The Freeversin' Supersonnet
by John Kendall Hawkins
.
I.
free range chicken hawks on the loose again
Can war be far behind? O, I hope not.
I've burned so many bras and draft cards
dodging bullets in order to be free
on social, all my friends want to be like me
twitter twats, regurge robots, whip stains of The Man
what they don't get is my deeply committed
some say straitjacketed sense of irony
f*ck the Russkies and their Lost in Sputnik ways
f*ck the white Coolies from Ohio who'll build the new Orient Express
f*ck good vodka, f*ck fine dumpling soups
I just want to sleep late into the mourning
and never answer the whistle call of the tragedienne
although I recognize that "men" will be men
II.
A little comical chaos is called for, Hang Ten!
Marx brothers in arms from college days fought
on a string -- cheeky, harping, grouchy -- real cards
of historical materialism, Lenin as the Holy See,
proselytizing, all militant persuasion, donning the Che tee,
yawning when I pulled out Hegel beachside with a tan
I always wondered who was in charge of the nitwitted
platoon of middles lording over the working. A surrealist tyranny.
What became of their Jerry Rubinized hashish haze?
Inside banker now, sleeper cell, conflicted mess?
Jerry died jaywalking, driver pulled over, oops.
At the funeral Abbie sent a lookalike to the memory porning;
Abbie was underground; O, I miss those days of simplicity, Amen.
Instant karma will gitcha gitcha, ya gotta earn your zen.
III.
Nobody really cares so long as there's CNN
to buffer our blues, to keep us apart. Who shot
JR? MLK? Malcolm? Bobby? JFK? Retards
will willfully speculate, unable to see
that it makes no difference to sweet liberty,
who holds that torch high and has a delectable can
of peaches in her other hand. I'm besmitted
with false love, false consh, all Byronny,
moving through fields of swashbuckling gays
like some turkey through the corn, as Taj sez.
I avoid intellectuals, and other militant groups,
buff and buffered, avoiding Buffy's vampire warning..
Let's face it: we treat Blacks, at best, as buskers: Here's ten
cents or dollars or pocket change thoughts of commiseration -- again.
IV
F*ck it. If we can "give" them back Hong Kong, then
let them have Taiwan, and toss in Korea, too: We fought
for nothing there -- Hot Lips and M.A.S.H wards
overflowing with wounded question marks. We didn't see
or care that Kim was once a hero, fought the hated Japanni
who occupied and raped and razed the very idea of "Korean,"
but when Kim turned commie, married Mao, Ike snitted,
threatened the Bomb, took hostages -- K and T --
in a turf war of goons. And they say: crime never pays.
When the Brits returned Hong Kong, there was no largesse.
Opium had been forced on the closed culture dupes,
who succumbed to collegial occidental empires. No adorning.
If you let it, the spin will sail you beyond your ken
and when the rice won't convert, you'll say, Hey, what's up with Uncle Ben?
V.
Black Lives Matter. See the News at eleven.
Unless, of course, you just don't give a jot.
Caught up in avatar tweets with your emoji pards.
To be Black, from a white POV, is an intolerable indignity
reflected in their eyes, as the bong is passed, for you to see.
When Black Lives Matter, we'll matter, too. I can
see a day, if I squint, when freedom's retrofitted.
When Black Lives Matter, we'll end slavery.
Reparations could not begin to end the days
of auction blocks and separations. There's no redress
for died-in-the-wool white supremacy, their loopy-loops
of logic that come on like summer storms without warning.
Maybe we should CRISPR out hate, make us all mocha. That's when
we won't need to say Black Lives Matter anymore with a pen.
VI.
If Jan 6 taught you anything, then you're men-
tally ill, see a doctor if you begin to feel like a bot --
opium's the opium of the people, and of some bards.
What were they thinking with horns and the Disney twee?
QAnon, Al-anon, kids lost to losers. Look, I'm a Proud Boy -- me!
Sometimes I think we need more Charlie Chan
whispering sweet fortune cookie nothings, cherries pitted,
peaches we dare to eat in chin-juice succulency,
or a mermaid you point to in a tank then served up for you to glaze.
O, what will we ever do with our desires? But I digress.
What say we go outside and shoot some hoops?
Dylan said you're either unraised dead or busy with reborning.
Now, had they stolen the oversized inside trading bra from the jungle hen
instead of her dais, I might have coughed up a subtle hurrah like a native Parisienne.
VII.
O, the Internet is a great thing for sharing things. But isn't open.
Are you a thing? Tick the box. Prove that you are not.
We are not our brother's keepers. We are not guards.
It's an "accident" that Facebook has our family tree:
I had no idea I was related to the late great Mother Machree.
But it's a battleground for hearts and minds. Like C-Span.
It attracts high brows, knit-brows, and the nitwitted.
I'm told by 'tars I trust the Internet has no sovereignty.
But algos follow wherever the humankine graze
and tempt them tempt them press press press
until their spirits are Campbell's soupà §on, minds homogenized goops
and we spend our lives eating kibble, and dry-hump in lovelorning.
The smart TV is in the stupid den.
And there I'll sit on the couch until about eleven.
VIII.
Don't know who Assange thought he was, but he's not American
and had no right to reveal all our secrets -- the lot!
So, we're savages when no one's looking. Our values, junkyards.
