hankering for a radio gestalt signifier in a world full of rhetorical questions
  
when some one dies
then each one dies a little
with no recovery
of unique deictic
tendencies or trials

not to mention
arrows sparrows
sorrows tomorrows

         and

never never never never never
a blender be
to the last consonant

           sigh

of relief or camel rings
wafting songs of slow choking death
over an ironic times square hub
of a crossroads in a fluid

current of commerce

and congestion
unrelieved by levity
while behind the curtain
and you don't know if it's Hamlet
or The Wizard of Oz

         that's playing

because the screen is blackened
and the sound track is obscured by

         white noise

an echo of gratitude
for what else is there
to overcome the silence of spring

  pouring across the meadow
  picking up lots of forget-me-nots

too young to be reborn aloft
where sky meets the black suck of deep space

        or

even in low orbit broadcasting satellite beeps
and broadcasting satellite bops
humming Dick and Davey
at regular intervals

like heart swells vary waves

          very vary waves

whose crests and troughs never hinder demolition
of constants

so formulae founder on rocks
of self described triumph after birth
slowly descends
until even the abyss
fails to talk back
because it considers your discourse
an echo of things to come

dredged up up and away from sludge
moldering in sloughs
thought to be the birthplace of life
by incestuous patriarchs

if and only if meteorites
imbedded just below surface appearances
claim not to be guilty of infesting the planet
with plants and animals doomed to eat one another
casting blame on orgasms

but who the fuck cares
if it's worth it or improbable
because someone or something bets
you didn't see that coming did you

well did you

     did you
 
don't answer that

_________________________________________________________________________

John Marvin is a teacher who retired and subsequently earned a Ph.D. in English at SUNY Buffalo. He has poems in scores of journals, including 6 Pushcart nominations, and literary criticism in Hypermedia Joyce Studies, James Joyce Quarterly, Pennsylvania English, and Worcester Review. He has a chapter in Hypermedia Joyce, and his book, Nietzsche and Transmodernism: Art and Science Beyond the Modern in Joyce, Stevens, Pynchon, and Kubrick, awaits a publisher. He seeks to marry the experimental, non-narrative with the lyric and traditional in the manner of Nietzsche’s marriage of Apollo and Dionysos. He generally avoids accessibility for its own sake, and the prosaic personal story with superimposed line breaks that is ubiquitous these days.