Purple-black red splashed mud
On the silk soles of Giovanni’s slippers
Just one more pretension warmed over
In an endless bowl of alphabet soup
Without the peas
It ain’t rocket science
And it ain’t Kansas, Toto
But what it is depends not so much on the lay of the table
As on who made the value judgments on the spoons
And that, my friends, changes everything you ever thought you knew
Like death on a cheap diner late night
Lazily lapping round the dessert
No one ever expects the blue plate to be fatal
And yet
The logic of all those films
The Stooges made in Hollywood…
Largely without the intellectual tradition of Blake
…flies south every winter
To roast and roost in those ever so hard to reach spots
Under the eaves and behind the Heliocentric…
Shall we use the good crystal?
Better not
When you’re challenging
The stitching on ermine under miters
Or any other opinion with tenure
It’s always in your favor to check the labels and never dot
Your whys
See,
The chairs have a way about them
They can’t help it really
A couple of catered banquets
And they begin to think they are above the table
And as far away from Major Strasser as possible
(The old guest list über the carte de jour trick)
Or as my grandmother used to call it
The inevitability of two toilet suburbia
But with different phrasing, of course…
It’s sad that it comes to this
But in the end even lace tablecloths are seen
With suspicion
Truth can get you killed said the Cheshire Cat
Or words at least more or less to that effect
The logic of rabbits with watches will inevitably go off
With their heads
…though I blame the cushions for that
(They live so much of their lives in fear of grape juice stains)
Who ordered the cheesecake?
The cook says we’re out of blueberries…
But if you want he can garnish it with some strawberries
Or a dab of the whipped dignity of man
…as long as you take it to go
