27/04/06 1031-1055hrs

From out of the orchestra
thirty-two years ahead of schedule
the Buddy Miles rat-a-tat-tat
as white letters shatter & drop
means full-on WB rococo is in effect--
Eddie G's the good guy,
Bogie in the middle of
his pre-Falcon "cheap thug" slump
cracking wise halfassedly
thru the expository
mini-doc on how the mob adds
a cent to the cost of every asparagus
while peaches rot on
the sidings, meanwhile
Robinson stares at his immense
highball tumbler--thick glass, real
ice in it carved to look
like grapefruit segments--
pineapple juice with a
dash of grenadine lights like
a sidecar--rim of gold about an
inch wide & then just drops
the guy from a seating
position with a shinkick &
some sort of prewar ju-jitsu
twister to the midsection but
Joan Blondell could care less--
its not something Little Rico
would have done!
Throwing a guy through
a glass door and joking
about it for the audience's
benefit a sign of lateness at Warner's
as sure as Cavafy panpipes
or the smirking gods of CSI
playing through our pain--
write the word BAM
in sharpie & then wipe
it with a damp cloth fingering
the opulent tassle the frappe
tassle the limoges tassle,
forced to spend every holiday
testing games for our dad
the game inventor presented here
in paradiso flashback
as a vaguely Sendakian bear
in a tweed suit
but they should have used more sun
or water-skis or something
because those varnished
little gamepieces rattling
and the silver balls rolling
over the kabbalistic carvings
bum me in a very
non-Ouija way.