Punch, with paddle
Judy, without paddle
Punch:
Perfection? Pfui! Return it to peerless source!
She cooks, gavottes, blue spark as clean as, in liquidity awash,
but nay I say, she will not do.
Bring on the lady’s twin, Aurora Sunset Midday Yin
(no kin to yen, currency or urge), followed by Ying,
& better than either or even forever, & so on, etcetera,
at last enmeshed where Quotidia tugs
tasseled gliss&i & frolicsome bugs. (Whack!)
I dashed off in haste: Mere moments away from ominous pings,
accountancy’s fugues, essence of otter,
Destiny’s tutus encircling daughters,
palpability’s badinage,
a fusillade by spasms arrayed,
alighting lightly on the splayed,
a setting for a gropes, by which crass device the race lopes along
as deconstructs the deck callèd poop. I hear you, Hosanna,
a Mae West requesting out there in the saline goop,
your spinto urgencies surplusly befouling
aqueous frills in the deep’s embrace.
One squints to intuit tomorrow’s erasures,
comes away with an ardent Inuit,
excellent benefits, perks. (Whack!)
Judy:
Ere we befouled our bespoke jodhpurs
merest motes in th’aether were, disfiguring matter
with imprecise skills.
Read into gestures ends before spleens,
dirigible dreams,
dank motets in bile braised,
sutured harmonics, anchors aweighed.
Can bunting mask an assassin’s world-view?
Camouflage farts?
Provide the glue for klunky mesostics?
Flat-out erotics?
A Phillips-head screw? (O surly yew!)
Be Hugo Boss’s Siegfried line?
A varietal whine? A rheum with ague?
I dashed off in haste: He wears a giant sheetrocker’s scowl!
I dashed off in haste: He brandishes a two-ton trowel!
I dashed off in haste: At anti-matter he fusses & fumbles,
stately as portals to outst&ing venues,
bigger even than tectonic bungles!
Stuffing feathers up his nose!
Inhaling! Inhaling! Feathers no more!
Punch:
J’adore your leg. (Whack!)
I note the point at which your leg tolerates anything,
an observation I file under Marvels Relating to Limbs.
Other possibilities?
Ramen Lao Da’s Ramen Da Xiao,
Jie’s Ramen One Thing / Two,
Crayfish Ramen,
Raimondo’s stew bleu.
After the rain, gazing at the glistening treetops,
his sister mutters dreamily, “Aspen, aspirin,
aspersions cast & casting … ”
He, likewise dreamily, lays his neck athwart a stump
awaiting a hooded passerby,
th’aspens whisp’ring, “Breeze…”
I clap clamshells in hope of becoming a percussionist.
I require tutelage.
Two potatoes, three. The aspins’ sighs,
this must wait or seem to, pig, & thinking so, see … (Whack!)
Judy:
Women almost hear them, swains in pits hastily dug.
Marmots mayhap?
At length we encounter a sky-like expanse
a touch too lacy, too long pants,
a too big hat under which one recalls
st&ing atop a discomfited child, its urgent “Uhn!”
suggesting what? Disaffection?
When I am old enough to ask, you will be dead.
Brighter stars were burning then, in 1692.
Among slate rooftops she abode, up spires shimmying,
herself, I mean, in olden times,
calling softly to yet softer clouds,
“Mousie dear? Are you there?”
Punch:
We anticipate what we loathe
or simmer. “Of what bonanza thinkest thou ill,
small smelly churl?” (Whack!)
The targets outnumber the marksmen. (Whack!)
This he is who, toothsome female? He who scuttles butts? (Whack!)
Is this the he of Cloudlet Eight where dreams are gratis, almost?
Who rang?
’Tis Low-Slung Hermal, pusher to the demi-monde. (Whack!)
“Drink & plough whomever you please. Ignore the cost
or may the devil do a hundred chin-ups,
taking moaning me in stride. It is many hours to infamy
& not quite time for din-din, my friend.”
His mouth is much diminished.
He is otherwise our h&somest survivor.
Sump pumps pump however shallow the sentiment.
Judy:
Out here in Nature I’m really really happy
in teensy tiny ways, wooo hooo!
Froggies in my panties!
Nothing makes me happier than peaceful buttered noodles,
the merest hint of companionship,
& thinking about – who else? – myself,
A Levantine doxy formerly, now a big, fat thought. I mean forever,
strangler.
Desire compounds the difference
especially on a pedestal. Can you hear me now?
How all my plans turn to l&fill? Be that as it may,
Project 31 (“Flemish Lint”) is rolling right along,
donations are pouring in, lots of fabric, & I will sew until
my beating heart’s humanitarian core is as content
as a chrysanthemum.
Punch:
& then? (I really meant “when?”) (Whack!)
Flurry, blizzard, slush
& Dowl&, dead.
“Can we excuse our wrongs…?”
The Legend of Chief Sequoia (He Makes Her Squeak)
Printemps! – renewed longings for that of which
one never gets enough, & above all else,
working well with others. (Whack!)
I am attractive, tell me your address,
I’ll send you a merkin on & off.
Tell me your address, I’ll send myself
at the end of the trail, trial, travails… a problem withal for
social engineering.
If you’d like to attend, please just be & leave it to me.
We’ll remark how we differ.
In short, improvisation. (Whack!) Or perhaps
improvement.
Mike Silverton is most recently the author of Anvil on a Shoestring (2022), Trios (2023), and Yoga for Pickpockets (2024).
His poetry appeared in the late '60s and early '70s in Harper’s, The Nation, Wormwood Review, Poetry Now, some/thing, Chelsea, Prairie Schooner, Elephant and other publications he may have (and most likely) mislaid. William Cole included Mike’s poems in four anthologies: Eight Lines and Under, Macmillan, 1967; Pith and Vinegar, Simon and Schuster, 1969; Poetry Brief, Macmillan, 1971; and Poems One Line & Longer, Grossman, 1973.
As a culture go-getter, Mike produced poetry readings for The New School for Social Research, New York’s municipal radio station, WNYC, and Pacifica Radio’s WBAI, KPFA, and KPFK. One glaring regret: Mike had arranged to record Frank O’Hara on the week in which he was killed, the weekend intervening, by a dune buggy.
Mike’s music writing, centering on modernist classical, appeared in Fanfare, a bimonthly review, and several Internet publications, including his own LaFolia.com. Mike's reviews of high-end audio hardware appeared in the main in The Absolute Sound, a print publication, and StereoTimes.com. For the unlikely audiophile reading this, Mike's speakers are Wilson Audio Sasha W/P.
When Mike and Lee relocated from Brooklyn to Midcoast Maine in early 2002 he indulged an interest in Dadaesque assemblage, resulting in several works in a group show at The Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockport, and a one-man show at Belfast’s Aarhus Gallery. Mike and Lee’s 1842 house and barn are peppered throughout with work he’d have preferred to sell. (Jefferson Davis spent a night, obviously at an earlier time. Really.)