Bradbury's Warning
The thought ended: phrases ago, clauses ago,
inferences …, with only a comic pause.
I'm sure this-after-pause, post-traumatic shock,
tail-down-curly-cue is best present than-no
slow-roll at all (one has to breathe).
The 19th century's aversion to endings fits
it's ornate Victorian beginnings; it gloried in the
small pauses (all there could be amongst a corseted
upper-class pining away, with tuberculosis, malaria,
or the fall of British Empire entwined in Dickens
and blessed or damned with Proust).
Breath came in fits and starts with the Charleston,
flat-chested flappers in knee-knocking skirts slink
irreverently through Gatsby fantasies on lily-stalk gams
(excited by rampant dashes-titillated by ellipses)
roared into the 20th century. But thought, rambled-on,
snaking through an inordinate amount of lines,
ending gratefully in a final period.
Kick-started to downsized gasps of dialogue with strong
doses of piss & vinegar, Hemingway howled, great lungfuls,
of petulant dialogue peppered with quotes, dancing with
castanet-clicks off commas & semi-colons; titillating with
ampersands unhooked like bra-less woman in silk.
Language tumblesaulted in2 the 21st century-slapdashed 2
syncopated shorts, OMGed in2 LOL, @Alice ed away
from formality a populous who has lost all need 4,
or sense in, prostrating 1self 2 periods when will do?
Wil we cry lik doxies 4 anon's N our push-up bras-
search virtual reams of un-scented emails lacking ribbon
markRS 4 traces of Heathclif N a torn fashion tear?
(You wil not find him there.) Xcept the pressing nEd
4 poor 2 B the nu $$$ in fashion the word?
(Bware Bradbury's warning, Fahrenheit 451.
Hold yr Bronte tight.) < has becum > & the nu
opiate of the m-asses. Full. Stop.
First Published in The Yellow Chair June 19, 2016