{"id":1639,"date":"2013-01-09T16:44:15","date_gmt":"2013-01-09T20:44:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/?p=1639"},"modified":"2013-01-09T16:44:15","modified_gmt":"2013-01-09T20:44:15","slug":"madison-avenue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/2013\/01\/09\/madison-avenue.html","title":{"rendered":"Madison Avenue"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tWhen the moon fell out of my mouth an
\nocean of coffee flowed from
\nHitchcock’s exploded marrow,
\nroaring through robotic airholes like the
\npants of a dozen alcoholics
\nrioting inside a car trunk built for 4.
\nAlfred’s plastic spoon stirred
\nkerosene into critical speed benchmarks,
\nupending traditional assumptions of
\naging and decay with
\nfoul but predictable outbursts of
\nanger expressed by
\nrattled keychains and
\ncameo fabrications.<\/p>\n

Great works of art,
\nstacked vertically,
\nstand along Madison Avenue,
\na road nearly abandoned.
\nThe Avenue has become an Interstate,
\nsponges piled on sponges,
\nlocusts piled on hocus-pocus.<\/p>\n

Playthings for the city’s future
\nshoveled onto shelves where
\nthickened plots spoil futuristic foodstuff in
\ncovert assembly of a planet’s vibration.<\/p>\n

Wither and writhe,
\ncluck at a lonesome pigeon,
\ndo not pound tables to
\nscare the bird away.
\nTry to understand its chorus,
\nlisten to the bird’s
\ncruelly sycophantic restoration of its
\nancestors’ sounds, wait for
\nbirdshit dumped on your
\nforebears’ heads and shoulders,
\nlisten for a worthy flapping of ancient air.
\nThis is a plaything for your children,
\na reservation for temporal porousness,
\nan opportunity for infinity to
\nsqueeze through endless fences
\nseparating highway from sunset.<\/p>\n

I skin the neck of 53rd Street,
\nblubbering pliant mumbles to myself with
\nnauseous patriotism,
\nwelling up with tears at
\nunfortunate points in an
\noverheard conversation,
\ndeclining to explain — even to myself —
\non account of needing to go
\ntoo far into a city’s psychosis to
\nreverse-engineer
\nbunions of consciousness that
\nsummoned sadness and selfishness where
\nnone was needed.<\/p>\n

At home I trade the mop for an automatic machine gun.
\nI swap unused writing implements with increased barometric pressure.
\nI invalidate memories of angry encounters with cravings for sugar.
\nI restart a solitary footstep by flubbing lines memorized in grade school.<\/p>\n

Brave and hungry the
\ngrafted clods of politics
\nhint at minted drivel.
\nThe brass rivets that once
\nheld their church together became
\nmolten slabs of stinking leather,
\nthe organization and its memberships
\nrolling into proportional obscurity.
\nBoarding a train to garbage they
\nmoped, pouted, tried guilty persuasion to
\nsecure votes from torrential sobriety,
\nrivaled each other for excellence in
\nvillainy, stroked exertions of
\ngrounded opinions, howled like drowned anger,
\nstuttered limits in crowded minds and
\ntreated themselves to dances on obscene wilderness.
\nThey fantastically woke up among tombstones but
\nembellished the memory for retelling.
\nHot and true their keychains rattled,
\nbitter signals through kitchen noises,
\nsignals transformed by context into
\nregulations and repetitions,
\nslaying normalcy’s handcuff.<\/p>\n

Content to lob infinities at
\nstranded troubles hunched in
\nthank-you notes a passing despot
\ntricked these warring nations into
\npraising the wrong dusk,
\ntricked them into blasting accolades at
\noutdated newspapers covered with
\nsooty vandalism, tricked them into
\nboarding a bus departing Madison Avenue for
\ndestinations unknown, the warriors
\nsharing unabashed banalities, the
\nnervousness of travel charging anxieties like
\nwedding invitations dumped into
\nmechanical bank mergers.<\/p>\n

Some came to believe in the
\ncompromise of being wrong, the
\ndisability of a captain at the
\nhelm of a school bus,
\na quarterback at a chicken shoot,
\na plumber at a powwow.<\/p>\n

\"Family<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the moon fell out of my mouth an ocean of coffee flowed from Hitchcock’s exploded marrow, roaring through robotic airholes like the pants of a dozen alcoholics rioting inside a car trunk built for 4. Alfred’s plastic spoon stirred kerosene into critical speed benchmarks, upending traditional assumptions of aging and decay with foul but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poems","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paumAn-qr","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1639\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}