POEMS FROM MORBIDITY & ORNAMENT
ON FIRST LOOKING INTO ALLEN IVERSONI used to drive by the junkyards and the gold
River in my superturbo Answering Machine, And turn the heat way up, coz it was cold, Watching the factory smoke rise still and clean, And I never had no doubt I’d get old, One in a million, superstar, and cruising Past the Projects, remembered I’d been told I’d end up dribbling circles round them, and losing Anyway. But I got the bling. I looked in my mirror And I will never forget -- saw this skinny wigger Wearing my line of kicks, yo, I got out Signed his kicks and told him, memories, bury them Anywhere you can. Your rearview getting clearer. Coz time runs out. Coz there ain’t no doubt. Coz his name was Darien. |
note: Former NBA player Allen Iverson was also known as The Answer |
AN INTRODUCTION TO CHAUCERWe hadde but tramped in the driven snow and pooled
Liberally from our boots whilom Professor Grant appeared First to us, desiccated minstrel, a walking Jack O’Lantern On the dole, for his head was lollopingly large And his bones could have done with a brisk dousing. He opened his mouth and a rich and tweety reel beganne: Flemish birds remembering the dawn. We fidgeted, We shivered, not long off the farm, rudimentary fools. He told us we were randy fowl about to spawn anew. The maidens were disgusted, the feeble senile perv. In the Tabard, nigh the martyr’s tomb, he rilled along. Then one day, he fell ill, and an associate marched in With a reel-to-reel, his tie snagged in the spool Of Grant’s voice giving lectures from intensive care, From a tiltabed. He did detail the jolly compagnie Of his infection inadvertently; the castle-rampart trim On jerkins worn by miller spirochetes and sickle-headed Pardoners and prioresses, obnoxious in their reach for mead, Their single-minded gluttony upon an Ox-au-jus, Ywending aye the sanguine ways of Grant’s anatomy. We satte in our parkas and imagined all the japes We’d yet endeavour, the lies ahead, the gradual past Crescive as an Ottoman moon, a symphonic entropy Filled us as we filled our scribblers, the winter sun Yronning down, the tinkle of Grant’s voice more tranquil, Until he stood corporeal afore us, not looking much better. Though we were wont to quicklie tell him the reverse. The pallor of a candle, the moistness of a broom, He gacked his throat two blasts, and he beganne “…all were this Lande fulfilled with Fairye…” The sly mink clepeth Alysoun, her eyen merrye In the back row, though she maketh not a moue, Yet smirketh at all to her full knowe: Professor Grant Would topple someday, crumple like wasp-paper into smelly motes. Fain would fair Alysoun take notes. |