boil.” “But it’s awful mean and blue. This
Loneliness is my chief asset.” The caterpillar
Chlorinated Haight-Ashbury, streaming up and through
The Goblin Valley. “Death be not casual! Throw
My art in jail or make it real!” (“She is ricin!”)
“My niece’s tonsillectomy went well,” I told the
Caterpillar. “That organ is the Socrates of sorcery,
Scored and natural.” “Come again?” I said. “Pandora’s
Thumb and wheat or corn; a confectionary of
Dunces!” A gonzo filibuster was at hand. “You plead
The fifth again?” I laughed, the very laugh that
Swept across the sky, and brushed aside its genitals and
Hurt. A tommy knocker strained the weather’s mind.
IV.
As she walked out one evening into beauty,
Betsy Ross imagined dawn’s syndactyly had
Merged the wine-dark history with asterisks
Galvanized by the feminine mystique, and
Nature cocked his head to beg she speak more
Clearly. Doe-eyed, addiction’s choreographer
Mistook the bearer of the essence for the essence;
A birdie’s chirp for changing of the guard, or
Betsy Ross’s magic wand for rays of golden
Sun. A California poppy on Route 66 was put
On notice by the caterpillar: “A forbidden,
Botryoidal love.” Dime Store Denali, Misanthropy
And Strong Humiliation: Drugs for intellectual
Debugging. Al Capone and motorcycles scattered
Rights to the west wind’s point blank accusations –
Right to an attorney’s rosy-fingered synergy; his
Wine-dark mattress in the court of luaus – all
For this. A misophonic missionary’s cigarette, like
Burning books, saluted misdemeanors with a
Maverick namaste to calm itself. Missouri’s twain
Of meth lab dalliance and migrant Hamlets on
The lam created torrents of marked men; Oprah
And obstetric static promised Sumer is icumen in,
Historical emergencies and nowhere else to go.
Spooky action at a distance proves the gods
Are miserable with perfect pitch, but gothic
Pitchforks don’t inject themselves; the addict
Dilly-dallied. A small step for man, and giant
Jackalopes were choking on his guilt’s emissions,
Nummular as if the unexamined coin was not
Worth spending. Molly Brown was in the room
To baptize the mafia – their long, long way to the urn –
And the Chinook. A skinhead, no more beige
Than common kestrels, viewed the eighty-eight keys
Of standard people through stained glass impediments,
And Betsy Ross pledged her allegiance to a needle
Pulling thread: “The sky is deeper than our skin, the
Sea is less involved than kin.” A shot of whiskey
And a barbacoa quesadilla was the Rocinante and
Catch-22 that Norman Rockwell spoke for; Baghdad’s
Dewey Decimal System masquerading, clearly
And delicious. But the caterpillar’s calico derision
And complacency was chiding all the country’s
Values while the addict wrote a final note to sew a
V to La: Dear Mrs. Ross, your eyes are pierless as
The Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria in 1492, and
Deeper than the ocean blue. He said, “Our nuclei
Accumbens hold the condiment and victim’s
Condemnation equally created. True hypocrisy’s
The medium of will, my friend.” “And error’s intent,”
I added, as a thorny crow of cherry red flew by.
It turned into a strip of ticker tape that fluttered
Down onto my jam and read: Get high on Penny’s
Pharm. A mob of brick went up around a crib
Of endless bombing. Smokey the Bear packed Green
Bay into his thumb to grow mercurial and THC.
V.
