chapter 3
poem
HUFFINGTON
09.23.12
III
Picks up the black: Name and patronymic. You think all this
security is just a game? Interrogation’s terminal.
Means you integrate, and don’t fill out that line on race.
Do fill out the item re your mother’s maiden name. Tartar, no?
When I first went to Paris with the orderly for mess
we asked for steak tartare. Didn’t know the local customs, raw egg
on raw meat. Nearly barfed, but stayed cool, & ate it up.
Did you clean your plate at camp? No you can’t phone Mother now.
You’ll answer only to the bad cop at mass. I hope for
your sake, Soldier, all of this can be resolved as expeditiously
as possible.
Hello up there & looking disingenuous
and fat. Here’s a joke. Guy goes to a shrink. After a while
the shrink says, Man you’re absolutely nuts. Man says Please sir
I’d like a second opinion. Shrink says OK, Man, you’re
bloody ugly too. Man says, Mein Herr, but I’m the Revolution
of the Word. Shrink says: Well then speak
He doesn’t though,
he can’t. He’s gagged by then. And look at how
his hands are tied behind him. If he could speak he’d
improvise a panegyric on his old Prof. Then they’d let him off.
For example, Camper Klubnik might begin, speaking as a
prisoner in the nether fields of play: By God they had me walk
upon the water, bored. That made all of them electric.
The men in protective cover took Aplysia by the tail & shocked
him good, found that serotonin is a modulator and that
neurons form connections where a new protein is required
for growth. Our team, my Champion, seeks out
long-term memory: Your own. Our mistake in Paris was in
not ordering the snails in white wine sauce.
(If you’ll just attach those wires to his name and patronymic
we can all go home)
Camp A is not ballet in Voronezh,
although it’s true they have a company. The dance we’ll do