Ed Dorn

 

LOW COUPS AND HAUT COUPS




How the Confederacy Finally Won the War
                               (the birth of a franchise)

Ammonium nitrate,
a little red salt picrate,
order out some
fried hegemony, and brother
the Ris'n Sun's
the fifty-first state.
China's the fifty second
Russia's the fifty third
Southern fried Hegemony's
on the global menu—Colonel Sanders
in Afrique du Sud? Umm,
racism taste good, deep fried—
terrorists, commies, tribalists
in the queue,
exploding chickens,
crossing the road
losin' their hide
to get to the other side.


The Future as Fatal

After the rime is scattered
all over the surface, and
the kerosene is pour'd
over the rotting expendables,
and the histidine hogs
have stompt out the vengeance
in the limousine's glass noir
and the aerosols coat every surface;
this orb was destined
to be a dump anyway.


Ambrose Bierce Studies the globe

"It is winter in Albania,

There's no place like chrome."


The Traffic Report

An aecyetelene sunset
turns into a parafin dawn—
there surely must be
another war in Deserta Arabia—
and Babylon.

How about it commuters?
let's have a swaller of coffee
for the children
screaming under the carpet-bombing.



Low Coupe Bumper Sticker

SHIT HAPPENED



No Ideas in Things

There is nothing
so irrelevent
as a red lawnmower
on the green grass
shellaqued with maple syrup


HI COO

The scapegoat's milk
is homogenized
The blackberry brambles
cover the hill


Early Modern

Every Poet needs a chorus of Negro women
And a friend in wing-tipped shoes


The Way We Are

One half percent difference
in the spelling of the genome
between us and the High Apes,
one percent from the Mouse.
Caught in the middle,
accused by both.


No Coup

You remember
When you were young
And headed for Alaska?
Well now, you're
Dessicated &
Going to Florida,
And you'll be lucky
To be et by alligators.


Way Coup
                               (with the help of T.R).

For the man standing
in front of a firing squad
4 cigarettes are a lot.


Another Modest Proposal

The border with Mexico
Will never be secure
As long as the Oligarchy
Is permitted to disgorge
It's surplus population
Into the industrial North.
We should annex the country,
Hang their ruling class
And distribute their property
to the peasants


Peace with Violence

We want peace and
we will kill you to get it


Low Coup, Long Overdue

NEA cuts Good and
NEA payback Better

[had Real Poetry "takings"
been in place, the deficit
would be our wages. ĦAh!
it is true when
the agriculturalists say
Ammonium has more power.


Slow Coup

If voting changed anything
it would be illegal


Beau Coup

For the capitalist, time is money
(he bets by the hour, lately by the minute)
For the artist money is time


Coups Noirs

No atrocity or horrid event
from the past can equal the
ghastly enactments stored
in the future: In fact the
worst horrors of the past
were once the future

          *
The light carries darkness
in its pocket.



Illustrated by Nancy Victoria Davis



In Remembrance of Ed Dorn