The sled dogs sought the apparition at the finish:
Surface of petroleum and cloudy, stationary
Petals. “Autumn in the hand is springtime in the
Feet,” the caterpillar commented. “The coliseum’s
Colicky. The caliphate’s lumbago is more details
For twilight, or seventh-inning stretch material –
Come and watch the race.” The Mississippi river
Flooded, and the sooty sled dogs bought the
Harm a farmhand stowed away. A silver lining
Was the race continued, past the Rockefeller
Ceroscape and acroluminescent labor unions,
Scrambled porn and Bunker Hill. Woman is
A voyage, Hell a permanent fatigue, a bumper
Sticker read, adhering to a tent in Hooverville
And flapper’s day-glo wit. A periwinkle
Twister tore through Oklahoma! St. Peter’s gate
Was pearly still, since summer in the head is
Winter in the heart. And Thomas Edison,
Discussing Karl’s lark with Charles Foster Kane,
Began: “Lacunae comedic as combustible
Carinas…” Orson added: “A regular assembly
Line for Rosebuds, Valley Forges, pioneers…”
A daisy-chain with penis pinions dropped by
In a hurricane; the autumn-time was tame with
Its particular tumescence. Cemented feet were
Under water’s watchful eye. Needless to say,
I pretended to be the Enola Gay and did loop-de-
Loops above the poverty line and racing fans;
Mascara in the sky. A knickerbocker Jersey devil
Told me, “Stop! The first amendment only
Guarantees your right to coded speech and state
Taboos.” Colossal tractors made the earth quake
Smoothing out its cowlick for the lumber. Tails of
Sled dogs wagged like Sunday at the smell of hasty
Pudding. The caterpillar’s calipers appeared, “To
Measure out John Henry’s path of least resistance, for
A gastronomical success!” Senile Gatling guns threw up
Their hands and cried Whoa Nellie! “America’s
Anemone,” he said, “is rooted in our daily chores and
Dismal operations.” Mt. St. Helens blew her top,
Instructed just to burn the other peak. Harry Carey
Called the race in coriaceous fashion. Jackie
Robinson’s papoose suspended animated haze to
Fix it in an ordinary phrase; orioles in a tamarisk
Or creole in silvery dread. And capitalists came
Connecting dots: a Wu-Tang lyric and John Williams
Score with tomahawk injunctions; brotherly
Betrothals or the broth of brothels: blizzards in a
Beautiful disgust. “Come and watch the race.
Reality is very disagreeable; a urinal for profits.
Cormorants know that harvest-time’s a talent
Show for osiers to judge. But what’s at stake –
Circadian while craters mark some holy nervous
Breakdown? Caterwauling craters: wombs to mock
The world.” The caterpillar’s callipygian botched
Apocalypse and Paul Revere were set adrift.
VI.
Intangible and truant, Charles Lindbergh’s
Sleigh bells jingled. Pilot fish escorting
Patty Wagstaff on her eagle to Area 51 were
Executing half-rolls, spins and firstborn sons.
At Kitty Hawk, the Goodyear Blimp was eating
Breadcrumb contrails; fattening for Betelgeuse,
That candy-coated oven. Monkey astronauts
Ejected Tweedledum in spirit: kidnapped
Pontius Pilate’s brother for to kiss the jungle.
And Groucho marked how Boeing’s arrow was:
“A sleek, unhurried vestment – tease tranquility
For sky; a sexually transmitted peace and
Iconography.” But Harpo didn’t care a lick and
Said, “This javelin will strike with a macabre
Rejuvenation.” Sally Ride and Sheryl Swoopes
Invited Rudolph’s sonic glow inside the Bell X-1
Till Shakespeare threw a UFO into the paddy
Wagon. The caterpillar’s calipers were under
Kite and key: “’This creature walks in the spring
And flies in the fall’ – Poor Lionheart said that!”
Amelia, her knack for almost anything, immediately
Landed on a griffin’s back. Chuck Yeager and
Rebecca Lobos eyed the moon: the dreamers’
Disc; ovarian aerie for the founding fathers’
Titillated howls. And Alfred E. Neuman’s wry,
Perfected negative culpability was parodied by
Me: “The moon is Earth’s technology.” But sugar
Cane eschewed its cape: the new Old Faithful
Rode upon Phoenician flames immaculate as
Flak to clouds. And Wilbur said to either Orville
Or Pat Summitt: “Airplanes wear a vulgar stare
Worth climbing out of breath.” The heir chimed in:
“That’s more profane than death, or Hindenburg’s
Propane.” The heir was plain, his error was
Humid: “The hyperboles that move the planets
Can’t attain the grand and honest style of
The plane.” The clammy clouds reflected all –
The golden, gated guilt; the ocean’s drowsy surface
And perfidious nerves; the floral noise and
Terminal resistance – to invent a super bolt.
The brothers Grimm took half-delight in Pet
Sounds, voyagers in Brian Wilson’s jingoistic,
Half-ironic sleigh bells. The Berlin Wall’s black
Box was buried by the Jackson 5 to the chagrin
Of hallelujahs; Jimmy Doolittle was accused
By incest of McCarthyism, but the sun still rose
To the sound of android hiccups on Mars. The ace
Balloonist put her finger in the buttery first
Cause and color-coded heaven. “I’d like to fly or be
A Kennedy,” the caterpillar stated. “But time
Is just a slow betrayal. That winged and singing
Eel is learning how to cry. The most content of
Characters are baby druthers: trilobite renditions
By James Naismith in the capital of Middle Mirth
Or Philadelphia.” The calipers grew fratricidal, buff
As Y2K; a mangled prime to stall the calibrated eve.
