I. a rebuke to ripostness

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again
what a real dream you provoke
with your dynastic marriages and surface quotients
terrorisms etc.
it is all the repertoire you have
a sterile mimicry abandoned to oblivion
already

embarrassment of housewives Hey Jude upon
the air from numberless loudspeakers
as if the Queen had entered pell-mell
into her Parliament of animatronic fowls
with a command to desist from all sporting
once and for all and then the thing itself
appeareth wondrously like a jackass rabbit
in the tip of a hat and a brave curtsey
and all the fireworks of Hollywood Bowl
with a clenched fist and a curl with a wink
not furtively but as it were lightly floating here
but along the side aisles where the produce is
hangs a tale of lettuce and diabolical states
of preservation that hide the news team or
the cosmopolitan blend of New York salts Boston teas
and Cal mimosa the estate would wish for

in this self-same identification there is much
much that is worthy of a trophy and much
that I would dare to trepidate toweringly upon
the rack if I were so upon asseveratingly asking
people the wrong questions or perhaps the right ones even

we have seen already too much
if we are said to have seen
all this before and in-between
found ourselves to be in Dutch

with all the powers that must be
arrayed against us in a pinch
delightsome tailored to an inch
behind and in the front set free