Cornfessional

[from part II]

Toddlers are taking over . . .

. . . Snoods converge
on a weary-daring man.
— John Berryman

You think I haven’t suffered? You think I can sing?
O holy all-day sucker: Thou
Knowest how mooest the yonder brown cow,
Knowest in soul-squoze song the diddled word’s the thing,
Knowest my wax-melt pard — one can’t elope to the stars:
The sincere sinecured sham-man’s sting.

I have hummed right along with electric blue guitars
And, dutiful, counted Freud’s daily cigars,
Dreamed the sin-secured neoReichian dream
— an got her all down, boss (cackle): and writ
in yer basic Koo Klucker (grackle) Klandesteem
n yer tiresome basic Sanskrit.

And when you hear the cry, “Pass by, Geronimo!”
Geronimo, you’d best pass by.
O but pass the Bourbon, Mr. Kleen
And pass, O pass! The thorazine.

--Mark Worden

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