Poem inspired from Viagra spam mail

Sent: Monday, January 12, 2004 3:16 PM
Subject: Good Catechism

good catechism
for P.McN.

A phone call from you is as
erratic as a delta-based algorithm.
I hear your words.
Another conviction.

You know as well as I do that the
Cook County jailhouse
is hardly a haven of Honolulu investigators
driving red Ferraris—
It’s more like a port-of-call for
Cicero’s unemployed bricklaying Billies—
One stacked against the other
in Nashville-gloom jumps.
You know all about gridirons
and passing through chinquapin hoops.

What? You don’t understand?

I know you speak south-side Latin, mommy!

Forget Euripides! Forget the prosody of
middleclass comforts!
As long as you keep booking
those illicit opium flights
and sailing on those
booze barges,
you’ll be seen as another excisable bum,
another loudspeaking cog—
just a part of the plebian pathology
the quadrennial conservators of
our dichotomized
culture
inspire lawmen
to eradicate.

It’s all about altitude and attitude, mommy!
Falconry and Heinz 57!
I know we've covered this before.

What? You don't believe me, mommy?
Then Go Ask Alice—
She’ll reciprocate with a
buffet of periwinkles,
which isn’t something
you can eat--but you can sure take in.

In the near decade I’ve known you,
You’ve needed an audience.
One hamlet to travel was never enough.

This is the ritual insanity of your romances—

Now, several banquets later,
you have an
ad gratis bellyache.

In your bathrobe,
your body will
take you on an adsorptive
pilgrimage through
a storm of
oviform dewdrops

OR

In your kitchen,
you will hackle your body
into an
oceanic convulsion.

EITHER
ONE

will cost you
some real
coins, mommy!

A real earthmove—
for such a single bucket!

What? You don’t like what I’m telling you, mommy?
It ain’t nothin’ but good catechism.