In spite of the ongoing controversy over dikes and so on, today I am beginning the blog-posting of my oldest poems, and I shall open with the virtual-last-page piece "Alternative Prosaicnesses" from my first virtual book of poems eponymously titled Alternative Prosaicnesses, a collection first self-published in 2009. That collection was previously available as an online book, which I made available for free; I am therefore making it available for free reading again, returning the collection online, one refurbished poem at a time. Here is that virtual book's virtual-last-page poem, which was added to the collection as a title piece in 2013:
Alternative Prosaicnesses
I’ll lay it all down like a Proustian fountain sprout
from an involuntary spring of spontaneity, however
the lines shape themselves like from Mondrianesque
atria.
Each leap
will welcome wanton jeers from purists and precisians,
them there partying with their bias, like stockbrokers
and fiscal polygyny, oh bulbous am I with my helium.
Every story that pours out of the woodwork is sweat
of some purple prose, fruitage to rococo buffs and
baroque bulls, jazz to the fanciful, puzzle to pedants,
putrid nonsense to your legalese or journalese or . . .
Have you heard from Helen? Has she phoned us
yet from Troy? So do I digress, as is my wont, . . .
Worm, that’s me. Call me Proem or Pee. But do not
make the mistake of thinking me dull or dodo-esque,
being Mondrianesque in my prolificacy or industry.
In the end I’m only like you, who tend to go round and
round in a calculus of thought that may never come full
circle to a halt like you’d hope for. But that’s the idea.
I’m essaying points not to extend your agony, sorry,
but to apprise you, prosaically but briefly, of the reality
of the situation, these abject objects’ objecting to our
contemplating in words gods. That Helen? I’ll take it.
— February 2013