VII.
A blast of fortune swept across the plain:
A cavalry, perhaps, the men on headless horses
For the God of Laryngitis on his dreadful horse
(“A Trojan lozenge ought we send?” the chaplain,
Planted like a bloody glove, complained);
Bazooka Joe, whose horse forsook its horseman
For a mane of fire, was blameless if this horseward
Charging flame was chewy in Chewbacca’s name.
And overhead: a plane and men on Calvary;
A million old Perhaps that never die or get a
Spear stuck in their eye like Macaroni by a
Corleone. A noon as tranquil as delight in
Death was honey for the men to drink and
Have eternal fame. The stooges’ Moe was
Singing silky, meadow credos (“Self is pain and
Pleasure’s call for nothing”) while Goliath’s skull
Was crushed again by Larry David. Vocal cords
Were heaped with tribe and gore for men
To run around. And Halloween was cut by swords
To watch its airy substance close. “Give my foreskin
A Christian burial!” Isaac yelled, to scratch out words
His nonplussed death deserved. (His knowledge in
That convex war was self-inflicted.) “My calipers
Will outlive any selfless gallopers,”
The caterpillar, in a condom, coughed.
A superhuman sentiment and sea of slaughter
Clashed. A concupiscent cow skull and bouquet of
Stealth (an Aristotle hybrid crossed with Amistadt)
Failed to follow suit: our lesson on life lessening –
Like, Jealousy can stab you with a jellyfish – was
Clementine, the caterpillar’s cloak-and-dagger
Darling cloaca; his coffin-size (or “caliber”)
Was deemed irrelevant. The mutilated speech
Of Meriwether (“Silver snot in riven dreams,”
Per William) inspissated the past and sniper’s reach:
The hairy trees’ adagios provided screams
And dull chords in the childish night. The ruined idol
Of an idle skeptic, patiently with beams
To label all the etherized retreats and bridle
Murmurings of ice cream, planted regicidal
Forests near the rooks. An open-ended
Meteor, from cannons next to Rosa Parks
Oblivious to youth and trash, was not intended
For the kennel. “Stony grace recalls our barks
Preferred the face of stoic walls,” the splendid
Canine canonized. Yosemite and other arks
Were dented, tenderly. “A citadel of venison
Forsook Utopia’s kabuki renaissance,”
The man on fire offered Seward. A Semitic,
Fiercely ornamental dentist, punched in the
Falsetto, got the best of Hiawatha: “Envy
Is disorder’s enemy!” A schizophrenic
Bugle disagreed; its layman maker praised
The will of Earth as “terrible to face,
And to possess. For what is love: the lion’s
Honey; the reverse transcriptase of the heart?”
VIII.
The MREs will be alfalfa and omega-3s.
Ulysses Grant will scan the Gettysburg
Seascape for gumbo and the angel mariners. (A crease
Will sexually transmit itself.) An iceberg
Will be coming ‘round the mountain like a virgin
President (in driven reams). In Guam, the perfect storm
Of TV dinners and Pacific Ocean borborygmi
Will be fish, falafel, mysteries and Dulce et decorum
Est pro patria mori. The sea of granite’s oddest properties
Will rise and fall like eastern Humpty-Dumpties westerly; (ergo,
Ticonderoga and Eggs Benedict will be a thing). The Navy’s
Plainclothes striptease will regurg
-itate on the Secretary of Fate to play the King of Anorexia, then gorge
Herself on frozen yogurt. Half a quorum
On the half-shell unaborts the tugboat’s chug;
The chef uncooks the sea cow burger. Dulce et decorum
Est pro patria mori unescapes the gunboats’ ecstasies,
Unyelling, “Look me in the ironsides and say it!” Ungurg
-ling, the sandy light tossed overboard like salad days unties
The anchor from its basket, unshanghais the Winesburg
Seamen and their alligator landlords. Nuts unargue;
Unsing dirges for the android unflying too far from
The “gormless sun” (on solar-powered wings). Cargo
Unbecomes the flotsam; ancients ungrease Dulce et decorum
Est pro patria mori to unslide it from the submerged
Tepees. And to unaddress a dolphin and unlure him:
“The calories in a caterpillar? I’m not sure.” In purg
-atory, war untugs the herringbone from Dulce et decorum
Est pro patria mori and stapes from the incus. And The Promised
Band played on (the humblest showboat band) on Lake
Superior. Long Island’s synesthetic ports (‘Come for our views
Of the sound!’) stayed the cyborg’s titanium and water’s
Childhood reflections. Varsity dyspareunia (like a virgin’s
Melancholy, with its sharp and painted nails) afflicted
Clementine, and so she flicked the caterpillar like a
Planet with a grimmer default setting, or a booger.
