Poetryland History Lesson (poem)

“If you get the joke, you get the history.”
~ Shirley Wajda, Kent State University
Wonderful Professor of History and Museum Studies
and former resident of the City of Boston,
(NEVER a professor at Poetryland)




The class is called “History of the United States.”
It is taught by Professor J R P Cueball
who makes less than $40,000 a year,
has three cats named Linus, Marty, and Sprig,
respectively,
and secretly hangs teenybopper posters
of Britney Spears on the wall
behind his office door.
He is single, thus the posters, and cross-eyed.
He has a reputation for being a dick.
Students take him
to develop backbone,
to learn important life lessons
about bitter white men
who are condemned to teach,
who say, “We’re all historians here.”
But no one knows
what a historian is.
He knows his reputation and thrives on its word,
brings pop quizzes on the first day of class
and makes them worth 25% of the final grade.

His social security number is 412-98-5006.

He lives in one room of a small house
that he does not own
on Winding Trail Parkway in Kansas City, Missouri.

He takes the train
to Poetryland everyday.

The class is held in the Lundberg Auditorium
on the North Quad of the South Lawn.
Professor J R P Cueball hates his classroom.
He tells in-coming students it’s the worst
room on campus. Welcome!

Students at Poetryland University
are fairies and figments of imagination.

They are rogues, they are lovers.
They are pretty, petty, and perfect.
They are lofty, lighthearted, and luminous.
They are as smart, if not smarter than their maker.

They glow “like the moon.”
They sing “like the birds.”
They babble “like the brook.”

They are a whole generation
of well-drawn
metaphor/clichés

Professor J R P Cueball hates them. All of them.
Even the pretty ones.

On each first day of class,
he welcomes the new bunch
with the same speech,
even though he tries to make
it sound extemporaneous:

“Ahem.
Greetings.
I am Professor J R P Cueball.
You are druids and imps
with no finger prints.
Welcome.
I guess.
For lack of a better word.
This is the History
of the United States.
I hope none of you
are big Jefferson
fans or Washington buffs
because I don’t teach
them in this class.
The Constitution’s too old -
who gives a rat’s ass
about dead anarchists?
The Civil War’s all bullshit.
(Let me save you the suspense:
the North wins and the South
will not rise again)
The World Wars are nothing
but propaganda.
The stock market crash is dull,
so is foreign policy with Latin America.
The very mention of Korea puts me to sleep
and no one cared about Vietnam when
it was current.
So, fuck it, no really, fuck it all.
Why dwell on the past?
It has nothing to do with today.
This course will begin our nation’s
proud history
with Bill Clinton, our Founding Father.
Light your cigars,
throw away your history
textbooks and subscribe
to Time and People
or The National Inquirer.
If you don’t ask me
to ‘Remember the Alamo’
or discuss the War of 1812
or admit there ever was a Civil Rights Movement,
we’ll get along fine.”

This time, when Professor J R P Cueball
finishes his solemn, thought-provoking introduction,
a fairy-like student with Rapunzel hair
and a Britney Spears body
raises her waif-like hand to ask why
he skips two hundred years of history
and he stares at her, cross-eyed and smirking,
and says: “That shit

is archaic and tired.
Useless, too. Unimportant. Uninspired.
We’ll stick to the cutting edge,
what modern writers say
about history. This class

is all about shits and giggles.
Starting now.

Here’s your pop quiz:

What are contemporary poets
writing about?”

The Archangels and the Devils,
the Melodramatics and the Seducers,
the Fallen and the Rising
all stare at Professor J R P Cueball

and he laughs.

“Don’t say they write
about history, either, drones
because, look, all that shit
is out-dated.
No one reads Thomas Paine
or Ben Franklin anymore.
People watch Hardball,
60 Minutes, The Daily Show
with John Stewart.
I have four words for you all:
Fuck. The. History. Channel.
Our forefathers didn’t make
that many mistakes that were
too catastrophic for us to repeat.
In this class, we pontificate
on ‘farting in the general direction’
of those who came before.
Now, pass your quizzes forward,
my pretty pirates and handsome handmaidens!”

The Britney Spears/Rapunzel-like fairy stands
when he finishes, bows her head respectfully
and says,

“Professor Cueball?
In the immortal words
of Kurt Vonnegut,
‘shove it up
your fundament.’

History is foundation,
isolation, explanation.”

Holding her quiz up in the air, she continues:

“And contemporary poets
try too hard to be free
from the past. It’s
dry and tough, just
like you.”

