Look away, look away, look away Dixieland.

-Elvis Presley
(i) Ode to Saphenus Ligation
Everyone in An Anthology of New York Poets

(Circa 1970) is ugly 70s vinyl ugly.

Ted Berrigan. Dick Gallup. Tom Veitch.

Bill Berksen spruces up the best, but even

his roguish good looks are unheard of in Oz;

land of paper tigers & the Emerald City scene

(Anna & Frank already four years dead).

A proskynesis of cool urban poetry

& O'Hara the Persian Alexander,

embraced this new Imperial role.

But after his death under Speedbuggy's

axiom of popular culture or some other

Amerikan big block cult irony,

this most influential of empires split & Oz

went to find our own vernacular wizard.

The Literary Enforcement Agency

(LEA) Frank propped up, collapsed

under the weight of his mythopoeic feet

& besides in the entire anthology,

theres only one female Big Apple poet.

At least Bernadette Mayer's work

stands up to the test of time;

the Munchkin's critical response.

 

 

(ii) ANZUS
& Oz, Amerika's odd little sibling

(so Malcolm in the Middle paranoid)

whinges whenever we lose to our big

brother & flips the level playing field over.

It takes about thirty years for ideas,

art, phobias, treaties & other signs

of degeneration to filter through

to Emerald Citys small 'k' kulcha;

& if it's from Europe even longer.

What we've done in Oz is sift through

the Western World's best urban legends

& appropriated all the razorblade in gum

slippery-dip superstitions.
Demonised everything that doesn't

wear a stars 'n stripes flak jacket

& watered down Reality TV's unreality.

The only Frank the populace of Oz

remembers is the Blue Velvet version

Lynch's amyl nitrate sniffing psycho;

a small town metamorphosis of perversion

buried too under Emerald City's brick veneer.

Oz had a good dose of 1950s/God Save

the Queen (she's not a human being!)

/ball-breaking bakelite social mores

but you, O brother sent us The Duke

himself whistlestopping across the East

Coast of Oz in 42, riding to our rescue,

opening literary saloon doors with his

emasculating toy six-shooters, a pale

rider imitation of the 88s that tore

Stalingrad a new winter arsehole.
& we're all on a hospital list now

waiting for our veins to be stripped

the saphenus ligation of Oz literature,

even though there's not quite as much

pill-popping in Emerald City these days

& even fewer Puerto Rican girls.

& why O my brother, do kids in Oz

still read To Kill A Mockingbird

in high school; stifle a yawn.

Your Boo Radley lung clot

cultural tradition; a death

sure as express-post anthrax.

Give us a break, Amerika,

& remember, don't open

those suspicious emails

in your Godhead.
 

 

(iii) Apokalypse Now
Amerika, it's not just

'Death from Above' anymore

but death from underneath too,

(Una Bomber, Tim McVeigh etc.)

painted there just below

Kilgore's Iroquois windshield;

the crossed swords air-cavalry

symbol looking more like an X

as in ecstasy the love drug.
Make Love Not War someone

whimpered from 50 metres

beneath the Nevada desert.

Amerika, haven't you got it yet

or are you still ruled imperiously

by that other reactionary credo;

Duck & Cover?

That worked a treat.
So many Death Stars to construct

& so little time. The only Emperor

is the Emperor of Ice-cream, right?

Einstein jotted Roosevelt a quick memo,

but he died before he could read it.

Amerika, they still call you Trinity, don't they?

Besides the Emperor would've been freaked

out with just a demonstration & surrendered

anyway, but as Capt. Willard says,

I needed a mission & for my sins

they gave me one.
 

 

(iv) Poet in New York
Lorca went to Amerika

& it polluted his soul.

(Oh, sorry mate comes the apology

from a fellow Oztralian as he

crushes some poetical feet).

Lorca should have come to Oz, instead.

Then 'Poet in New York' wouldn't

have been so scary because it would

have been called Poet in Emerald City.

Nothing too heavy, just poems about

the sun, surf, golden beaches & bikini clad

meter maids saving motorists from the real

axis of evil council parking inspectors.

At least Lorca didn't grow a beard

or appear in any poetry anthologies

where they fuck elm trees.

 

 

(v) Why We're Mad at You, Amerika
& besides, we're only mad at you

Amerika because one of your famous

New York school of poets told our local hero,

John Forbes to Fuck off in the 80s.

Dunno, it might've been Dick or Ted

or Bill or Bernadette, but it was

definitely some intertextual power

play of Frank's from beyond

the remaindered bin.