Piker Press Banner
March 25, 2024

Carmina Burana

By Robin Wyatt Dunn

Carmina Burana

Come, come, come!

You old wastrels; bored and beautiful. Bountiful and diseased men and women of Los Angeles.

Bad men. Wanton women. Lackadaisical omnipaths! Ritual seekers and golf caddy sundressers.

Bogey men. Bench-sitting men. Black white and yellow, red. Ocean red.

Gay and straight garrulous hulks, masking mad fakirs orchestrating disaster, who are you come to?

What pork and pasture milks your great orison, bad chalker, mercurial disaster. Who walks the name out of your feet, and writes his peace into your sleeve, black blistered and calked into the sea of asphalt, attenuated. Broad feet, no mare, in east coast hats and west coast hair, lost to memory.

Philter philanderer of drugs; teetotaler. Ritual garbanzo bean. Maze being.

Come into the maze with me for a minute; it won't be long; I've seen you before, scab.

I've seen you in your mighty hat, old gun, oath keeper, totem breaker, salt mine son, who was it hurt you, in the mud and main drag, over my beckon and breach, dear heart, I told you, in the taxicab, that it was I who made your mother scream, such tremulous things, written over the yellow yellow yellow city;

Well, maybe it wasn't you. But you could be guilty anyway. You never know.

We've been keeping count, on our phones, like a metronome, for the right hour to speak. The right name to forget. The ordination.

Which is it, priest? My mighty priests and priestesses of los angeles!

You horrible cultists!

We'll have a song for you.

Humming under the sleeve.



Watch and Listen to the Reading of Robin Wyatt Dunn



Article © Robin Wyatt Dunn. All rights reserved.
Published on 2018-12-31
Image(s) are public domain.
0 Reader Comments
Your Comments






The Piker Press moderates all comments.
Click here for the commenting policy.