Antonio Facchino
Decline in Industry

The surgeon dreams.
He’s busy now in a chair.
In a moment he’ll have wrought
a silver teapot
to leave at home.  Go clear
through looking very tired;
Must he have such circles
under the eyes?  Can’t they
do something for that?
Must.  The dress is shorter
in the back, almost teal
and alsop on her nips...
Must the dress is shorter in
the back; they’ve begun
to load the freight – having
trouble drawing the straight line.
Or a linden tree.  [You] are getting
sleepy, getting off with pillz-n-cologne,
counting to twenty by zero, one

                      *

He sat with his pole and the yellow
dog.  On a rock he sits with his pole
tipped end into some eddy,
and his dog, yellow on the rock,
panting for water.

                      *

Rising in his throat, a scream
dreamt of the thermodynamism
eeking a living out of swill,
luckily he suffers a refusal
of the mouth to move for fear that
“all we need to make it
a complete flop is mice.”

                      *

Sometimes I catch myself
wishing I could bawl him out.

                      *

Beneath ellipsis of Russo-American Dippers
black ice cracks up, giving good reason
for some sagging skin on the doctor’s chest
to resist limpness, embrace antigravity,
and nothing else except the occassionally
purchased tug on the firm breast attached
to her, I think.

                      *

Waking.  Tipped end into a-a-another
eddy.  Cut telephone lines and lines
for cigarettes; he slices the shape of a heart
into bits of apple to be refused
by the dog and thrown to a fish, then
brought into a room
for operations where the very
woman on the table has evened
herself out, tossed open the operatin’ room
doors, demanding he buy
the nice linen handkerchief in this store
with enough rubber gloves on hand
to supply a normal demand.

return to S H A M P O O   13