I'm in the CopyCat bar
with my countrymen,
the seven thousand
bastard apostles
of Charles Bukowski.
I'm a poet.
I'm a poet too.
And I'm an augmented waitress
in a peek-a-boo bra.
And we're discussing
hashish and Baudelaire
and immaculate conceptions
and breast reductions
as lesbian conspiracies.
Most of us are red
and sweaty.
All of us are green
and watery,
squatting in the bar light
like seven thousand
Mickys' Bigmouths
transmogrified.
And I'm dressed nice
but out of money.
So I drink the drinks
that other people leave behind.
I don't let the rim
of the glass
touch my mouth.
I just tilt
back my head
open wide
and swallow fast.
I do this naturally
without gagging
and I'm so good at it
that several of my countrymen
ask if I've ever been
a sword swallower.
Yes I have.
I specialized
in all things sharp
and orally metallurgical:
Mayakovsky
and "Ecce Homo."
I was good.
I had an ageny
and a brilliant career.
In one deep breath,
I ingurgitated
all of "A cloud in Trousers,"
"The Antichrist"
and a Physicians Desk Reference
for college students
all over the East.
And as an encore
I'd take four, five,
six syllable words
from the audience,
light them on fire
and swallow
two at a time.
Penultimate. Evisceration. Eventually
it got out of control.
When no one was around
I'd gulp so much
High Latin Mass
and Ancient Etruscan
that I became
almost pure ornamentation
from the lips down.
It felt so weird
I was scared.
I swallowed a roll
of fine gauge
chicken wire
to trap unnecessary
elaboration.
Then I bought myself
a flotation peek-a-boo bra,
a pneumatic teddy,
and a vat of Mickys' Bigmouth
to float in.
And I floated
until I got almost
all feeling back.
Now I feel like
my countrymen
and they feel
like me.
And we feel
like another beer.
-Dian Sousa, Lullabies For The Spooked and Cool
The speaker in this poem sounds to me like the poet herself, speaking generally about her relationship with poetry.
What surprises me about this poem is the location, a seedy bar. The speaker seems to be a reasonably intelligent, well-spoken, and well-read person, and yet she is located in what seems to be a very seedy bar. This disparity makes for a very interesting environment.
I think that the Poet is speaking of the realism and honesty required in poetry. She states that she had a brilliant career, an agency and then started ingurgitating five-syllable words, and it got out of hand. I think she is speaking of when poetry becomes more ornamental than meaningful. When the length and intelligence of the word eclipses the meaning of each word and the overall message of the poem. I think that, also, that is why the poem takes place where it does, in a seedy bar. Originally it seemed so delightfully inappropriate, but I think she is saying, through the location, that the down-to-earth person is the real roots of poetry.
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