A Tender Resignation

The bottom dropped out

When the litmus tests started coming back positive

And the archangel positively flipped

Started recalling contacts left and right

So I bought stationary with balloons and Goethe

And tied up my wings behind me in a bow

Out of respect that would get me nowhere

Inside, gingerly pushing the envelope

I prepared to tender my resignation.

It stated with a clear throat:

“As the soft-minded

Crabs scuttle into any moist crevice

After shedding their gray-blue cigarette blankets

I am infested with the unemployed

Who nurse sores in my public dens and moorings.

Infected by congenital

Harpes, who plague the night-minds

Of guilty men, sea-sick and passed out on keeling decks

Splintering like dry oak if they are rigid

Or else tied to the yardon as eternal gaping mermaids.

“And so I find myself

Chewing the last of this wiry placenta

Hairless and pinkish in colour

Face wrinkled like a stubborn and bitter Polack

Mouth desiccated and instinctively gasping for nipple

But alone, and by my choosing

Having licked off my scent with a long pebbly tongue,

And covering my tracks in the pure-black excretia

Of my own self-discipline.”

The door does not open

  But the secretary is philosophical.

He smiles at me with big topaz teeth.

I straighten my tie and rehearse straight into them:

“And so for these reasons,

and for others which I am sure are quite evident

I hereby relinquish my muse

And any benefits thereby bestowed:

“1.        I have been writing so much between the lines that there is little to no room remaining.

2.         I want to go to the playground.

3.                  Obscene quatrains have been appearing with some regularity on the back of even my right hand.

4.                  I get teased constantly by astrologists and Cabalists.

5.                  The Maypole is in season; It is intended as a phallus: an image far too painful to visualize.

6.                  If historians were to visualize my past, they would find manifold incongruities.

7.                  I was rejected from Berkley due to the suspicion and paranoia of Balladeers.

8.                  I have personified my dinner and proceeded to eat it with greater enthusiasm.

9.                  I have begun to romanticize obscure and expensive drug habits, such as “absinthe”, for euphony’s sake.

10.              I don’t have a dog, but. . .”

“WhlHhmmmeeeeemhkEeemssgkHH!!!”

The archangel hocked up a complete child,

  And I turned and walked through the door.

I saw a round man large with kindness,

  Dressed in linen, the whole man was the shape of his own bottom.

He spoke generously:

            “I am sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Wilson

            But I thought I should inform you

that there has been an awful inexactitude laid on your doorstep.

I am in fact not the archangel, but a temp,

And tax interpreter from Outer Detroit

An incipient manifestation and general body-double for the great Logorrhean.

I was flown these thousand miles to inform you

That the grotesque acts for which you have been held responsible

Are in fact the work of a vicious carnal puppet

Of the infamous Beringer family

Who has been working out of San Diego’s Turkish garment district.

Your position will be reinstated full of benefits and lubricious vindication.”

I bounded across the room to embrace this unctuous vision

  But his bald head collapsed like cantaloupe jelly between my thin fingers.

I stood in the mess for a second

  Knowing that this must be yet another wicked ruse.

Feeling that I needed to tip the secretary,

I handed him a pack of gum like a downed bomber pilot

Would pay for cabbage soup with lipstick,

  And walked slowly out into a light, sweet rain.