Back Nine Backstory
(a toast to the end of 2020)
Imagine how divining rods thwacked—
trigger: ouch!
Executive weddings tear up the midways
& cannot bear to cease to remind you
even golfclubs beg the Firmament
being evident almost anywhere
Even on perimeters
deep within blast zones
indeed even stuck onto surface adhesive
on hearts which appeared
unfit to gather up
handfuls of specimen
of the bulbous-intestine’d
polyp-engendering
honey-wagons of the Fairway Misanthrope
mud-humping nightly through meatfields of migraine
on the PutterSafe® indoor carpet
Yet belief being requisite
as caddies chorally flatulate—
“Alas” intoned the landscape architects
“recall the Holy Bleeding
Head of Arnold Daniel Palmer
not of the blackballed @lastSeasonsCircuit
#myTwoTasseledLoafers
#myNewishGreenJacket
#myMoneyballDollarStress
@dimpledUpBoomerang’dGolfballsGoFigure”
Counting bits later on
they need escorts to the feedlot
For though their funding tubes be dry,
& greens fees inconsolably high,
& driving pro’s noteworthy hairdo extension
of precipitously sprouted crabgrass nigh,
what emerges solely head-first first
from the brine of the beauty tank
& into the clubroom, subsumes those bereft
in a locker room towel-spank: birdie,
bogey, pitch & putt: trigger—go
<blink>SAND TRAP</blink>.
Boom-Boom in the Über Room
Any potential martyrs in the room
considering an upgrade to reportage?
Airport TSA
scanner personnel say
“…
exit thy Shoes
exit thy Belt
& thy Boot
& thy Boots
& beget thy hinky laptop-ish Overage
hinkily into thy Bin
…”
Soon enough, a corrugated bed of conifer bough
may catch the falling arms & leggings
of passengers blown out the fuselage,
some of which scenery may be photographed
by you, dear colleagues, should you happen
to kite-surf in spatial vicinity, by chance
to rubberneck to fireball billow, miles
above your heads (note: “Orange Blossom
Special” in spokesperson-speak)
Then a rainstorm of sneakers
bracelets
& mist of lymph descending
as the Mountain Dew Steamcloud
punctured by patter
of terrified campers
fleeing through fire curtains
opening before them
leaving meandering
gas-vapor tunnel
down into which
stampede of refugees
aspirates quickly
from prior oppression
to subsequent scooting
in bodywagon booze conveyor
tying one’s bomb-belt
under one’s cassock
bypassing checkpoints
with a wave of its clerical member.
Unfunded Phrenology Mandates
Not having too many problems today
with your sanctimonious pony flesh
you’ve marked “predisposed to read:
abnegate!” Judgmental evenness to (a)sensual
slapabout, even if it did give meandering
& meaningful, tongue-up-your-nostrils-
reverse-siphoning-pachyderm-sphincter-
only-Mean-Spleen-the-Prancing-Machine’s-
long-dong-silverado-guinea-pig-shish-
on-An-Angry-Vegan’s-Soy-Kebab-Stick
fully dipped into variegated-breadcrumb-
oven-baste-turkeyball-slapabout-pap.
A plethora of post-coital-
innertube-cigarette-
of-a-fleshy-foam-
love-droid-hotness
CALLER OF THE POWER!
onto its hot jumper cables
& discharging baby-blue AC sparks
clear across the Biblical Imperative—
“Pastor Pax
whacks to relax”
Millinery logistics?
flippin’ haddocks!
which creation myth so
gestates the fish?
Mealtime roulade
only bracketing cascade
a fountain slide off dowager hump
precipitate dump
abutting a mountainous blowhole
slayer of constitutionals
& inopportune as trailer tryst missed
Look at what else has happened here:
now I’m clearly grieving like a pro
Who should put us down?
Fucking cowards.
Rates of Exchange
Markets expire in divisible syphilis: one
that crosses as one body overlaps into
the bulk of another. Mutual hunger bears
crowdsourced intelligence (burn!) construct
to moment of conquest. Backstory nearly
equal in substance as flight of the decimated
kinship makes clear, exemplary that
of its grandparents’ grandparents, dunned
by genetic remorse, so says who—
Underestimate fault
‘til the state of undress
volatile incursions into glory-hole optimist
gawking aside
as if commerce commenced
on skillsets to haggle
even when prompted to try
something else
List into ur-space in camera
eyehole mounts
to gooseneck-in-socket
& asks to receive its little guest
After gut-paralytic cross-examination
ordinances plant
themselves in the body
those who claim owner space
shrug police power
& deftly dilute de jure from constituent
in under plexi
in reign of molten brass metal
as brittle reflectors
affix onto epaulets
Reiterating gadjo
you were only adept
at how to steal with the pencil
& as further pretender
to right of resistance
—you cannot imagine any of this—
even as it closes its aperture off
into markets on autolytic overdrive.
Dirt Devils
& raise your feet
when dust-
mites ascend:
do you accept or further assent
to set its inaction in place?
If assumptions be nominal
adherents may fetishize
fall-in continuous
present & make tutelage
but only [my Parrot]
in the mirror
On which kind of surface
can a con conk its noggin?
noting for instance
logistical interplay
strung by direction
made to account for executive summary
rewritten while sleeping
in armature
Your feet still ascendant, hover stiff over fire
as you struggle to clarify what plays out
next week, after your characters perish
without notice. There’s a prayer being
offered in advance of its issuance, a font
full of sentient tadpoles conversing on
whether divine precepts get hammed
on the lips, or circled up-anus on principle.
Reasoning to snuff out implicit assistance,
(make any outburst / take cue from itself)
of late in the manner of anti-obituary:
neither point nor retraction, nor pole-
dancing figurine plotting a stealth-strip.
Alas, one opts out; but is it an option,
an insurrection only for you? Absolutely.
Marc Nasdor is a poet and musician; a native of Baltimore who has lived in New York City since 1980. In the 1980s and 1990s he co-produced international literary festivals with The Committee for International Poetry, was Program Director at Poets House and the Gas Station. He has also spent more than 25 years involved with the Hungarian arts scene in the US and in Hungary. His most recent book of poems is Sonnetailia, published by Roof Books in 2007. After a 14-year hiatus from literary activities, Roof Books published Sonnetailia in 2007. His current manuscript is Insurgentes / Avenues. In addition to his literary activities, Nasdor (a/k/a Poodlecannon) is well known as a world music DJ in New York City. He has also DJ'd in Budapest and Pécs (Hungary), Nantes (France), Mexico City and Mérida (Yucatan). “Nasdor is a poet of compactness, compressed excess, & to my own eye these pieces work best the more crowded they feel, which in general is quite a bit.” - Ron Silliman