Kevin McFadden

Can't tell your oh from your ah? Go, go or else go ga-ga. What, were you born in a barn? Oh. Ah. What do you say when the dentist asks? No novacaine? Nah. Then joke's on us, Jack: we gnaw ourselves when we really ought to know. Can't tell the force from the farce, nor our cores from our cars. The horde works hard in this new nation of shopkeeps, moles in malls, minding our stores when we should be minding our stars. Harmony, whoremoney—can we even tell the showman from the shaman? Or are we the worst kind of   tourists, doing La France in low fronts, sporting shorts at Chartres and so alone in our élan? Nope. We're Napoleons of nowhere, hopeless going on hapless, unable to tell our Elbas from our elbows.

For knowledge, says the Old Sage, add; for wisdom, subtract. My head in a surgeon’s chair, checking Lao Tsu’s math as these teeth I barely knew I had (mumbled of as wisdom) introduced themselves—rude party guests—right as they had to go, their pinched

Art was long. Paul was short. Art sang the song. Paul was the sort who made one up as if from air. Paul had more gift. Art had more hair— which isn’t to take away from Arts. Many sing well if someone starts, and it robs no Simon to get paid like Paul. Along was Art’s way to be singing at all. If Paul robbed some, it’s harder revealing. What stuck in his mind, he stuck to concealing so koo-koo-ka-choo would stick in our heads. It wasn’t Garfunkel, someone said Simon said when they parted acts. Debts one forgets. Acoustic is fraught with strings over frets, taken together, taken apart. Paul lifting from life. Life lifting from Art.

The first seated takes the chance he’ll be stood up. She’s getting on with the hope she may get off. One and one make one in this riddle. Or, more closely, comedy routine: first, impressions; second, observations. Impolite to have thirds. Bachelors and bachelorettes beware: more than tonight they can mess up your order. Who would go for the lobster expects the claws. No pets allowed, keep your shirt on, places this strict— like loony bins—require a jacket, sir. Mark sudden pauses, gaps in the flap, commas where a sutra might be

For a tree, you're the worst kind of friend, remembering everything. Pale-skinned, slightly brailled, blank page of pre-adolescence. The way the smallest knife-slice would darken with time, rise and widen. mark was here. Left his. But these are the digs you're used to, sufferer of mere presence, scratched years, scratched loves we wanted to write on the world and couldn't trust to an eardrum. (I scarred you myself long ago with my own jack-knife, jill-name. You took her as the morning unsteamed around me. Took us as we had to be taken, in.) Old relief, new reminder, I was young, what could I have written? Didn't care then, had to see it scraped out, big letters beneath your erotic nubs and crotches. O beech, it's no big riddle: we fell in the forest, you heard. Quiet, in your own way. In your own way, spreading the word.

I have nothing to recant, I am just the decanter. You, the just destroyer, have in faith become the role, recalling for those gathered the noble fallen with a prayer to his-grace-above-fire, (“Turn me, I’m burnt on that side”) St. Lawrence. Well done, I applaud. And you: Well executed. This is it. Not much else to await when our fates touch: I’ve nowhere to be but eternity, you’ve nothing to catch but the thatch. Dry on dry, we keep our wits about us