OK, that's it for the Old West.
Earlier today, I visited a class.
And they asked me what my favorite word was.
And I told them-- the first word I came up
with-- well, a phrase was, "buck none,"
so I thought I had to read it.
Buck none means bachelor cowboy, or I
said in class, a cowboy who can't get laid.
So I'm going to move on to Shangdu my artful boom
town, which is an invented city sort of based
on industrial cities in China.
"Aubade" I long for harmine morning.
To lift me from my hisshurled life.
But my hellwhelmed county of hard-scruffed crops
is marooned.
My plow, a beached whale's brow bone on morose miles of mooor.
Heft, heft, I cried my ox.
But no hint of green wort, just midges to torment my ox.
You in tone forgo lament, willingly forfeit the ai-ai
so I slaughter my ox.
So hi, hi.
I am ready in my plaidwhelmed puff-puff golf hat,
ready to be whelmed by a pet store cacophony of crickets
shirruping in their cage balls, juddering
slam of hammering jack, humming susurrations of catamarans,
aerosol striations of welder's firecracks,
then a caracas of fist cracks
after workers slurp off their goggled specs
to a bassooning foghorn, hooning,
so spooning lovers know when to return to their dawn shift,
tuning symbols for toy baboons who clap,
clap Hail the industrial age.
Hail."