seen in storysaw i 
                         o Chesterman Beachaways : 

some space-agèd CAWdger
     in slumpsack need of a CAWs
aperch on a beach log 
          head in hand like some 
     CAWperplate chump
          presumably CAWnsolidating some 
               flagmope CAWnstitutional collapse . . . 

is snapwing CAWnfronted in the sun 
               by one iridescent adolescent
     halfpint cockeye trickster lickspit CAWn artist
what greedy wings pickpock the sky
    what ’chinegun needlebeak 
chides the CAWllared citizen thus: 

     “Hey baby, what-evar may   >   be the new black,
but when what-evar goes   >   down for the count
          it’s the old black, me and my 
                    murderful CAWmunity
of dramaqueen jumpstrut lunchsteal CAWmpadres
          still be blackbelly here, laughing— 

                “here till the CAWs come home—

     “here with our heiroglyph antic 
          and our cryptical testament   
               ever CAWnfounding the dictates
          of your dreary sourboy CAWnspiracy
                    to suck the juice
          from a CAWsmos fulleye bubblesmash 

               “what fairly flapwings
                         to be crowed!”
                                 * * *
                                  * *
                                   *

by greg blanchette, 2010

A note on formatting: Normal HTML lays waste to the indents and spacing in a heavily formatted poem like this one. I tried using &nbsp; (the HTML non-breaking space) to bump the lines over, but WordPress strips out all leading spaces. I finally figured out that using the <pre> (preformatted) tag preserves all spaces — at the expense of reverting to a fixed-width Courier font. Maybe i’ll figure that out too some day….

Ah, wait: as usual, all is answered in the FAQ, if only one be bothered to read them. Here’s the WordPress help on Writing and formatting poetry.

Back to writing page

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