“My lady of the kale and daily licking of the wounds…”
“But there are plenty more big-breasted weapons
In the sea,” I reassured him. War has rows of teeth
Deferred, and has to dream around the bloody impasse;
Doubting pain, our common tense to perfect form
Was jogged. The eyeless fish in Plato’s cave
Are singing: “Peacetime rest in breezy breasts
The earless men hear best…” The coral grave
Is lapping up the supernatural dock;
A holiday for sows in younger weather
Is ok’d from Dow Jones’ locker (as played
By Meryl Streep, whose own facilometer
Attenuates antennas in Atlantis, like barbaric
Aliens). Scarlet town’s sole android burns,
A double-you, with bushy rage; the sun
And its reflection argue which returns
The bluest eye. The ocean’s brackish insults
Breach for men (the treasure of all static cling)
To strive, to stake, to fry and not congeal like rooftops’
Calipers, up there to replicate barnacled yawps.
IX:
“This here confession’s the world’s oldest: scaphoid;
Appalachian,” Clementine began. “The road less travelled
Bisects too. Just as you didn’t begrudge the slug
Of double-helix slime and fame, or that ham-fisted
Fiddler on the roof for peeping while I bathed on
The O’Leary’s barn, do not renounce my Daisy Dukes
For teeming with their modest mysteries and prefects –
Am I some old-world convict or scorbutic hearse
With roadless travellers?” This gave the caterpillar
Paws. “Your gentle-antlered pleas and popliteal
Apologies are like a nosegay for the priest or stout Balboa’s
Sly Stallone: a grain of fault; I take it with a salted
Migraine.” Viscous silence flooded in from the sadistic
Sky, like masochistic quiet in the sophistry of sunfish.
“Those dilapidated loopholes you’d subpoena
To unravel their appeal – as if a glass of lemonade
Were not half-bitter as your biceps bulge.” “And yet
I see the ass half-full,” was his rejoinder; “taste
Your words and ask: is this the feces launched
By Fossey’s apes? A tonsil-hockey pox for you, and
Pax of cigarettes! Go buy a cat, or else square root
It; a thrice-thriving man would do you good! You sought
A sunrise southerly and crises, but the company
Of cheaters claimed your balcony for gulls to judge.”
“Fidelity? With yours like a ham radio’s! Double
Crossing in your mask of roses!” “Spy no more;
Deception rarely is the bearer of bad news”:
The caterpillar lobbed chalcedony incognito at
Her solar plexus, and Chicago’s forelimbs cramped.
“The rhetoric of nether bells, distributing
The gumption of your liberty: your parallactic
Self-reliance limned your family tree a ring
Unspoiled: a sawyer’s; clawed by water’s wandering
And watchers.” Ivy League and saber-toothed, the cataplectic
Caterpillar’s retort neither confirmed nor denied a thing.
The window’s predatory lending, offering
Tomorrow as immortal – or, the John Cage tick-tock
Of self-ambience – cast its broken vote to play the Ringling
Brother’s lead: the rose and buyer’s bleeding wing;
Aloof in residue of time’s desired tactic;
Water’s gated scandal. “Not another clapper-tingling
Belle,” the caterpillar catapulted, furthering
Rhodoras’ morning rhapsodies and hectic
Rhinorrhea. “The grass growing on your gringo
Back, refracting nanosecond phrases – brandishing
A foghorn’s genitalia, if you will – is chiropractic
As the day is long”: the clam-in-tide: this misattributing
A flame to infamy’s tight-fit. A cowbell’s ring
Atoned. “The meretricious Tully Monster partly read
The sea, and found a Mariana trench to moor in
And to die”: the caterpillar climbed a coreopsis
To continue: “Lovers part the sea of eyes – its false
Contempt for contemplating red – and to our hearts
A ray that spills crepuscular delay; selenium,
At daybreak, pours into your porcelain aye. With
Perfect merits meeting, come; let’s to our wedding rise.”
X:
The current stripped itself to bare essentials.
“Simplify your wounds,” the paranymph advised
The caterpillar; “cancelling a passion seven-
Billion strong is a tall order.” Golden lures were followed,
Paramount to fill the golden role with hemolymph.
