Rooftop Poetry Club - Alessandro Porco

Alessandro Porco

Bio:
Alessandro Porco is a poet, critic, and scholar. His latest collection of poetry is Augustine in Carthage, and Other Poems (ECW Press, 2008). He is also the author of The Jill Kelly Poems (ECW Press, 2005). Currently, at the State University of New York at Buffalo, Porco is completing a dissertation on the subject of hip-hop poetics and American poetry. His monthly hip-hop column, “In Extremis,” is available at Maisonneuve Magazine Online.

Mottetti

Hello.
Telos.

*

This is the saddest story.
We took the stairs to a happier one.

*

Once upon a time.
Once upon a time.

*

Mote.
Emote.

*

She invited me upstairs for coffee.
Res not verba.
*

Omit.
Obit.

*

It was a day like any other.
Other.

*

Misp
laced.

*

Little.
A little later.

*

Empyreal,
Empirical.

*

I am
Things in things.

*

She loves me and he loves me.
A love-me knot.

*

Still
still.

*

Language.
Gag.

Hieronymous Tugnutt in Love

I

In Boschland
did Tugnutt knock nock,
and in hogeye bacchi
winkel and wame
the quimwig quimbush;
fuzzymuzzy yawns
of the city, world-wary —
too, too much so
to ginch, zither or futz
with any impression of dee-
light: jutsum just some,
I would weary, bid
thingamy, and good-blite!

II

On a polly-nussy
summer’s day, chuftie enough
to make a kipper twitchet
like titmouse on baz,
there’s no place more muffet
to Tugnutt’s eyes
— children scat about
afternoonies
amusing themselves with
games of Snutchies —
the tweens wexperiwent wixing
conchita and whidgey,
only to wind-up diddlypout
above the toilet
wubbling to God —
and the folks
gig hefty-clefty on the Tenuc
shore, or some-
some the timetime jody
on porches like pip-
kin, while their jibs jib.

III

Down
whelk zouzoune,
the Musée des Poontenanny
schmoya of Goya fl-
unked by
gammon of Lautreamont and
Matisse mapatasi,
twat blivvets — the likes
of which dollup for cooch rides
whipped by gimcracks
oosy-doosy
Yum-yum, Pum-pum,
Spadger, and Stinkpot streets.

IV

Come dark, the Moon —
yellow,
with abstract
muliebral of monilia —,
to quote from
Pintle de Case (Boschland’s
anaphoric Poet Laureate),
is

poe tootsie-wootsie
poe hoecake hawsehole
poe dumbsquint cunnikin

And goosed beyond dingle
(alas, when in do, do
as they do, or risk the calamity
of a glamity tag such as
gewgaw tosser or poof todger,
nonny-nonny shaken oaf
with cerassie ease)
every Tugnutt straps his futz
taut as his Achilles
and hiles the holla-
waymile up the skirts of Boschland
where Madam Colpyle’s
pleidid daughters
— loquacious Loquens,
Jaxy and Joxy, her -xious twins,
moot Moot, and la tou-
louse Sluice —
twirly-whirly his ding-ding…

V

"O swallow, why wench
ile bliff you," Hieronymous
Tugnutt’s in love —

Palindrome: After Dino Campana

Momentarily
The roses are deflowered
And the petals fallen
But roses I could not forget the roses
She was a rose I was a rose
We made roses
Our blood rose our tears rose
The dawn the sun rose
A brio of roses in the sun
In the thorny sun of the briar
Roses are deflowered
Petals fallen
We forget it all
Momentarily