The Britney Spears/Rapunzel fairy lives
with her boyfriend, a spider monkey named
Zed, in a tree on Mortimer Lane.
She has no social security number
because she’s not human.
She has no finger prints
because Zed licked them off.

She has no history
because Poetryland University
doesn’t teach her about it.

That is the lesson.

Out of the Blue (poem)

Like derelict muses
sinking in orbs of jaded
sparkle-dust, they stand
at the podium, stomping,
shouting, reading, performing
a line of ditties
about That Route 3, Led
Zeppelin, and misunderstood
victims of rape. But
I feel violated, feel ashamed
that I’m laughing
at their overwhelming incompetence,
their lack of style, lack
of grace, and I realize
my bewilderment is pressed
on my face as I chew
on the edge of my lip,
struggle to stay focused
on their art. They are
out of the blue angels,
telling stories of Rat, their Satan,
insisting they know nothing
but each other’s genius, never
their own, even praising Buzz
who’s invented a language,
and I can’t help but wonder
how lucky they are
to see each other
as beautiful

Not for Another Six (poem)

My brother calls me
to say he drank too much
the night before and was left
under a pile of blankets
in his best friend’s side yard.
“I woke up with grass stains,”
he says and he laments
nights wasted being wasted,
wishing he’d been in bed
with a good book. “I’ll never
drink again. Not for six
years,” he says, and I’m left
with a mouth full of laughter.

My Brother Calls (poem)

My brother calls at one a.m.
on a Saturday night to tell me
he really likes the Counting Crows
CD I sent him for his birthday
two weeks ago. I sez, “Good.
Can I call you back tomorrow?”

The next night, he calls me
at midnight to say, “You know
what I really hate? White trash.”
He sez they come to the video store
where he works and they smell.
I sez, “That’s understandable.
Can I call you back tomorrow?”

Monday night arrives and my brother
doesn’t call me and I sleep poorly
in anticipation of his interruption.
Silence is heavy, though, a stifling blanket.
I sez to the darkness, “That’s nice.
Can I call you back tomorrow?”

Mercury Lounge (poem)

Pulse
Quick
Flood
Spiral arms
in thick air
Vapid smoke
Twitch
Love, long, linger
Beat
Pause
Beat beat
Hear me
See me
Lick
Lips
Oo
La la
Swing
Stomp
Beg
Cry
Throw Your arms
Up

Last Days of Hallmark (poem)

My name is ‘Bellum, Boberra,
Sarahwolf, Savannah, Sahara, the Angel
of Narcolepsy, the Queen of Fresh
Ink and Plush, Chrissy from Three’s
Company. “Supervisor?” an old man
reads off my never-worn name tag.
“That’s a new one.” I don’t know
if I had the most nicknames, but Tina sez
I have the most popular votes (add Miss
Congeniality to the list). I want to thank
my supporters. I did what I could.
But I couldn’t stop the store
from closing, couldn’t prevent
the end of our time in the glitter-lined
trenches of Holiday’s, doused in Agent Orange
by Boston Properties Leasing Demons.
Of course, no one expects me to have
all the answers. Although, I will confess
I’m the one left gasping on everyone’s
darkest secrets. I will carry them
to my grave. And in the last few days,
I feel my soul rip away from these
Gold Crown saviors, watch them tuck
closer to each other while I step
to the side. I wonder if they notice.
I wonder what name they’ll remember me by.

It's a Great Day (poem)

to panhandle. I practically trip
over homeless people as I maneuver
through the Saturday/February
Back Bay crowds, hearing,
“Can I git a qwa-tah?”
I’m beginning to wonder
where they’ve been hiding
all winter, if this fifty-degree
day has defrosted their vocal
chords, de-numbed their joints.
And I laugh when a man asks for change
from a skirt-clad twenty-something
who responds, “No thanks” -- as though
he was selling mouthwash or knitting
needles -- and the man repeats her -- “No
thanks?” Even he thinks it’s funny
but doesn’t miss a beat when he
sees me -- “Can’t you spare
something for me, honey?”
Regardless, I don’t, too consumed
with the idiocy of cramming
so many cup-janglers on the same
city block. Spread out, I think,
and you’ll convince people to invest
in your poverty. I’ve had no
business training and spent no time
being homeless, but I know
what it means to saturate
a market, so I walk past
their pleas, smile-plastered,
with my eye locked
on the generous sun