Thoreau/Who Directed Le Boucher/& Pope

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys... We are in

great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine

to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing

important to communicate.

Thoreau

*

Hiram?

Walter. Uh-huh. You scurvy

goat. How's the -nope. No,

uh-uh. Ptooey!

(this

last: a jellied tobacco-rich gob of spit the

wind streamers out half a block).

*

I remember the child's invention: two

tin cans and a long taut of string-intermediary

sufficient unto the message,

usually. / I think of it this morning, I see

sun gilding our easternmost coast like a friar his

first letter on a vellum page, and

then, with the leisurely workings a

plurality of time zones affords, touching every

crushed discarded beercan between here and the Panhandle,

gold-alchemical .

linkage. Transmitter goes fir tree receiver says

tumbleweed, and the country inbetween

glorying tin. / Row of kids playing

Telephone, whisperwhisper: information to

gobbledygook, to an affirmation of goddbledygook through

usage so long, it's its own information-a way

language grows. Pass it on:

Buck Everett Kissed Miss Wright!

*

Me, you, by noon the

abacus of our day's accomplishments tallies: a dozen

broke eggs, a fight over who really did

direct that French film where the bride's knifed, where's

that book I could look it up if you'd keep the goddam

books in order "Worchor Kachawg!" What? Oh

look, shit, now you've done it, he lapped all twelve

up shells and all. "Idiot. I said Watch For The Dog!"

If we both mop up the same slops and spillings,

it's marriage, isn't it? Kiss me. Pass it on:

Bwu Everis Is'm Wright.

*

Walter?

Hiram. Yep, the Missus

been in The Tender State now near

the full nine, we're gonnata

christen him Little Hi. Wha...? Dad

blamed cert'n it's a boy!!! 'Nif

not, I still been in The Happy State

m'self so long now, I'll kiss her new rosy bald head

all to shiny!!! -Nope. Got

me a beer here. -Uh-huh.

*

It's night, the country folded

to sleep and its air the dark obscurity of that

vellum page scrolled and shelved. But

there are small lights, telegraphy

flashes, switchboard blinks, spinal

twinklings of relay, we

still communicate by, with the old stories:

kiss me. Plug our bed into the national spangling.

It's dark, it's confusing, it's light, a spectacular

meteor blazes across -no, it's a dazzling

sienna projectile of spit -no it's -anyway,

it arcs like a logo

across the width of the happy states. From Maine

to Texas, great men tonight think

great thoughts. The rest of us... I won't quibble with

sleep's small functional murmurs.

*

Pass it on: Whatever Is, Is Right.