CANTO 74 Watching the one watching

 

Watching the one watching the fabric wavering

with the enigmas of today’s breeze—

behold Homer Simpson,

{note: Homer Simpson first appeared in 1933 in Nathanael West’s

The Day of the Locust. "He came from a little town near Des Moines, Iowa,

called Wayneville, where he had worked for twenty years in a hotel."}

or is it this fellow Onslow

who won’t keep up appearances, or is it

Everybeercanman surfing the tent-wall channels

busy hardselling self?

Here is a man of the cloth (frayed phrase

Andro would not approve of) who might as well be the stone

this fellow Flintstone keeps knocking his head against

dooba dooba doo now sparks fly

smoke and mirrors and a barrel-chested voice booms:

{Rock band, singers, smoke, mirrors!}

HEY YOU spend prime time watchin’ reruns on the wall of the cave

chuggin’ cans and singin’ I love Lucy (in the sky).

Well you got to crawl on up to what we all crave,

where the sun shines, the bacon’s crisp and the oranges juicy.

CHORUS:

OUT OF THE TRAP OF EITHER/OR

OFF THE HEAP OF UNHOLY DUNG

WE’RE ON ALPHA-WAVE PROPULSION

LAPPIN’ LATCHKEYS WITH OUR TONGUE.

Oh but once outside you get hung up and stretched out on Form,

out of the frying pan and into Platonic fire,

with your soul split off run your body head-first into the shit-storm

of unending desire (samsara choir)

CHORUS:

OUT OF THE TRAP OF EITHER/OR etc.

Or if you’re too hip for that you fall into the positivist trap

shootin’ it out at Josephson’s junction with your clone,

or you go sleddin’ through a blizzard with a physicist’s map

til your quarks drop in their tracks where it says "territory unknown."

CHORUS:

OUT OF THE TRAP OF EITHER/OR etc.

In the middle of all this dirt and confusion I can’t tell you where to go

you got to find that out for yourself (orison for Morrison)

but you know you can open your mind let in the light

listen to astronomers Hawking their goods

IRREGULAR VERSE:

seek out the good THE LIGHT IS THE GOOD

THE LIGHT IS THE LATCHKEY KNOCK ON THAT WOOD

YOUR MIND IS THE DO-ER DON’T DO THE DOORS DERRING-DO

CHORUS:

OUT OF THE TRAP OF EITHER/OR etc.