Huff

I wanted to use " Hank Azaria will sue my a*s in court for defamation" but that was too long of a title.

Driving the concrete
river called the almost
square of forty-three,
named for the year
of the return trip that
Meriwether and Lewis
made back down the river
that parallels the concrete.

Of course, that river
can't stay in its banks
during this cycle,
the cycle that
Mother Earth
can't seem to break.

As Elton John said,
the message is blatant.

Reaching the hills
named for Hank Azaria's
character on that one show,
he only guffaws at the
brown stone obelisk
that's considered the
state's political beacon.

Yet how could
McKenzie know
this state was a
time bomb made
out of water?

He returns home
just hours later,
and, just like before,
it's the same s**t
but on a different day.

The s-s-s-sucking sound
of the shop-vac won't stop,
like a rattling shop cavalcade
that causes a machinist to go
all zip code on everybody.

And himself,
in front of everybody
that bears a marked
resemblance to
Hank Azaria.

Or maybe that happens
when the sump pump
clicks and
wh-wh-wh-whooshes
the water upward,
the opposite direction
of Heaven because this
water isn't the water of life.

Of course,
shop-vacs and sump pumps
have something in common,
they both suck hard like an
intern hiding under the desk
in the Oval Office during the
Clinton administration, or like
a line of cocaine during the
Bush administration.

And so he takes
a Hank Azaria
while imitating
the awkward
facial expressions
of a Hank Azaria,
and imagines
floating down
the concrete
river passed
the beautiful hills
and excavated
Indian villages
that existed BHA.

Before Hank Azaria.

And off in the distance,
he sees the
brown stone obelisk
that bears a marked
resemblance to a
perpendicular t**d
that God took upon
this part of the world.

Or maybe it was due
to the fact that human
political actions and
aspirations are nothing
more than Babel Tower
fantasies made of their
own wretched s**t.

Who the f**k knows?

And so he plods over
to the perpetual motion
sump pump, and jiggles
it like the busted toilet
flush handle that it is,
and huffs again because
it's the current sine wave
that is the bane of his life.

And he wonders aloud,
how would Hank Azaria
react to all this?

He'd probably huff and then
proceed with the psychoanalysis.

Welcome to the waterlogged hell,
he would say with a wry smirk,
and huff a sigh of indignation.

Reviews

[Joiedevivre]

there is a hint of anarchy and sacrilege in your writing, which is quite addictive. So many good references, made me smirk and read with spirit!

[Neva Flores Smith - Cha..]

Oh Kenneth, I laughed at quite a few of these lines, what an awesome poem!

[....]

Powerful read and pondering too. I liked the opening stanza the most....xo