I'll read two more poems from the book, the second of which I
actually wrote while I was last in Tucson, so I thought
it would be appropriate for me to read it
I. Was just telling Tyler I wrote half of it--
an unlikely combination of cities-- half of it in Montreal
and the other half in Tucson when I was last year
back in 2018.
But the poem I'll read before that
is called "Diet Mountain Dew."
It's a beverage that's near and dear to me,
or it was near and dear to me at the time when I wrote this,
knowing that it's not the best thing to drink,
I've tried to curb it a bit and I've
had some success in that respect but there
was a time when I did fully embrace it
as a necessary toxicity in my life.
"Diet Mountain Dew."
I have built my ship of death and when a wind kicks up
I'll cut it loose to do its thing across an unnamed lake
of you, a firefly sent pulsing through the nonstop estivation
of the verses of our South, who in its larval phase
would feast on bitter worms and snails, who emerges
from its mud chamber, our planet's most
efficient luminescence, who turns chemical
energy into radiant energy shedding very little heat,
so will I sail the compass of you pleased with my cold light.
I have built my ship of death aglow in sturdy chemicals
and powered up at night like American Express.
I'm all customer service only minus the customer, no service
to speak of other than death.
You will know my logo by its absence and slogan
from the past ad for the sugared style of you on TV in my youth.
It goes like this: when my thirst is at its worst...
and then I let it trail off into the unsayable, or is
it just unsaid because my mouth is full of you again.
A green like no other green in the dale,
indelicate green or green indecent, surpassing the fern
and sprout in April's optimistic leaflet
some stop to admire in nature.
They take photographs non cognizant of other vehicles.
You are too green for pasture, you
are my green oncoming vehicle, usurper
of green, assassin to the grasshopper and its plan.
I put me in your path which is the path a planet takes when
it means to destroy another.
I think you know I'm OK with that.
A green like no other green resplendid in production
since 1940, when brothers Barney and Ally Hartman cooked it up
in Tennessee qua private mixer named
after moonshine, its formula then
revised by Bill Bridgforth of the Tri-City Beverage Corp.
in 1958, year Linwood Burton, chemically inclined
entrepreneur and ship cleaning service owner,
sold his formula for a relatively safe maritime
solvent to Procter & Gamble of Ohio,
who went on to market it under the name of Mr. Clean
(this is by) whose green approaches yours,
then at the last second swerves into a joke.
Yellow plays on green to make blue jealous till it blows up
in its face but can't not love the smell of it,
citrus re-imagined by an extraterrestrial lizard which
is to say inhuman in the way you say inhuman to me,
a compliment unraveled in the drawl,
hey you, over there: you look so unaccustomed to temporality
I would have sworn you were inhuman, and time for it after
time I fall, further evidence of my humanity--
I am at heart no less susceptible to rot
than the felt hat on the head of the rifle toting
barefoot hillbilly, your mascot until he disappeared in 1969.
Instinct says he must have shot his self
in the woods in the mouth one sunrise when a frost was
at hand and the apples fell thick,
and he was way too awake when he did so,
not to think there would be another waiting
like a can of you and the 12-pack in my refrigerator.
I have built my ship of death and enough
already, every toxic sip of you preparing for the journey
to bloviation, I have to return--
and I have leave to return and return to depart again
the stronger for a satisfaction being bound to no port
has afforded me.
I have built my ship of death so that even when
I crawl back down into the hold of it, alive
as what unnaturalness and you can keep me,
it's only to emerge from the other end of it
intact and perfectly prepared to be your grasshopper.