there's no easy way to free


Tod Papageorge, Central Park, 1978

The Poem That Changed America's Diapers
-- klipschutz

It was fitty years ago tonite
Sargent Shriver taught us wrong from right

No wonder de Tokeville came from France
to knock out a book of quotations

A frontier lot we were, a load in our collective pants
City Slickers got released & then the sequel

The rest is not quite history but you’re getting warm
Coast to coast we’re clean as hounds’ teeth in the rear

& spend more on toilet training cats
Than certain U.N. members do on condoms

Thanks to Our Way Of Life & Miramax & Jerry Wexler
But mostly thanks to "Bowel"


Grotesque
-- William Carlos Williams

The city has tits in rows.
The country is in the main--male,
It butts me with blunt stub-horns,
Forces me to oppose it
Or be trampled.

The city is full of milk
And lies still for the most part.
These crack skulls
And spill brains
Against her stomach.


Bargain Hunt
-- Ron Padgett

for Tessie

Suppose you found a bargain so incredible
you stood there stunned for a moment
unable to believe that this thing could be
for sale at such a low price: that is what happens
when you are born, and as the years go by
the price goes up and up until, near the end
of your life, it is so high that you lie there
stunned forever.