Tintin’s Further Adventures
inside the frame is a succession of frames
in which the oil freighter’s captain dead
drunk if the dead soldiers
around him offer any clue bellows
apoplectic gibberish at clouds
darkening they swell as he rattles his fist
right before the crash
baghdad falls the headline of the daily
the cross-legged stranger hides
behind exclaims slowly he turns
the page the encaged enraged baby
elephant in the park provides a different type
of frame stopping stooping the emaciated elderly
professor listens with an ear trumpet
so it’s funny likewise the ineptitude
of interpol literal nazis own
the streets but its bold bald agents
who share the same name same inky suit
are drawn instead to dogged pursuit of
the rebel leader stirring a nebulous
pot of beans & trouble & so on frame
after frame until reaching the bottom
of the page where the doughty reporter
moans a smoke-like string of o’s
as he rouses rubbing his brow after
conked unconscious by a shadowy figure
who got away but even so we have
a pretty good idea who it was
don’t we snowy
Lost Glove
the hand seizes upon a tear
in the fabric of the universe
a black hole in the pocket
of an overcoat
cold fingers poking through
flimsy fleece
down to the very hem
find only matches a rusty nail
clipper an old to-do
list crumpled into a ball
thirty-five no thirty-six cents
a misplaced belief
still persists the one missing
the other the sole mate
will turn up maybe at the diner
right where it was left
like a bad tip by the spilt salt
shaker or more
likely the backrow
at the movies overlooked
beneath the seat
the proverbial one
hand clapping perhaps
a murky booth at an eastside
dive falling out while shooting
schnapps with fern from
work possibly dropped on
the staggeringly long way down
8th street or stumbling out
of a taxi fumbling around
for the key bumbling up
the neighbors’ stairs shrill
cockapoo on the other side
of an obtuse door barking
symmetry first
then hope too is lost
for one without the other
feels if not useless used
if not unwanted wanting
if not nothing something
to be discarded replaced
Net Neutrality
(after Bertolt Brecht)
when the corporate masters created algorithms
to filter out fake news anything those
dicks in dc don’t want us to know
an old poet with work appearing
in various magazines & anthologies flew off
on angry wings to tweet
don’t do this to me haven’t I spoken out
against tyranny & torture witnessed inequality
reported same yet now I’m bound
together with the staple
of unhinged fear-
mongers who babble baseless
conspiracy theories about the mad monk ras-
putin hacking our electoral
then electrical system
who cite without contrition anonymous
sources warning that while we sleep china schemes &
who market freely the everchanging face
of the enemy to mask the truth
as in a pandemic but haven’t I shown repeatedly
with pointed facts here & finger there
proof enough that I’m unlike them & still
you wrong me most grievously
I demand you censor me
To a Young Poet
consider the thinly veiled
travelogue composed in vers
libre to show that charlie
poet’s got good taste see how
he sputters up tree-lined champs-
élysées making bone-dry
observations about art
at the louvre a quaint café
almost lost among the crude
american chains couples
strolling past plump plum pigeons
& statues in jardin des
tuileries as well as
a history of the park
plus commentary on games
of boules until it sounds a
bit like a clickbait guide sans
pharmaceutical ads then
slipping in a metaphor
as if an overturned vat
of lard he calls the arc de
triomphe a stale half-eaten
baguette subsequently he’s
praised for his biting wit I’m
sorry dear franz but you must
think about these things before
you can commit to the cause
© Jens Magnussen: IMG2918