Stephen Bett

Sheltering 

QAnon finally (finely)
getting ready to die?

Takes a lot to laugh,
takes a train to cry

                    ——

Trailer park bride stripped bare
on a vigilante darknet dare

Same diff
Sh-boom, sh-boom
like, literally

                    ——

Rape, murder (woo)
It’s just a shot away
(just one plot away)

Detonation, bullet hole (& apparition)
Conspirators disrupt delay

                    ——                   

Get it (third rail) straight:
weaponize, then monetize

It’s just a kiss away,
Kiss away, kiss away

                    ——

KKK, take-out-trash insurrection day
Triple in-fra-thin, viz.
F-F-Fade away

If I don’t get some shelter
Ooh, yeah, I’m gonna fade away*

 

*Dylan & Stones; & don’t forget The Crew Cuts, The Who, & Duchamp’s Large Glass

LeftOvers 

First they go …  Sugar (oh honey honey
& candy man fed us bubbles
popped up in our heads

Honey honey, yeah, we
heard it through the grapevine
(lotsa soul-gasp infra there)

Then they went …  Uno dos, one-to-quatro
barked it out ’til Matty told Hatty
…  Ho, you’re CANcelled!

Tracers on the tracks them years
yelpin’ Oper-A-tor, Oper-A-tor
… they’m feels V-I-O-Lated!
Drools   /   Fuels   /   Abuse

Sho’nuff the Left ate itself (again)
deviation crime, purity taster time
(wooly bully-eyed rime …

… & we din’t had time to say
Stop in the Name of Love
when SNL became a “thing”

Triple ’thin running dog lackeys
ever’where — alt-right to halt
fright to cult·nite·lite
up (& down) the rabid’s
back hole*

 

*The Archies (cartoon bubble-gum pop), “Sugar Sugar”; Marvin Gaye, “I Heard it Through the Grapevine”; Sam the Sham, “Wooly Bully”; Smokey Robinson, “The Tracks of My Tears”; Mary Wells, “Operator, Operator”; The Supremes, “Stop in the Name of Love”

 

The Creeley / Spicer Outtakes 

Instant Karma’s gonna get you
Gonna look you right in the face
nuttin’ you can do or say ’bout that one, ace

Well we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Give it up for sailor grrl, happiness sho’s a warm gun
— kickin’ ass on a sunshine day, sport! aint we got fun

            *                  *                  *

He come groovin’ up slowly, he got walrus gumboot
he say will dance, chow down, yo, dis’ lumpen brute

He roller-coaster, he got early warnin’
nothing’s out beyond us, it jes’ riding the swells
an empty creel, taint no spice wuz forewarning

He say, “one and one and one is three”
Got to be so jacked when you’re one-eye at sea
(one to one to one they’s too UNfollowed)

            *                  *                  *

Come together
Right now
Over me

Lordy, lordy …       Q ’n boogaloo
rearin’ up down south
we aint never gon’ free*

 

*John Lennon, “Instant Karma” & “Come Together” (& “Happiness…”); Creeley’s “One thing done”: “let / me sing, one to / one to one, and let / me follow” — such loveliness no longer seems possible, given the grotesque rise of white nationalism presently around us

 

Stephen Bett is a widely and internationally published Canadian poet with 24 books in print. His personal papers are archived in the “Contemporary Literature Collection” at Simon Fraser University. His website is StephenBett.com