from SongBu®st
by Stephen Bett

Head Note: “Breaking into song, or breaking it apart? Maybe a bit of both. Simultaneously a celebration & a send up of iconic pop culture lyrics.” — SB

That Micropoetics Buddy

Stop the tape
it aint Peggy Sue

—cool at the loo
(ah hey, fountains R us)

Every day it’s a gettin’ vaster
’til some mutt says go ahead ’n ask her

A hey, a hey hey
that infrathin delay

Blast of gun shot, 
bullet hole in target

Gorgeous cover, & ah’m stumped

PS: Love like this will suRly come their way
(a hey, the hay hay) ¹

¹ Marjorie Perloff’s new book on micropoetics, Infrathin, gets after Duchamp’s notion of “infrathin”: there is a difference, however miniscule, between two seemingly identical things—e.g., looking at an object (hearing a sound, etc.) now, and then one second later; or Duchamp himself noting, the “infrathin separation between the detonation noise of a gun (very close) and the apparition of the bullet hole in the target.

I couldn’t remember which Buddy Holly song kept the “hey hey” brain-worm in my head; thanks to Carol Reid for remembering, and thus releasing me.

Then there’s Duchamp’s urinal, titled Fountain & signed R. MUTT.

And Patrick Stump (originally Stumph—rimes with Donald Drumpf, hey?) did a truly gorgeous cover of this Buddy Holly song, “Every Day.”

That Magic Sailor

I sailed an ocean, unsettled ocean

Magic, magic, magic, magic

Oracle—  more nautical
than prodigal
Polis has eyes on the field

“We are a coast people ... no
thing but ocean out beyond us”
Edge of dumb-struck space

Sail on, sail on sailor
Sunshine kick back day

This magic mo-ment ...
so different & so new
(nuttin’ you could say or do)

...  Brought to us by our
favorite (third rail) multi
model relational database
management system
(oh please ...  please me)

Support your local Global
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
(New Regions coming soon!)

Sail on oh magiK Oracle ...
Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh ²

² The Beach Boys, “Sail On Sailor”; The Drifters, “This Magic Moment”; Jack Spicer’s “coast people” quote, redux (again); Oracle Corp, Silicon Valley: yet another term & concept ripped out of Western Civ.

Sheltering

QAnon finally (finely) 
getting ready to die?

Takes a lot to laugh,
takes a train to cry

                    ——

Trailer park bride stripped bare
on a vigilante darknet dare

Same diff
Sh-boom, sh-boom
like, literally

                    ——

Rape, murder (woo)
It’s just a shot away
(just one plot away)

Detonation, bullet hole (& apparition)
Conspirators disrupt delay

                    ——                    

Get it (third rail) straight:
weaponize, then monetize

It’s just a kiss away,
Kiss away, kiss away

                    ——

KKK, take-out-trash insurrection day
Triple in-fra-thin, viz.
F-F-Fade away

If I don’t get some shelter
Ooh, yeah, I’m gonna fade away ³

³ Dylan & Stones; & don’t forget The Crew Cuts, The Who, & Duchamp’s Large Glass.

LeftOvers

First they go ...  Sugar (oh honey honey
& candy man fed us bubbles
popped up in our heads

Honey honey, yeah we 
heard it through the grapevine
(lotsa soul-gasp infra there)

Then they went ...  Uno dos, one-to-quatro
barked it out ’til Matty told Hatty
                        ... Ho, you’re CANcelled!

Tracers on the tracks them years
yelpin’ Oper-A-tor, Oper-A-tor
... they’m feels V-I-O-Lated!
Drools   /   Fuels   /   Abuse

Sho’nuff the Left ate itself (again)
deviation crime, purity taster time
(wooly bully-eyed rime ... 

... & we din’t had time to say
Stop in the Name of Love
when SNL became a “thing”

Triple ’thin running dog lackeys
ever’where — alt-right to halt
fright to cult·nite·lite
up (& down) the rabid’s 
back hole ⁴

⁴ The Archies (cartoon bubble-gum pop), “Sugar Sugar”; Marvin Gaye, “I Heard it Through the Grapevine”; Sam the Sham, “Wooly Bully”; Smokey Robinson, “The Tracks of My Tears”; Mary Wells, “Operator, Operator” The Supremes, “Stop in the Name of Love.”

The Creeley / Spicer Outtakes

“Instant Karma’s gonna get you
Gonna look you right in the face
nuttin’ you can do or say ’bout that one, ace

Well we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Give it up for sailor grrl, happiness sho’s a warm gun
— kickin’ ass on a sunshine day, sport! aint we got fun

            *                  *                  *

He come groovin’ up slowly, he got walrus gumboot
he say will dance, chow down, yo, dis’ lumpen brute

He roller-coaster, he got early warnin’
nothing’s out beyond us, it jes’ riding the swells
an empty creel, taint no spice wuz forewarning

He say, “one and one and one is three”
Got to be so jacked when you’re one-eye at sea
(one to one to one they’s too UNfollowed)

            *                  *                  *

Come together
Right now
Over me

Lordy, lordy ...    Q ’n boogaloo 
rearin’ up down south
we aint never gon’ free ⁵

⁵ John Lennon, “Instant Karma” & “Come Together” (& “Happiness...”); Creeley’s “One thing done”: let / me sing, one to / one to one, and let / me follow” — such loveliness no longer seems possible, given the grotesque rise of white nationalism presently around us.