Accompaniment at Nollendorfplatz
Not blind
like Mina Loy’s
blind youth
blowing out
concussive dark
upon a mouth-organ
but keeps old
eyes shut tight
pressing
the little radio
radio only
he can hear
to his mangled
badger ear
tho what he pumps
on his harmonica—
boiling
muesli sewage
steam shovel
swamp wheeze
backfiring
diaphragm cannon
intergalactic
cheese chump
vomit instigators
roofless
loose esophagus
powerline
in a puddle
cheeks cramping
in revolt
jerking the
body every
furious
sour suck
& gust
pure tonic
102 cents worth
pitched straight
to the attic
he’s killing
time and
drilling
her to the core
Presley hips
looser than a
stripped bolt
stubbly
shadow-faced
Pythagoras
where’d you get
that super bad shirt
buttoned &
tucked in so nice
essential embellishment
destitute of
tone row
Stammstrecke
elegy for fluorescent-
topped whores in
succession
on Bülowstrasse
your stiff pants
carefully cuffed
ascending descending
fearsome anti-
harmonizer
without cup
to collect, giving
it up for free
on the free-reed
and when you
stop and step
from the spot
of a broken
symmetry
your eyes
look right
into me and
oh! that smile
is the crooked
crown in the
kingdom
of a universal
minor key.