4/20/25: more music and tom foolery

Today's prompt and a poem by Frank O'Hara

ding ding ding!
another correct[able] response
made light from bells and gongs
and the sharp spanking of a triangle.

all right, angles
mangled into the least manageable
botanical manacles, poetry is made through
a series of tubes and my own [happy] nonsense

suspense, suspend the disbelief. more horns to
the concoction. more cons to the hob-nobbery.
more nobs to the conned snobbery. shellacked 
settlements. what good sense won't admit, that little
is kismet.

cleansed and made with the alms i've provided
to make amends. so much depends...you've heard
this before, haven't you? 

unburdened by my truth-telling. salt smellings:
the vapors hit the captive audience. we're waking 
them up. they won't miss a minute of this
performance. this, my comeuppance. this, their
limited engagement. our mutual and
casual estrangement. we've failed to contain it and
now it's got the run of the place.

i should have known this is what we make of it-
this, my inheritance- squandered and dashed against
the breakwater as the boats look on. some sad, some 
indifferent, some seeking vengeance. we are all the boats
and the rocks, maybe even whatever was mine that
hit the rocks and was smashed into tiny water-soluble 
pieces. we are seeing, knowing, dying, growing, fleeing,
crying, lesser poems, indifferent, significant, and none 
of us has really learned anything from this entire enterprise.

the symphony sells itself. we take a bow. thank you for joining.
donations are always demanded, rarely enforced. drive safe.