Flat on my back I see
an enormous schnoz sneezing missiles
hither and yon indiscriminately,
a nasomonger to the antlings below
gathering wool, bouncing barroom logic
off satellites, callous malaperts ignoring the
meek, mocking the colorblind, hiding their minds
in caves where only shadows speak.
Nostrils flare.
I see a domino dictum split a country,
polarize attitudes and generations.
On the late show running late,
I watch the laidback spacedout meganose
snorting peppered isotopes,
and a technicolor sneeze is heard
from the ancient Land of Mu
to the Super Sargasso Sea,
and I lose the signal when a nucleonic
circumstance breaks the local station.
The UN hems before it haws.
I see the loathsome probosupervile
cast a pall upon the planet, trade lives
and treasure for oil.
On the wings of Aquila,
I watch tall cities suffocate, venerated
monuments tumble, Wall Street
hyperventilate, Cassandra prophecies
ignored, casinos couch their bets,
nasal drip invade the valleys.
On the Internet
Basie, Bach, and Boogie jam
the panic button.
I hop a subterranean soul train
to the shores of Acheron conducted
by a guy without a prayer.
Nuzzled in the aftergloom I see
a broken probostele, a Rodin brooding rhinolith
without a thought to think, a tongue to speak,
a heart to beat, an eye to bawl,
Humpty Dumpty has a great fall.
Deep inside a nasal passage barren
as an Amazonian belly, I see
an Ouspenskayan sibyl draped in gossamer,
perfumed in frankincense and myrrh,
and I hear her say,
If only man had blown his nose for good.
Not a creature stirs.
On Jupiter’s day,
the day before I disappear into the cracks
of Odin’s rubric riddle,
I hitchhike on a passing comet
for one last tour
of the old neighborhood.
From east of the moon I watch
precious days dwindle down,
The ark sinks...
and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men
can’t put Humpty together again.
I see the last one out
pull the stopper, yell a last hurrah,
kiss his ass goodbye. I watch
a radiating marble, a cinder bouncing
on the Milky Way, weaving aimlessly,
a burned out galactic drunkard
vomiting spent molecules.
The cinder cools.
I see a coagulated nosebleed where
oceans used to swell, and I find
a personally autographed photograph
of Mother Nature tying her tubes.
On the way to Uranus I grab a ring
off Saturn, choke up when I see Venus
clamp a mourning band around
her missing arm. Gliding close to Mars
I see waves of dancing light where
phantom rivers were. I hear
throbs and spits and coos and pings
that shake my hollow frame.
I see sparks fly.
I see blips of quantum energy,
in a declining act of autogenesis, create
nothing out of something
in a nasoscheme of devil take the hindmost,
dazzling sights and celebrant sounds
diminishing, blowing my mind away, begging
unthinkable answers to questions no one
taught me how to ask.
An organ sting startles me.
My orphan annie eyes watch
a dogged out vapor trail curl languidly
around an asteroid, chase its nose
into the sun’s corona.
The sound I hear
as I wash out on the tide of timeless time
is neither Alphas’s bang
nor the plaintive whimper of Omega,
nor in fact a crash at all
but a kind of breathless hwoo or hwyoo.
Call it a cosmic sigh.
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