Phlegm Flambé Abercrombees & Bitch (A Birthday Poem for Halifax) with Réponse Retortés
Phlegm Flambé Abercrombees & Bitch
(A Birthday Poem for Halifax)
by Quasimofo
When the going gets tough,
you’re the only guy i know
who duck tapes his underwear
to his butt.
..But let’s take this cup
of mea culpa culpability
and bust into the Tea Party
Headquarters like Billy Jack
kickin’ the crap outta mistspellirs!
There’s no ‘iffy’ in prolific
and no such thing as an
‘erotic mesozoic’.
Why met tough love
when gentle hate skirts karma
like vomiting pre-k-ers on a
1930’s roller coaster made
of spam cans?
You, sir, read your Lorca from an Orca
while tossing lawn jarts and croquet tiddly
winks at Moby Dick as if he were the wet
mammalian festation of nature’s will.
(or maybe it’s all just Or-whale-ian).
Let’s fly to Vichy France and train
rats for the upcoming Cirque du
Soleil tour where the theme is
yet another artful rendering
of society’s ugliness turned prissy.
It’s all snazzier than
Neil Armstrong doing snow angels
in moon craters and Lance Armstrong
plaster-of-Parising his bony ass
with cortisone into the Arc de Triomphe.
Dermot Mulroney and Dylan McDermott
know that the self-destruct button
doubles as the ‘add to cart’ icon.
Bro, we are stoned on Thelonious Monk,
Cloud Atlas Sextet, and a million and one
poems a day.
Chapbook snuggling cats
tramp over ramp and heavy metal amp
and guardshack m.p.’s at the
p-station.
..Sometimes it’s as if we are up a tree
without a paddle…
——————————————————————
Réponse Retortés
by Halifax
Little Hiawatha came pimp stepping with
Anne Hathaway back peddling each
other on the way down Spoon River
there were storied war bucks
to make near a Starbucks
panhandling near Amarillo
canoodling on an inner tube
coolers of inner peace
and half a two-piece each in tow
Anne leans into Little Hiawatha to whisper
paddle faster, turn the ham radio up louder
I think I hear them finally playing my request.
Doesn’t do much for me. All I can make of it are random mind associations. The first stanza is the most cohesive and funniest. I wish they all were so gripping. The one about Cirque du Soleil is amusing criticism, but I don’t think “prissy” is the right word. The “Response” communicates a sense of addict street life through puns, neologisms, and word associations, but doesn’t have much point. How does “Dueling Banjos,” via the end request, relate the flooded river from Deliverance to Spoon River in either the heroin or Edgar Lee Masters sense? More connection, please. Maybe someone can help me out here. The photo could say it all.
I’m just writing for fun these days. I got tired of making rational cohesive sense a long time ago. lol. But yes, ‘random’ is what i’m going for here cause that’s just a reflection of how my mind works and how i see the world to a great extent. Thanks for taking time out for a comment. It’s good to see some new blood here at H & H and someone who will submit work but ‘give back’ to the site by adding respectful creative criticism. Cheers!
I think you got all there was left over once I opened my present. Feel free to reuse the rapping and the fancy bow. I got what I needed out of it.
Cake?
A big piece or little?
Cheers to you, Randomness, for giving back to your critic. Rational cohesive sense can get tiresome. You helped me out by making this connection.