Steve McCaffery
A Few Donuts From an Hommagiste or: Bad Modernism

Pizza the cage next Torre Ugalino
meaning ghosts know a double-plot.
Terza, vespa, terza Dantescan
                    [insert a phrase in Geek]
& my highest compliments
              to Mrs. Sea Yelp’s vast whisper.
And Chung Lang brought it beer from the keg
[insert Chinese ideogram then a passage in Italian]
              through lilacs and prufrocks
              high bramble the stagger

                                                                      [insert Chinese ideogram]

And Lang Po thought this is dissonance
                            [insert a phrase in Greek]
and ordered dysjunction
                                                    [insert Chinese ideogram]

which is ole Joe Stalin’s way as a linguist
          [insert a passage in Russian]
as when in Ravenna
                       [insert a passage in Italian]
they marked stones in a unison.

Hast ‘ou topic to try ye?
Slant mind to thy gibbet?
Hast ‘ou cradle-wind snatched
to saddle up anti-sound?

[Insert long phrase in Norwegian]

air powered barbarous

              pewter.

[Insert very large Chinese ideogram]

And Kung Fu spoke and saw the limp Cuban
from McFingal’s
              [insert phrase in Gaelic]
which is [insert phrase in Spanish]
high five his false teeth
                   for [insert a passage in Italian]
for [insert a passage in Latin] meaning
[insert a passage in Greek] to papa Hesiod
which means that the Musso’s crime lab’s under water again
yielding to the [insert passage in French].

And Kung said to Hu Flung Dung “it does not cohere”
[insert a word in Greek followed by corresponding word in Latin]
then “never fall in love with your theories,
              just go find that missing head.”
And Jefferson thought it all through at Flaming Wash:
“don’t be admonitory, kiss it up the arse
as that bastard Churrrc…heeell told you to”
              but Ben Musso still resolves [insert phrase in Italian]
to put his bank in order
meaning at 1.3 per “fu**ing” annum we could all be meeelionaires
too dee cosmic debree.

Aetatis above alla breve
And yet Eddington admits there’s a “little too much
albumin in the aldrian alembics, makes the Aldine
aleatory spin off its axis, causing ….
                            [insert a passage in Anglo Saxon]

And Ole Possum informs he’ll do his laundry next Friday
              at Mrs. Faber’s swa-ray
causing E.P. to unterrrogate “when will I be paid
for those wartime speechuz and in which currency
lire or denarius?”
But Marcel Duchamp insists we keep it naked
coz litritcher is nudes that stay nudes.

II

Hang it all, John Ashbery,
there can be but the one “Flow-Chart.”
But Flow-Chart, and my Flow-Chart?
Ask Camoens:
                            [insert a passage in Portuguese].

                                         “Twang!”        “Positron!”
                                                        “Terpsichore!”

Pink flowers in power-point,
cool breeze from Sienna touching
cobwebs and fingerling.

But Dr. Dingbat opines
it could all be arranged “throo zee Maarsh – all Plan
for those starving chinks in H K.”
And A. L. P. agrees
the P.M. and H. C. E. don’t consummate
a sewer rat’s fortune

[insert a passage in Latin, followed by a passage in Japanese]

Concrete on wedding-plans.
No-show in Norwegian.

                           [insert passage in runic] which is to say
[insert a passage in Phoenician]

All this, while that s. o. b. Lord Alf**d D**gl*s
              thinks it’s fun to be b*m f*ckd by O. W.

Oh [insert Greek letters for ARMOR]!!
Oh [insert Greek word for sodomy] !

Burnt cinders by faggots,
but Francesco Lionetti made it by hand
passing the fast train on his pogo stick.