The Dunce Song of PJ Frufrufrock

A Poem

The Dunce Song of PJ Frufrufrock
By: B.S. Smelliot

Let us pour, you and I
When the butter is spread upon the toast
Like a clown pulverized in the stable;
Let us blow, through unsuspecting neighbor’s doors,
With candied nuts and treats
From expensive minibars in cheap motels
And oyster-men who juke and jive:
Streetsweepers that blast easy polemics
With lubricious hips
That shoot you with tendentious assertions…

Shut your face, you stupid idiot,
Uncle Ted’s gonna pay a visit.

In the womb I come and go
Talking of Michelangelo,
And Leonardo,
And Donatello,
And Raphael,
And Splinter,
And Shredder,
And April O’Neil,
And April O’Neil…

Her yellow jacket that rubs it’s back on my window-pane,
Her yellow coat that rubs it’s front on my widow-pain,
Licked her tongue into the corners of my “window-pane,”
Lingered upon the pools of my window-pane?
Let fall upon her back soote shoures from the sweeties,
Showering as we slip along the terrace in sweet pursuit,
And slipping sweetly seen within her sweet pillows in night,
I’ve curled them once round, groping asleep.

Indeed, there will be no more time,
For yellow coats that slip off to the floor,
For rubbing backs in flaccid rage;
No more thyme, no more thyme,
To wear faces that wear faces that you wear,
No more timely murder nor faces to make,
Faces that droop and drop across the plate,
No more you, no more me; No more thymely dates,
But time enough for million’d incisions
In collisions of previsions for abscission transitions,
Before for the taking of toast and insani-tea.

In my doom I come and go
Taking of cherrie jello.

Perhaps there will be time,
To ponder “Do I care?” and “Do I care?”
Time enough to turn my back and kick the chair,
Or time to tumble down the down-turned stair.
They will say: “He went down damn quick.
Too bad the landing didn’t stick.”
And laid at bottom naked as a babe;
Is this then Man! Cloaked in coats of yellow shame.
I do not dare, I do not care,
Split the pear into a pair;
Time is flat and space is sham,
I do not like green eggs and ham.

	(Shock me    shock me    shock me)

I’ve seen the meth-heads, the crazy bums,
The savage sat upon his bongo drums,
The violators and dilators, the ratchet-strapped,
Rape of the flesh hanged on the rack.
I’ve typed out my life with keypad taps,
And soaked my soul in over-proof rum,
I’ve pissed in the night, banged my head on a rock,
Said bon voyage to a thousand socks.
	So how should I begin,
	When beginning has no end?

I’ve seen the eyes all ready, already blind,
Like thousand nulls streaming across the screen,
And I am looped, end over end, in plastic dream,
My dreams slinking into the corner of a mind,
A mind not mine, come from without, born of the fiend.
A mind strung out on dopamine.
	When I begin to take back time,
My taking is fraught with empty signs,
	So how can I begin
	When demons dance on top the pin?

No more semblance, my dear Tom, let us speak,
You and I, of lackluster sex and lamplit nights.
Despite your Muse, my eyes are bright,
But have you thought of your progeny?
It is I, your Janus boy, bloom of your seed,
Half-form grimace, half-laid steps,
A darkling well of shallow depths.
	Now how the hell should I begin
	When you’re the one who let them in?

Shall I say, it’s rough nowadays since they caught us all,
They taught us how to dance in cactus land,
Measured out our brains with heroin spoons,
And I’ll be damned, there’s a lot of room in a hollow head.

I should have been a tiller and farmed the dirt,
But now I ponder killers and peep up skirts.
(Not anymore, of course, I’m a twenty-first century flirt.)

But back to April evenings and afternoons,
Stretched asleep on the floor next to me and you 
(You and me, Tom? On the floor? No thank you.)
I’ll leave you to your cakes and tea,
If you’ll clean me of my irony.
Strength or not, I’ll give you this,
The moment’s come, we’re in our crisis.
But since we’ve slept and wasted, slept and frayed,
And felt our heads roll cross the page,
What lolling phrase shall dare you say
When burnt-out stars have lit our days?
You and I, speak here today, neither sage nor seer,
So let us say, in the face of death, “Know no fear,”
But I regress, in truth, I too, am afraid.

Is it worth it in the end?
These thousand voices in my head,
After touchscreens, internet; self-pay kiosks, smartphone slave,
The formalization of you and me; timeless terror of load and save.
Was it worth it, for spiritual incest, for self-made grave?
To summon up a thing to say; to wake amidst the Conjuring Day?
But now convinced to self-interrogate: 
Question my soul in rabid rage, thrashing the bars of an ancient cage,
You’re of no use! You’re of no use!
Cousin Nancy’s tied my noose.
Have I taken Dewey Dell down backroom stairs?
I found the way unwell, unlit; steps of empty stares.
Of course I care! Of course I care!
I never did it! I never did!
	Of course she says, as we all know, that’s not it at all,
	“You didn’t do it after all.”

Is it worth it to begin,
To wager wisdom for ignorant sin,
Entrust your soul with Intuition,
And limply fail, falling for perdition?
After electric souls surcease my history,
Confined with integers eternal mysteries;
Pumped my desires into aluminum cans,
My Muses stuck in allocated RAM,
After charging cords and worn-out ports,
File structures thrown out of sorts,
After digital damsels and fragmented fears,
How am I to trust my ears?
It’s impossible to say just what I mean
When nerves are growing cross the screen.
Now is it worth it,
To write these wretched beats,
If when the lady turns her back,
And drops the act, shawl and all,
And sloughs off her frilly things,
Slinks out with a smile, a slithered word:
“I never meant that you should sing,
I never meant it, after all.”
That’s not all...that’s not all…

No! I am not Tom Eliot, nor was meant to be!
I couldn’t serve the aesthetic clerisy,
Condemned and damned to heresy,
I will not pay the Footman’s fee.
I’d rather die than wear your frock,
True frocks aren’t used for painter smocks.
But sure, I’ll burden a library upon my back,
And lug it around till my neurons crack.
Crucify me on my books,
And tear the yellow coat down off the hook,
Wrap me in nostalgia’s shroud,
And toss me in with Mister Pound.

You’ve grown old...You’ve grown old…
Your lines are growing bloud-red mould.

What then is next, when steps are pressed to please confess
Which way to plod? Which path to guess? With the past professed
A kingdom of death. The present thriving death. The future cresting death.

And of the sea-girls wreathed in manic matrimony,
I do not care if they sing to me, I can not care if I wish to breathe;
I give it up, I give it up, I give the song back to the sea.

Inside, my fathomless pride swells to hear; but God! I cede the sound.

Denial of space, existing in the supposition of imagination’s limination, 
Elimination of room, a place of home, pushing the precipice of transformation;
And now—only the Reason of Faith and its quiet purgation of pious un-creation.

And now—Goodbye. Symbol, Image; these subtle beauties, let them simmer down,
Reduce in time and let the fiend evaporate; reduce in size and feed a human mouth,
And now—Goodbye. I am awake, boiled alive, inflamed with life, refusing to drown.

---