fishing in the dark
fishing in the dark
hook, line, and sinker
she’s become a social drinker
— zumwalt (1970s?)
Archive for the ‘1980s’ Category
frame face
frame face
She glowers like the towers telling our past hours
to strangers passing peddling private wares of
seeding past affairs
shoot the blaster
pass the mustard
laughing choking not disclosing
distastefully hoping
resolution teases like a ten buck hooker
a textbook burner
wishing off evil thoughts with wards
of destruction
in frantic future non-operatives
mask reality like drifts of mud
tracked on Sybil's high polished floor.
— zumwalt (late 1970s or early 1980s?)
mystical message
mystical message
pound the telephone
sharply spinerating – generating – expecting
raise roofs of village flashers
swiftly fending
mentally attiring
tremulous trumpeting
a sour-sounding
mellowing hollowing “carving”
miracle mecca
with a teaspoon and an ‘e’ coupon.
pass the bumper
shape the shark fin strumpet bakers
lower floors of bundled tenements
friskily sending
incompetently mending
revolving in time
shaping destiny like the rivers of mildew
in the august of the dusking mountains of equinox.
— zumwalt (1981)
(When first discovered in 2011, I did not post this particular item here, but due to increased interest in Zumwalt’s works, adding now. Is it a draft, is it a final version? As always, Zumwalt has declined to comment, gently reminding me that a poem is what the reader makes of it.)
jet
jet
rose colored optimist in your bright and breezy spirits
playing ardent admirations in the joyful penny chorus
holding on endearingly to the steering wheel of our honda
with the wings of love,
with the science of comfort:
skyrocket dreamer who has made this life mean more.
the sincerity sinner is rushed to his dinner and we overlook
a life long since abandoned,
left to the birds of
pretext,
pretentiousness,
and petty prevarication plunder.
we are safe,
thanks to you,
and your large
inheritance from Aunt Ruthie.
— zumwalt (circa 1975-1983?)
No More Cornborers
No More Cornborers
My steel-wool scrubbed & Comet-clean spuds
grate with injurious gusto
Protect the enamel at all costs!
And a sheen is added to our distended
esophagus.
Wintry blasts of fluoride and chlorophyll
attack the waste
But only further pollute the abused
frame.
Death enters the corridors, stalking stealthily
in the Ajax-whiteness.
All is blinding! There is no more gray!
Josephine is become a slaughter-baron.
Ammonia chokes us all
—Zumwalt
[1981?]
Von Bock Was A Pansy
Von Bock Was A Pansy
Those iron plates that churned the mud and gravel
Impress me not.
The rifled bore was, and is a crashing bore,
I shut my eyes to the breechblock and
Do not care for thermite.
I recoil from venturi.
I have only cutting remarks for the bayonet;
C.B.W. stinks.
Give me Gandhi & Walden, with a little pickle
On the side, and I am content.
Blood-red waiters make me yawn.
—Zumwalt
[Early 1980s?]
Slice-of-life, Microwaved
Slice-o-life, Microwaved
Askew in a vinyl cosmos
life’s beading up on
a cold tumbler
And Juan Valdez
has repossessed my mind
for the glory of Brazil
or Colombia
Some squalid country at any rate
Leaving my 33
grooves
scarred by needles at 78
several rich hits
off of
Mrs. Olsen
And Muzak sounds
like steam jets
and
dark mutterings over eggs
become berserk natterings
of rabid chipmunks
Gee Zus !
Only 12:00?
Existence is
deformed
in a
time-warp
—Zumwalt
[Night of 30 Sep-1 Oct 1981, Washington, DC]
Unprincipled Certainty
Yeah, you can make human sacrifice to dialectical history
with druids and Marx
And you can root for truffles on Wall Street
But until you see the fallout on your
greasy fork
You’re just a vapid bowling alley
attendant
on graveyard.
–Zumwalt (1981?)
Burnt Toast
Burnt Toast
Orange!
Hellish pastels screaming unknown genius and hint at hidden chortles
While nicotine nimbi scud and stain
And we suck slyly, slyly sweetened caffeine and wait for it to
reach crit mass in our body-plexus-pit
How’d we find this sticky formica stop anyway?
We iron out our cerebral wrinkles
Observe the threading warp and woof
And still can’t discern how we got in
Or where they hid the exit
So all you know is that its always open–
Isn’t this the graveyard shift?–
And the cross-eyed waitress will bring a misspelled, miscalculated
mistaken check when dinner’s over
whining whining wining and dining
Somebody waste that skinny kid if he won’t stop bellowing
Disagreeable distaste in distinct decibels
Disgusting!
The food may slither down your maw like greasy lint
But can’t we at least eat in peace?
A garish cosmos of flickering neon and cretin muzak
It seems as if everything was drawn from the maniac cook’s
Primordial soup
The proper proprietor leans in languishing linger leisure
Across the register
Smiling slightly as he strokes his beard, unconcerned
Christ! Is this morbid midnight meal a subtle jest
Or is he just plain stupid?
–Zumwalt (late 1970s or early 1980s)
Voortrek
Voortrek
Twisting and deforming
Raging daemonic forces
Scream across the veldt.
Corkscrew clouds
Peeling off our thin, Formica-top civilization.
No Oz awaits;
Dorothy and Toto have headed for the shelters.
The only Munchkins, mutants.
Your fault
My fault
No fault.
We pulled the cork,
The Jinn gave their notice;
And History’s in its familiar whirlpool
With vertigo the fashion of today.
Like hunkered hedgehogs
Curled in spherical,
Lance-backed laagers,
We have one option:
Shut our eyes
And wait for the dust to settle.
— Zumwalt (1981)
