CANTO 47 Ah what word-shape

 

Ah what word-shape to drive on:

Yeatsy smells of Ezra’s vortex, with hops and malt of Olson

chug-a-lugging one perception flowing instantly into another,

Ted Berrigan over my shoulder, "Trust your mind, trust your mind!"

Who would not travel on THIS interstate?

But let’s listen to Andro:

I lean easy on the muscular curves of concentration

and wind out hard on the polished scriptural straights.

I’m a sight-seer marvelling at the country I’m in.

Up ahead samsonite gorillas crack overpass pillars,

dumping crateloads of chickens whose Catholic cackles

echo down canyons of protestant Cadillacs.

"Did you see that...?" the atheist trucker 10/4’s

as the CB’s crackle over the jostling Episcopalian Speed Queens

and the lurching evangelist do-it-yourself furniture.

Now I duck unravelling Yiddish retreads,

hits a steep agnostic off-ramp full-throttle

and soar over a row of 24 Buddhist used-car lots,

singing all the while

Yeah I’m the Evil Knevil of meditation

I’m the she-devil of the west

I’m the enemy of imitation

yeah my way is not the worst!

But there is a villain—Razzle.

Master of the real, a hard-head,

the monistic

western empiricist

militarist supreme,

clutching in his stylus-studded fist

a hot Pentagon shopping list.

Andro racing amok on the Plains of Free Association

doesn’t know that one of Sir Razzle’s smart MIRV’s

has homed in on Andro’s hot exhaust of words

polluting the Mahayana-ha (did I say she was perfect?),

her plume of distractions, her oxides of bent badinage,

flakes of particulate fluttering down everywhere,

even as far as the rosy valleys of the Pure Land.

SIR RAZZLE clucks a jowel-full of joy as the scammer

of his cruiser registers Andro amok on the inner-state,

a long way from Awakening and a few miles west of Reverie.

Jamming his foot down hard on the particle accelerator

Razzle peels out into the passing lane, saying

"Gotcha now goddam hippie bastud,"

smirking to his loyal sidekick Fone

who glares up from the girlie mag

to punch on-board systems analysis steady-ready-state-of-the-union

digital deflector omnibus ARM functions antennae all erect!

Squat over the wheel thin-lipped big-eared cheek-bulging glossy-helmeted

RAZZLE hits Mach 4.9 closing fast on Andro

whose somewhat oddly assorted

thoughts we pick off the scammer

and present unexpurgated:

Dim hangs the harpy and haggard

from her forlorn and fitful scabbard,

thick weaves the mist of old samsara

when self ripped the hem of the sutra...

Razzle yells "Listen to that goddam liberal bullshit!":

Instantly six lazer-guided-mussles mush

from the speeding unit, leaving six gleaming trails of mucous

that settle as slime on the inner-state, throwing traffic

into scads of skids and fits of fender-benders, literally streaking

to the bemused Andro, whose song is cut off in mid-flow

from the impact of the solid-state molluscs

as the e-prom and fully-booted shells of the utterly accurate bi-valves

arrest the errant Mahayana-ha.

With unerring calibration the Free Association Retrieval, Tactical,

opens its titanium maw to scoop up the terrified Andro,

while back at Missing Control Razzle does a fandango,

gleefully clapping his potentiometers

as he executes Phase Two,

wherein Andro finds herself languishing in the dudgeon

of Sir Richard Adamant, hard scientist.