Allegory

Etch a Sketch an electronic ocean

Weaving and pleading participation from the masses

In Damascus they weep for her

A small bird dying early from

Winter snow deeper than before but

Yo-yo mind springs back from the past

To the face of Eris

Chaos swimming past a fish

Bigger than the last

But slower than a herd of turtles

Marching feet patter a smatter of green

On the window sill sings

Hey bug be gone in a quick

Fix the window’s still there

Left behind intentionally the poetry

Was better in the golden years

Walking with you in the

Inner tube forest of Chinese food dates

And greasy Italian fast food blues

Winter gray but your face was lemon water

In the snow and we climbed the tree and picked

Mistle-toe together while watching

Invader Zim in my basement

Quick again and spit the type

Pick a lick of words to staple

The eyelids down so they can’t escape

From the paper, keeping attentive

The captive audience leans in

Happy comprehension as they are

Included in the poem’s right brain

Flicker

Ripper

Picking Shakespeare's eyes out was

The last good thing Waldo did before he

Disappeared forever into the striped

Saharan afternoon, because without the

5th sonnet we could build the tower of Babel

again just to watch it fall over

my jenga game was pretty good

but at monopoly...

a panoply of marching Damocles with

pointy crowns reminding them of

Ceaser who, after a salad should

Have probably avoided the senate in March

Left alone in a room a thousand monkeys

Write Grey’s Anatomy in five minutes

Before an encore, the entire Disney channel

Prints off with simian smudge marks

On the chalk white paper that the Norman’s thought

Looked like heaven when they sailed past on ships

Built of Irishmen’s skins and Englishmen’s bones

Tech is racing Tycho to the moon and back

Before the lies that Mark Twain saw

Could get around the world

Glittering like some gold doesn’t we watched

As the sun sets on another day in space

A Danse Macabre, a vaudevillian play

Life played out in a single day

Look it twitches and squirms under our finger

Do we press down and end it?

The button sits there smiling,

Like the Cheshire cat but G.K. never

Dreamed his cat would go nuclear and

Eat Tokyo before Godzilla would get a single bite

a bomb. A-bomb

a hokey Loki let loose

the gatecrasher atom smasher

Einstein's bastard lasted

28 seconds of free fall

from the Enola Gay saved

the day a swan song

before long a tattoo

a zoo of noise a

conflagration nation

rolling and stretching new wings of fire

a sucker a Phoenix born every minute

Knighted and copyrighted on the same assembly line

the news furled and unfurled a yellow

toothy smile promoting the idea

when said is not stopped but

named becomes real, a palpable pion

a civilized foray into the forgotten rhymes with

Met on its forehead and kosher kids in its trunk

our golem our monster that sways like a kite

buffeted between sixty minutes and the daily show

named and alive, breathing rumor and hyperbole

living stone I presume a rock given life

an automated housewife for the masses

rosy to the Jet set and Hal to a few good men

or perhaps a smiling eye at the end of the movie

a knowing nod to the newest armband the

bumper sticker preachers and armband guerrillas all

claiming allegiance by the barbershop soapbox that they

all love to stomp flat as a cartoon coyote and then

we go fishing off the cape, nod to the good people

of Roanoke as they stroll by a ghost town of certain renown

and uncertain passage but here she is

in the snow

a little girl

smiling

and

in her hand

a blank

etch a sketch