IT’S COOL, THO

I can’t hear Chet Baker in Tokyo

    (whose deathward drift

    by ‘Funny Valentine’

    is well underway)

    over Francesca’s

helium-voiced europop

whose rabid cheer 

opens a wound in my braine

from which billows out

a literary night

to cover the earth

contaminate the whole horizon

or else coagulate a gulf

wheels of confusion

are all in motion

no airbrake’s got a purchase

on that

a contagion of letters

in an access of decay

a scun

of sunshine

chucked in the window

tied to a rock

a swivet

a stab

of retrograde caution

against a mob of communicants

you should know by now, professor:

you can’t fight Francesca’s europop 

        with Chet

that

is an errand 

for Sabbath.