Scratch NYC old guru
Don’t rent me out as a mosquito detour ooh
Non want
Geritol, Vermont
From crazy brat reading Krazy Kat
To Kafkaesque this Kafkaesque that
Never saw “action” ransacked my dance act
Came up with a nance act
Trek aids
Sped up the decades
Loved ones
Re-re-re-re-re-re-re-reruns
Full of blubbery residents
Watching rubbery Presidents
And me, the figure in the carport, the proverbial carport
Unrafeened Laff Fiend dreaming of a far port
Of Chinatown torsos and fizzes
What is is
Fields unfenced
Tomato plants to brush against
Heliotrope
Dope
A whiff tease
From the Fifties
Went around in a fib haze
Never went through a lib phase
My whippet wants in is in
Keeping tabs on bug-bite scabs sniffs at my skin
Poems by Kenward Elmslie are used by permission of The Estate of Kenward Elmslie.