The Avant-Garde Is Dead So What

for Christopher Shultis

(written in November 1995)
 hear this poem read with improvised piano

Avant

      pickle-dee-doodle-ee

Guard God.

Guard God!

Pick up a rock and carry it to the navel of the Earth and drop it in.

Ask three times

      this is twentieth century America ness pa?

      this is?

      twenty-first century madness?

You’re not mad you’re sadder than a bladder.

Breathing in and out practicing Tai Chi

      because he’s not a football star.

Say nothing for three Mahatma Gandhi’s.

Cut a fiddle in half down the middle if it’s not worth anything & and you don’t want it anyway.

Conserve.

Make some chutney. Green tomatoes and apples and raisins and ginger and cinnamon and on and on.

Boil art in it until it tastes good.

The avant-garde is by now well pickled. well heeled, well potatoed, picked over till

not even the carcass is left.

The weight of a dead bird.

A way to not be able to fly into the 21st Century.

Flap

                                    FLAP!

Flap

                                    FLAP!

I CAN’T EVEN GET OFF THE TABLE!

   HOW ARE WE GOING TO ENTER THE 21ST?

      With a ding dong?

      With a merry merry have a canary?

      With a post guard tough love syndrome where character counts?

      With a pillow with moss on it from an endangered tropical bonanza?

      From Campbell’s soup quietly put to rest and never pop-arted again?

      With a giant bang or gross whimper or just a nothing at all not even a sigh

            a whisper or a kissing sound?

      With just the same old thing again but more people, more people

            and a helluva lot more endangered species.

      With a gun in every hand and every man an octopus and

            every woman a hydra-headed Dillenger toting weapon?

With just a little mercy.

With just a little sobriety.

With maybe a good night’s sleep.

With maybe an appreciation of the dawn.

Not hung over

not all drugged

not just so tired

not weirded out or anything just

getting up to greet

Number One.

larry goodell / placitas, new mexico / from Beyond TV, poems from 1995