Our fair-go empire is merely doodling lip-service, salutary,
Our tropes as deep as the words uttered at a spilling bee.
But Way Down Under Australia's not exactly Dapper Dan.
The wrong look or word and you're jumped, lamb-basted and out-spitted.
Snowden's another one. Oliver Stone has him reading Ayn Rand. How Funny.
I don't know, his seemingly post apocalyptic revelations started a craze,
but there's something about the guy that says to me, 'Chess.'
I mean, are we really all living in free-range chicken coops
when we check out unctuous girly pics so early in the morning?
One day Meta enforcers will judge us through a Timeline len,
and after they snuff us out will zoom off in a Mercedes-Ben.
IX.
I read somewhere that if not for gain-of-function
humans would have no consciousness, our brains just quantum snot
that aliens cracked up over, until they pitied our hards-
hip and zapped us into First Woke and planted an Eden see-
d, and charged other aliens an admission fee
when what we got up to was Sufi dervishes from Iran --
all over the galaxy little fungible green men thumbed and twitted,
thinking Man was the sun lit Beacon, and they waxed siren-y,
driven like Odyssey sailors to their dooms by the lit-up rays,
and saw their aching questions finally answered. But guess
what? They discovered it's a cookbook! And they were porky poops
and dumplings absorbed by our desire. 'Dyss killed himself without warning.
And after that, here we are, sipping pandemic tea, real men,
going on about our origins and the first Assault-and-Battery back then.
X.
In the hivemind ahead we'll be meurons in a piggy pen
lost in the space between our ears, lams that time forgot
suffering from obese infirmities, swilling down the sweets and lards
returned at last to the wide open Serengeti
marking our path with an occasional pee,
singing "What A Marvel Is Man," with a Hamlet tan,
but feeling, nervously, that we've been utterly bullshitted,
knowing it for the first time, fat f*ck gazelles, high grass lion-y,
a future of predators, commie capitalists, and spays.
You can try going from Bradley to Chelsea in a tip-toe dress,
but, boy, when you're in hot water, the gods have golden scoops
and you could get slurpy-swackled down without advance warning.
Well, I don't know. I consult the Tao. Buy yarrows from Dr. Chen.
But this bird's not going anywhere, unlike the throaty kunilingus, aka the wren,
XI.
The Singularity is said to lack only human mien
We fear the AIs won't get past our civilization's rot
past Bezos's mirrors or the privileged chards
We keep looking for the Lucy link, but we are the Eden tree
to the new Adams (alright, and Eves), to be and not to be
quantum truisms uttered repeatedly over an infinite span
monsters of Dr. Godenstein making monsters, refitted;
old dreggy wine refiltered into carafes at the Gallo refinery
days of wine and roses and monster tears, days
sweeter than the bitter wine of years should be. Can you guess
which of them is a 'borg, which a psychopath? Note they hang out in groups
and are not especially interested in new learning.
Who knew that Man was a closet Machine, Barbie and Ken
kenning, new mind-f*cking In/Outs, eggs laying a hen.
XII.
If you remember Harold Pinter's Birthday Party, men
come knock knock knockin on Stan's blue door of thought
"You want your cake and eat it too," they cliche on postcards
they send themselves. "You'll come with We
so we can blow your fuckin candles out, see?"
And there he sits all discombobulated, our Stan.
Birthday boy's led away for the readjustment. What a titted
pretty that he must know such wrath and metagnomy.
In the new regime, we'll become kennel heads, easy lays,
neurons barking, each moment a full court press
estrus monkeys on Red Rose tea sailing sailless sloops
sado sizzling sibilance somersaulty circus scorning
The enforcers are there for our good, to chase the errant yen
before we become conflicted, minds all angry Phnom Penh
XIII.
One Mind will bring back peace and Meta physics to the Venn
our overlapping concentric circles, lines drawn from dot to dot,
our high maintenance bodies freed from their prison yards
turned eventually into the lawn-mowing, dependable trustee
who after kissing enough ass becomes a New Man parolee
who turns his back on recidivism and kicks the can can
forever. Now, where were we before I so rudely lit-critted?
I dream of being a panpsychist afloat in an ion sea
with a consciousness greater than me, halcyon days
again, forever adrift in haloed hoo-hah without surcess.
Of course, opium provides the same thrill. "She Stoops
To Conquer" playing on the jukebox like a memory of the horning.
Well, a One Mind world without "me" in it's fine by you, lumpen;
Pol Pot felt the same: dummy up or dummy down, fist pumpin'
XIV.
The real Real will come when multiverses hen
out galaxies like there's no tomorrow, and long sought
meaning is reflected in mirrored fractal shards
each an infinite closed-circuit of potentiality
realized in that Heisenberg moment you see
Quinn the Eskimo's mushed dog-sled approaching with "his" Plan --
a beau geste only as good as the gaze that time has permitted.
I'll be hanging down at the river by the winery
nursing a glass of old Shiraz, humming old lays,
while blue angels with harpsichords impress
and cherry blossoms descend like paratroops
until the last light of eternity's adjourning.
We learn in the end that we are just instances, snowflake men
no two alike yet the same, lost, at last, in the blizzard again.
John Reads His SuperSonnet below! Are you hyped?
(Article changed on Nov 30, 2021 at 7:03 PM EST)
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