Standby at Chicago O’Hare
It is time to take up smoking.
Time to mix scotch with orange soda.
O where is there an end of it,
the soundless wailing?
Here Eliot was talking about O’Hare.
It is time to wonder if one could kiss Katie Couric
without thinking of The Joker.
Does that smile ever stop?
If I said, Katie, be sad, would she unhook that smile
from the nails in her cheeks?
The purgatorial ghosts at C-10 would like
to bludgeon her.
I can see this by the way they grip their Chiquita bananas.
It is time to try the McDonald’s Double Filet o’ Fish.
You knew that time was coming.
How much tartar sauce can be creamed on a thing?
How much tartar sauce can be creamed on Katie Couric?
I would like to stuff her face between these buns.
Double McKatie Couric.
It is time to look too long at magazine covers.
Time to realize a man never really gets over the swell
of breasts. Could Buddha have sat
for so long under a tree with magazine leaves?
That is an engagement I would like to see, Buddha v. Maxim magazine.
Lindsay Lohan is “back.”
Avril Lavigne is “not a party girl and wears underwear.”
I love the discourse community that produces that kind of headline.
Likely some poor fucker like me
boarded the plane I was supposed to be on
because I got bumped.
That is the way of the world, one person reaping the benefits
of another getting f—
I know I’ve reaped my share of benefits, so I shan’t complain.
Yes, it is time to say “shan’t.”
Bishop’s “One Art” was inspired by O’Hare.
The man next to me reads Ulysses,
which most people think takes place in Dublin
but really takes place in O’Hare.
The man is cute, he holds the novel on top of the Annotated.
The footnotes provide the saucer for the cup.
Reading Ulysses is like waiting in O’Hare,
you go to each word like a gate and get delayed to the Annotated.
The Department of Homeland Security
has raised the National Threat Advisory Level
to orange.
It is time to take up origami.
How perfect would it be, someone to teach me to tango?
Never the right instructor for your wait.
This is not a lyric poem
but a poem of delay, which is the only appropriate poem
for our time because I think you know.
Absurd, United telling me they couldn’t let me on the plane
a minute late. I stripped like everyone else.
Always that mysterious fucker
fucking one.
Is this the closest an American comes to God?
Dear Mysterious Fucker, the sound of your fucking is the sound
of the Starbucks espresso frother.
Make a poet wait too long and he’ll take over time.
