Short on shimmy

they took to the disco

with a resounding
whomp of white

& solid silver

waves of wire;
a platform

to berate from,

a wag the dog diorama;
wearing only your shadow

& shouting

to the stomping throng
a backroom

storm shelter, a platform

euphoria, plagued your
halfway to decent

anti-progressive, rational

yet strident monologue
pitched at doomsayers

of the glitterati, low-lobbers

& pinch-hitters
who’d forgotten

how their IDs were burned

back in the days before credit
slalomed through car

dealerships & foaming

restaurants
leaving only ‘the market’

to determine aesthetics

& solicit
dinner dates

where an oasis

was a hedge fund
leaking liquid security

where trade isn’t free

& big bubbles can fry
a factory superstar:

crystal ball shimmering

in the trash, Chelsea Girls
worn & scratchy prints

ditched as war begins –

black monday, 1987
flickers left of field

& radiators are left

glowing through summer
as they loose a lemma

on the the green valley

of silliness
or call the bananas

out of the republic: the proposal

we just had to have
& grew to love

as much as anything

that might save us from ourselves
or shakedown trance

at one hundred & fifty beats

per minute –
fast enough

to blast extreme sports

off the mountains
& rattle

sheer glass walls

of a tycoon’s penthouse
yet not powerful enough

to change the way

we live
in Cold War bunkers

abandoned only because

they’ll hold out none of the blast
while they wait for recuperation

as delirious museums,

squatting
where tektites

rain down through

glorious night’s sunshine
& marsupials skitter

& forage

like strewnfield wastrels
counting on fine bones

dazzling paleontologists

& amusement park operators
whose scandium-lit roundabouts

take science

for a ride
which is tantamount

to messing under

the hood
when you don’t know anything

about it, not engineering,

not nuthin
to shimmy by

when the moon is lustrous,

a beacon through space junk
sensitizing bruise & swoon

where we flounder

in waves of static
swooning & schmoozing,

collating best hits lists,

stuck on K-Tel’s Ripper ’76
that nobody remembers,

it’s the latest constraint –

the no-nostalgia radio list
we fret over, squabbling

over the slice, the ear-horns

and his master’s voice
booming from the box

locking & popping & flipping –

impossible to mix
the schmooze, the swoon,

those ear-horns & hits,

platform shoe extravaganzas –
I’ve got all my life to live,

I’ve got all my love to give

& I’ll survive, I will survive, I will survive