TU M'(After the title of a painting by Marcel Duchamp
loosely translated, "You gotta be kidding me, right?")
for Ulysse
I hang out in the buffer zone
between brutal perspective and the inquisition super highway
still smoldering with burned ox carts.
Someday the way will be cleared for modern hover craft.
I am waiting for the war of bloodied self-images to end.
I'm very suspicious of any self-respect
that comes from self-mutilation.
The god of the rose still hangs by his thorns.
The fleeting self keeps falling away
diving on the immortal laughter of gravity
and spontaneous song infrequently soars up on wings.
To surround human beings with acts of pleasure
takes a poet-engineer set free by his stubborn joy
willing to risk his reflection and his prophecy.
The 19th century is right here in polyethylene.
Given the shoes of Prometheus we go anywhere on the map
and say, in my opinion and how do you spell that.
Johnny learns to stare at his alpha-beta rays
while he studies mammal-hood on the mean streets,
content with rapid tongue and a shine-through heart.
When I was a kid it was fun to play in shit.
Today's kid is force fed.
"Tu m'en merde, n'est ce pas."
Duchamp once said.
ŠJimmy Warner Design, 2010
