"Eisenhower was a rube, I know, I loved to watch his pinned medals glitter against the sun, out-shining heaven in our low human eyes; even a deaf man hears the exploding power of a gun 5 that's pointing at him. So I heard that hissing voice escape from a head bald as a tire. Unshaved in my happy rush to greet him at ugly dawn's each initiation, I kneeled and scraped the dog-lickings from my master's unwashed plate, 10 revelled in the white-house grease, and after that displayed to my warm house-mate the tired, flat unscolded coating of my obsequious tongue unleavened by any pentecostal haste, or arching stab of truth's spirit, that catches fire on the worst dross 15 to drag a grand thing back to its humble embers topped by a smoky spire. I would brood my ruins. But I knew how to keep my acid grumblings down. One knew what one was and what one wanted to be. But how did one know what wanting was worth? 20 Have I closed up too much of what I ought to have left seething open? Was I too-much a mouse waiting for the lion's roaring chance as I peered out from my walled hole? The drain-hole that saves a whelming lung could suck my zest; 25 I crest the world's wash, and watch the lancing TV-eye mount my blubbered burn, an Ahab on his wild whale, ready to needle me open again and sip my ambitious innards into its downward din. Around me grin and whiten the papers' lettered teeth. 30 O Horatian mouth, drooling sibilants, o ocean hunger raising the rage of insistent seas that grind all my lifted fakes of paint to one grey truth, please forget me, a shrimp among your inks, a tired tale to regale dry old maids with, not a storming nation. 35 After my quiet time I shall cut flesh to tailor my new suit with, all golds, to implore the masses' adoration. Eh, Checkers? so, absorbent nation, swear in your Kennedys and Johnsons; i swear, before the world has spun its globe to mush 40 under a forgetful sun, I'll come back to win, surprising the reeling competition with a smile as thin as a knife-edge, and grind these snowy pediments under my heel to dust. But for now, turn in your watered sleep, bury me 45 far back behind the advice column, or cramped ads for toothpaste. Sleep, o recumbent nation, while dreams are cheap. When teased into the arena by Fate's fickle feather once again and treated traitorously by our desires 50 until we long for the approach of the lions, lying in the dusty sun, we listen to our overdue bruises mumble invective against us."
From the collection "XXX Sonnets"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.