Richard Owens

 

Ulixes Comicus

                                          Then sat we
in ergonomically engineered office chairs
homo sacer—soccer mom hauling son
by minivan to muddy field for soccer match.
Washington Bullets & Paris Match

langue & parole she stands between two stones
the gall—& for the love of God safety ratings

several stars not the Pleiades given Honda Odyssey:

Rollover Resistance Rating
Static Stability Factor
Driver's Side Impact
Passenger Side Impact
Thoracic Trauma Index

thus by minivan to muddy field fallen leaves
jamming the wipers.

         These—software & systems applications
cartographically reconfigured—rhizomatic colloquy.
& for the love of God don't be fooled. Testify
to the reification of abject rage inflected.
Index down. Ulixes Comicus is clearly
not the man we thot him be. This is all something
of a terrible travesty—something of a convention.

Ulixes at the office ensnared in detachable
drop lift cubicle panels complaining
carpel tunnel & lower lumbar—the pain
of supplication
of examining data feeds more valuable than
the data they contain.

         Penelope neither Creeley nor Cruz
supportive subaltern in the margins of the fold;
by minivan to muddy field for soccer match
between Ithaca & Ilium, watching her son receive
a yellow card—the boy Telemakus a legacy
tired of bearing witness to soccer dads swooning
his mother in the margins & tossing bones
from buckets of KFC to form a beggars banquet.

                                He a legacy
plods across muddy field in muddy clothes
cleats worn down to ineffectual nubs.

Ulixes at the Manhattan Office
mired in Microsoft Office laboring through
overtime now unpaid under
recently amended federal guidelines
shamefully & sheepishly received.

            Parodia sacra nelle letterature
moderne . . .

that is Novati but not Novati, rather
"the grammarians of Toulouse arguing
over the vocative of ego amid
                                        the crash of empires."

Their passing songs like stones
rivaled a thousand furiously written theses

these the epic song of
the Cantastorie bellowing in Tuscany
& their minds then as now
                                  on the conflict
between Christians & Moors

                       wandering troubadours
wearing Depression era sandwich boards

telling tale of Ulixes &c

(this according to the mighty working
whereby he is able to subdue
                         nothing other than himself)

But don't they talk tough
                         around the coffee pot
                         or in the parking lot

where every vehicle is leased.    So that:


 

Copyright © 2008, Richard Owens.

Richard Owens is studying for a PhD at the University at Buffalo / The State University of New York, and edits the magazine Damn the Caesars.