The stubbled bafflement of bachelors – seminal
Achievement of the furless – vexed the Seminole
Ideas of order, and the right to bear a sentinel
Collapsed behind a curtain. Simplify: that hymeneal
Vendetta’s coriander garnishing support
Like golden fleas; a panoramic fellow.
“Everyone’s accordion is needed!” cried the even-
Tempered monotones, pervading the Sven
-gali air. A side-armed, sidereal sic semper
Tyrannis stumbled inside. The caterpillar bellowed
Wall Street Juvenal opinions: “Rara avis elements
Be damned! I am E. coli’s hummus!” Counseling
Solicited maneuvers to out-Heimlich
Summer solstice, née the screen of spring. La Bamba; schemes
Ischemic in the caterpillar’s capillaries: knaves
To all coincidence and not coin-operated. “Sappy knife,
Happy strife,” the Tarot Card suggested, lemon-scented
As a séance. “Reeks of rotted care. You know, the center of
The sun is only new”: Copernican and pillowy,
His theory’s golden lyre and billion strings were mellowing
His native vanity. “Geology of ego; Zeno’s limp
Along the road to mucus… If the bicentennial’s
Flâneur had squatted near Ponce de León’s manure – or heaven’s –
Gateways to the arch above would close.” The good Mer-Martian’s
Birefringent sea, meanwhile, was not the viceroy
Janus, given suffrage, would have chosen to obey:
Libido’s cauldron; Rip Van Winkle’s hollow
Toil in ammonic littorals. Golden pairs of summa cum
Laude guesses came regarding hormone levels,
Whereabouts; “A wedding is the morning’s due!” “But evenings
Sue.” “My love and destiny: inconsequential
Language-games to tangle up with God’s piano and
A rifle:” self-devised in hemolymph, the caterpillar
Followed seven calendars that, without representation,
Gilded seminal parameters and the essential naughtiness
Of archers. Ticket stubs to raffle a priori
Gossip – pledges rigged to go a-maying – feeling sorry
Gingerly for the proceedings, offered to condole
With an E Pluribus Unum and lysergic sorry,
Paramilitary-style. Fletcherizing the event,
The caterpillar climbed the Chrysler Building, sorry
To see Clementine’s art deco code in 57 varieties
Of morsel. And with bacchanalian aplomb, no sorry
Found a way to catch a falling fury taxed with 3/4s
Apple-green emotion. Coward of Nantucket, feeling sorry,
I began to dream of inguinal retreats and sing:
“A penny savior pennies spurn; a splenic spring,
With nuptials on the fritz, is lobbying for truth:
A concrete love’s well-lighted start; the facts of youth.”
From a lachrymose blind spot, Clementine came near,
Denying sex a Führer like the act was laissez-faire.
XI:
“Take the seat of meaning”: Klementine was changed;
“Your child to the dark flower came, and eager to wheeze.”
And Frank Lloyd wrote a river into a babbling tower
Blonde with bedtime’s blood and urinating maize.
“A piscine wager: put on childish wings; decline the royal
Invite of esteem without a steamboat close behind.”
A teething gnosis bled inside a lamb’s head, red
As toilet water fed, as if a serpent shed it, what the C had
Said to be a K instead. To get behind her satin, fowl-
Mouthed guidance, first I had to ask: “Why’d you kill
The caterpillar?” “Sorry, poetry is room to make
A moor,” Jake Sheff replied. It stunned; to mock Beringia
A Sesame Street opened. (First, a plethora of sylvan
Platitudes.) A Franklin stove enables sticks to shower
Upward too; despondent fish, amuck with stones and Esau,
Cried, “The dark flower ceded the Amen just east of
Burden; go!” But Klem said that was, “cracking wise and up
In all directions. Neighboring redemption, past
The android’s reach or stanchion and all lethal inspection, is
The caterpillar’s door. And now the train from Ditto, heading
For the land of Dodo, comes believing me a Dido standing
On the shore.” Her cadence stopped the waves from
Landing on the shore; four and seven score. And frankly,
Nothing gave a dam; to Waterloo and through, our preachy
Mansion stood. Our shucked empiricism, hirsute with
Happiness, confabulated: “Yonder stands your hallux
Off hallucinating me!” Upon the dune of loony and denuded
Doom, an actor – brokering electric shares and firing squids –
Broke character into a chariot for chartering Paul Bunyon’s
Flaxen ox above Iscariot. “The dial laid is twice repaid
In diaper money,” spoke the earlier catastrophe; “The horror
Of baby loins!” Accused of hoarding bloody cranebills
In her horde of hearts, a dowager got ginseng stuck
With jury duty. “Years that never listen; Lent was given
Countess ears…” A ukulele’s fumarole relayed the verdict:
“Glut on lust: this slut for guilt, her slit of silt and lake of
Silk to slake the skeleton ilk; it slights the saint and serial
Surpriser – sunrise ain’t kind. Impeach this Georgian!
