The 20th

It was the animal with the longest name

It was the Ferris wheel around the neck of a woman

It was television most of the time it was business it was

It was a till to store your time in most of the time it was

the canebrake shuffle

the zombie vogue

the last minute twist

It was just another gesture of implication

The genocide of order

It was innovation

It was bakelite gills on paper automobiles

radon toothpaste

a snooze-button on the death knell

It was only a few decadent decades

waiting for a hitch in the rain

It was merely us

surrendering to the staff cars

between the quaint memorials

which sprang up to replace us

and only lent a tepid shade

It was imperceptibly real

It was a policeman’s interpretation

of what the modern woman wanted

when they didn’t want blindness

but mainly it was blindness

It was blind property

It was blind tinkering

with the blinding lamps of blind forgiveness

It was blindly useful

and thus useless

It was a flood of pertinence after the impertinence

and then it was impertinence once more

It was very large windows on a very small hotel

It was fumes and flames and dust and hands and heads

and panthers patrolling an off-white continuity

until we sent in the midgets

gats blazing

It was a yellow-caked ready-made

of romantic fissures filled with sponsors

It was the ascension of art to the boardroom

It was accumulated

then burned

then celebrated

then stood up

It was diplomats squeezing out the last cup of coffee

from the donkey’s tongue

It was the pulsating involvement

It was the thin blue air of dramedy

It was variety

It was talk

It was a petite balsa wood throne

a wet plastic sheet

a wet naked comrade

or two or three million

It was a disappearing act

It was a sofa painted with a target

It was a situation being investigated

by embedded receptors

It was larger than a county hospital

and smaller than a entry wound

It was responsibilities assumed

It was unfree freedom

It was terrorist children  

edging along the chalk capillaries

between Bonanza and Belsen

It was sometimes built-in

and often burned out

It was awesome in every aspect

It was a car bomb in a cartoon

It was immature

and vigorous giggling

at the car bomb in the cartoon

It was long hours

like magma wrapped in black velvet

It was motors and rotors and raspberries

It was the seduction of the jackhammer

by the dead end street

It was fish leaping into a top hat

It was promises

of poison appetites

and intimated thirsts

It was anyone else but us

It was lazy

like sails on a celebrity’s boat

It was interchangeable clarities

It was alarms and music

It was drawn to my attention

It was just

okay

Okay?