CAMPAIGN TO INCREASE VISIBILITY

In these difficult times, bloggers must go above and beyond the confines of their interface. They must be ready to use the interface but jump-off in a more virtual manner, like hello-my-name-is stickers. The monopilization of venues of visibility by the Planet-States of Advertising, like ClearChannel, have made it exceedingly difficult for the common man to get his tiny message across. This most recent Campaign for Visibility on Manhattan and Brooklyn is an expression of that frustration and was started on January 25, 2008. In fact, if you are reading this then chances are you have spotted one of the advertisements. If so, please make yourself at home, and read some of my works. And if you snoop around enough, you can even find a way to get a message to me.

Fuacata,

Spicaro

Familial Casual

Your Father, megaphones from sidelines.
Your Mother, inventor of The Whatever.
Your Sister, scrams to Lisboa
for Lisboa’s sake.
Your Uncle, shuffler in Orthopedics.
Your Aunt, speaks in miracles
of the plastic ass surgeon.
Your Auntie, eats mushrooms
in Oaxaca with French daytrippers.
Your Other Sister, services
the ancient indigent from the top
of Mt. Sinai Hospital.
Your Other Aunt, Night Nurses.
Your Other Uncle, plaster
architect, part-time flaneur.
Your Cousin, encroaches
on the Midwest—
invades Naperville.
Your Other Cousin, hoists
mausoleum reefs into Biscayne.
Your Other Cousin, brings
home strays, like Noel, in mini
skirt, tube top, and strapless pumps.
Your Godfather, throws it all away
to raise horses on the Okeechobee.
Your Other Cousin, go-fors
for a corrupt judge.
Your Other Father, former
Brown Beret, former bodyguard
to Black Elk.
Your Other Mother, ‘Rican
secretary with babies in Fallujah.
Your Other Mother, veteran marm
with cottage in Ossining.

DEMOS 2.0

Our Greece is puny anal
a bun in the oven
baby-daddy Democracy
parliaments of Enfamil
tithes to tide over
the ephors and scribes
broken antenna that dribbles
milliliters of veritas
into the monopoly flagon
greasy spoons in Queens
legislating forks be forks
whatever happened to ostracism
as a means of purging malvolios?
instead of babysitting embezzlers
feral generals and industrialists
they should have to crack rocks
with a blunt butter pic
we have incorporated several
theaters of spite towards
boat, plane, and raft people
to little avail or renown
is dragons of infidelity
dragoons jettisoned to where
we currently want brunt
generals with aggressive portfolios
in subsidiaries that cast blamrays
is the distracted peasants
of Dromedaryville for they will
withstand most anything, except
being able to floss and pop lip gloss
is Brooks Brothers thobes
denim saris and supersecret
rayon abayas, everybody else
moving in just uniform apparel
is defunct stirrups of Captain
Cowboys, quarterbacks
linesmen, safeties, Chairmen
on the House Committee
for International Heisman Ideology.

SEVENEXPRESSISHMAEL

On Wednesdays and Thursdays I take the 7 all the way to Flushing from Times Square. The trip takes a good 40 minutes, but it provides me with ample time to devote to my studies and staples of fiction like Moby Dick. This poem is a result of that compulsion.


Call me the pilot of my commute in the belly of the seven
Call me something indicative of my milleau, but that also harkens
Call me the customs agent of the feminine ingression
Call me harpooner that sleeps with his implement
Call me mutiny on the high seas of the Queens elevated
Call me pressure dyspepsia as the express barrels
Call me the plaudits of the wake of silent seas
Call me jocular recluse: a farm christened, Arrowhead
Call me unclassified tendril on terra firma, an abomination!
Call me superstitious seaman in the same way that astronauts are superstitious
Call me Knickerbocker Clancy, South Pacific de la Carre, proto-Kipling
Call me pulpo, ink of the octopus, Squid Bic, a stylus named, Lance
Call me epic tome, didactic almanac, critical rubble
Call me alcove throne, carrying a sundry solace like a dromedary
Call me passed over for promotion all my lubber life
Call me paperback flagon of symmetric, synthetic poetry cabernet
Call me Captain Apeshit with prosthetic pinepeg
Call me the whirled woods of Woodside, Corona Park, or Kissena
Call me pip of mongrel caste, Admiral Deep Pockets
Call me windlass of my lector time in the ratchet of Jonah’s gaze
Call me capstan of the stand clear of the closing doors intercom command
Call me something you can make more fancy by adding an e
Call me the great, white whale of Shea Stadium
Call me todos los mamones que van al U.S. Open in boat shoes
Call me pelvis of the world, Ambassador to Foam, Prince of Cetyology
Call me late for classes at library school on the frigate, U.S.S. Marm
Call me “dismemberer of my dismemberer” with the tact for tit for tat

D.C. Joules

In my muttsack, a slender volume on graft, glossary replete;
A monograph guns, petermen, and tools could have penned in the stir.

By chance, I looked in the foot stool on the porch. Inside the foot
Stool, a trove of Bromide tablets for the outdoor hot tub.

The dartboard console, toothless, from the shock of light splayed
By the miniscule lamp, a joke of a lamp if you ask me.

Hyperbole aside, marshes of detritus and window depots; a grid of winds
From nipple to chin and ear to ear, and all that marble on the Mall.

Jiggawatts and Torrs, seeping lovely; my flag unfurled, misfurled
In a fracass with Pinkerton over setting off the sculpture sensors.

For lunch, Polish sausages you can scabbard, a giant egg roll in foil
And the foliage banter of the standing silent nation, Arbitron-rated.

Think about the cheddar you can heave hustling headbands with the
Logo of the Bureau of Labor Statistics or Department of Labor.

And then Mailer appeared on the S.S. Raggea Dive, and started grinding
The Broadcast broads, and was told to put his shirt back on.


--For Jimena Wright Foley