so give me all your money, give me all your gold


Intersection of Black Lines, Shalaev

Two poems by klipschutz:

Confessions of a Made Man

I took crying lessons 
from Bly   
              Just when I could turn
on the waterworks at will, it was off
to Mythological Boot Camp

Plainclothes Ginsberg frisked me

I delivered pizza to Bukowski
and loaned my girlfriend to Merwin

talking crop rotation and Jefferson
with Berry, Milarepa with Snyder

I know, I know. . .but the timing
proved inopportune for upturning applecarts—

So I spent my measly inheritance
at a bed&breakfast in Vermont
taking notes as Kinnell limned Hawthorne
under the alders

Drew blood with Dickey, matched
                          mean streets with Levine. . .

Brilliant, Brilliant, I concurred
after Wieners had mumbled into his sleeve
for an hour, a sad succotash of spasmology

Sight unseen, I told Ferlinghetti I like your
                                                                        paintings!

Quarterly the dividends roll in
Andrei Codrescu told the friend of an ex-friend
my work is "close, very close"

Omens are underfoot, not merely in the sky:

A cartoon elephant, the mascot
of the New Informalists,
has been spotted
right around
the cor-
ner.
                           
Black Mountain delivers water to my door
 
The Second Coming of Wilt the Stilt

As if we didn’t feel small,
here he is, out of whack
with the furniture, the big bowls
of his knees practically in the room
with us, all praise to the Great
God Talkshow.

The whole entirety of his legendary selfhood
is back, that we had forgotten was gone—

We’re all back, forgiving the years,
one
mo’
time,

as he brings host after host up to date,
setting the broken record straight.

He was our national giant, fresh
off the schoolyards of Philly, 
"dominating the game"
as we dominated the world,
underhand free-throw and all.

Now they bring them in from the Sudan,
half a head taller than he,
and camera-shy men of dark mien
own the groups that own the teams.

He is hungry again for air-time, and has built a paper sandwich
of his life, providing some ghost-Wilt a juicy check.
Let the book tour begin. . .

20,000 women—
Within weeks anyone who’d even talked
to anyone with a television knew he'd had sex with—
run that by me again?

If they were laid out end to end. . .
ask a bookkeeper, I can't even imagine.

(A girl I knew, too much for me,
met him on a beach in L.A. 
They played volleyball, had dinner,
I was not impressed.
But when Elvis shook my hand 
it didn’t mean much either at the time.

I was thirteen and on crutches.
After, I could walk and run and jump.
Dr. Baldwin scratched his head
and said go home.

The lay-up still eluded me.
Ping-pong was my game, I showed
no mercy.)

Was there one that got away?
Did someone get a chance to say,
"It’s okay, it happens to everyone."

Was she wild, the transsexual joker in the deck?

Will he debate the author of The Casanova Complex?

Inquisitive husbands beware!

Same old same—
party-time for the Gods,
monogamy for mortals.

Stay tuned for the guy
who slept with his own tired wife
20,012 times exactly.

Can she pass a polygraph? Did he take her out to movies?