Peter J. Grieco

 At the Musarium

[13401 – 13500]

In economics, middle-class cupidity butchers
smoothness. Agile connoisseurs advertise.
Ahmed’s godmother howls loyally & the rest
chide at the abortive propagation, thrashing
Aphrodite.  The leafless misguided sleet
& the buff but inhospitable postscript
co-operate to refute the mystified
librarian & insinuate uprising.  Bonfire
in the Balkans, Tibet aglow, the tipsy lyrics
of Riley—that renegade from Chichester:
wasteful, incipient, unconnected.  Eddies waver. 
Loam boils. Sharks graze the aquatic mead
posterior to the toilette stench of pesos.
Through prickly soot, the wavy wove,
insurmountable beneath the yew.


[14601 – 14700]

By their superlative reappearance
the husbandman & the viscount sweeten
the grouping, while Ariel Vat & the mendicant
let rip.  One tsp of unaltered condensation
braces the terminus.  Woodlands transgress
the palisades of technology like a plucky
sorcerer with his sickle to dissuade—
theoretically—the blizzard inside
this doughty fresco.  They allege a
jumble to the coxcomb & the spaniel,
to the turnip, to the sawdust, to the goldsmith,
detecting the torpid luster of a loser.  Aw, Marcel,
you blockhead!  Junk your statuary
for a more reputable stupefaction.


[13901 – 14000]

On the bus to Babel, Günter was stringent,
cruising a blur, accommodating at bedtime,
but despondent:  manna, wreckage, rib fracture—
What platonic atheist wharves his nickel
so figuratively? Xerxes glimmered Ceres
in her vestry.  Alf & Ste Arcadia lurk
khaki & penitentiary.  Is this permissible?
Indiscriminate exhilaration? Ailing ventilation?
Vitals & valuables, though voluble,
impair hallucination. Aborigines mayn't
spindle here! Even the gayest outpost
adept at avoidance piques invective, 
wicker, & the drip-drip of media.  O
decrepit Hebrides, unmindful & lewd,
exhort again your lax Germanic phalanx
past the gauntlet of precocious asceticism,
tightening  its cudgel, smashing, gushing, palatable!


[15001 - 15100]

Spectacular Siena, you conditioned me,
absent-minded vortex, like the phenomenal
cactus in Deuteronomy after
a thunderstorm.  This mediocre clod
of egoism, overworked & simplified, you
uplift, airing this vessel’s godless viper
of misconception. What quaking rift or
isthmus unattended, what annex garrulous
& rueful, revise unconditional this jester,
this clandestine genie, this Vedic comedian
gleefully abolishing their suffocation?
Yet you perplex O Siren as you loot
among the ruffle & breakdown, tiring
your several beaux, like Zola on the dole.


[18001 – 18100]

“Nevermore,” adverted as cranks outwit
a UFO then recline near Loch Mir.
They carouse until gibberish accomplishes
the gracefulness of Urania.  Allegation after
allegation, the brandy sop inquisitor
who exalts 666 & the senile whaler
converge, weeding alfalfa.  Zechariah,
why fem? The quartet near Flagstaff
scald the auditorium, ranking ovation.
If yeomanry prune their demesne
grafting Brescia to Korea in a vise
wainscot us?  Awe-inspiring touchstone,
incautious paunch, wampum torpedoes,
alphabetical malediction, cadaverous
puss. Why balk?  Whisk me an omelet
of this witless pertinacious tang.