Slivers of slime; a diadem of scorpions and flag on her lapel!”
“Pythagorean, populist papillae; no papillon or pedagogish
Vision quest. For who, in honest camouflage, seeks
Phony privacy?” “The novelist and mantis,” I replied, and Klem
Said I was close. “C’mon, we’re here to wake a sleeping
Giant.” Sequoia trees for Howard’s raft were screaming,
“Down with Howard Taft!” “In God we strut and tread
On no one, in order to form a more perfect bunion,”
Dividing minutemen to kill the time, she joked and joked.
With livestock close behind, on travertine no mason
Whistled Dixie near, my genome’s tethered gnat
And gnome betrayed how out of scope I was: I shat
Myself. “This lily-white untouchability confounds you?
This rehearsal for your death’s reversal?” At that,
She pardoned me from our jejune calamity
Like antsy oak leaves by a Cuban missionary. She
Had reconciled differences with daylight-saving’s
Coalition; her canary beak inherited the free.
XII:
O say can you – to see or not to see –
Believe this caterpillar’s cuckoo shell
Is other people? Crooners unusual;
A song of love no scythe can see, yet free
Of anonymity. Calliope
Of nations, shepherding, to clutch a heel,
The oral past; for what fair youth drive steel?
“To contradict my flesh and multiply
The eerie eye’s lacustrine promises
Of nothing else to want.” A Clovis point,
For dripping paint, was utilized; and jazz
Was all that coveted that Alcatraz
Of dazzling Alas. The bishop’s joint:
Diagonal with unbelief; Gee-whiz
Of new colostrum: agony and diet.
“What isn’t born that ages well; is not
For love and not for hell?” The west is quiet;
A Show-me Static front. A polyglot
Reviewed the valley’s Hebrew mildew, got
The weavers’ wives involved: a camel’s hair
Was thread with gossamer nostalgia; pot
Was melted into top. “There’s nothing here
To measure or emancipate,” the care
Of Cheyenne, charity and yarrow; “Plow
The Porlock keystone; tepid turnpike! Spare
The wigwam’s rocky peak!“ The tubas bow –
“Renew the wine and slow the cotton gin.
Renew the wine and slow the cotton gin.
Two pockets too notorious, I turn
‘Em out again.” A baker’s dozen of
Commandments form the yeast the beatniks burn,
To batter out the weird and banter’s love.
To pull a word from stone – Corinthian
Etudes; a bindi’s crimson – I had wrapped
The caterpillar in Olympian
Material, as the revolution’s rapt
Approval told me to. No basin raped
The bison, superseding Motown, grit
And trigonometry. No word escaped
The Alamo: no Valentine or writ;
High noun (a person-plinking thing), or verb
(The soul of brevity). And to disturb
A leather-jacketed biped: I greet
At the beginning – blink, therefore I damn –
The caterpillar’s merry-go and scam.
His firework the foul-tail’s fart, a groatsy-
Farce; subprime Butterball, at best! To start,
This temple surely isn’t serious; art
Monopolized the will to live to grace
The land with nothing true and beauty? Meat
And time’s enamel ceased to be when Turing
Tested ‘The truest nation is the most foreign’;
The caterpillar, tame and adamant,
Was called to action: wings of reason, moved
By passion paired with eights and aces, proved
The lady of dark laurel’s pilgrim mate.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jake Sheff is a pediatrician in Oregon and a veteran of the US Air Force. He’s married with a daughter and a whole lot of pets. Poems of Jake’s are in Radius, The Ekphrastic Review, Crab Orchard Review, The Cossack Review and elsewhere. He won 1st place in the 2017 SFPA speculative poetry contest and a Laureate’s Choice prize in the 2019 Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest. Past poems and short stories have been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology and the Pushcart Prize. He’s also published translations of poetry and reviews of translated poetry collections. His chapbook is “Looting Versailles” (Alabaster Leaves Publishing). A full-length collection of formal poetry, “A Kiss to Betray the Universe,” is available from White Violet Press.
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