Someone on the subway’s playing a butt tuba,
whoever this boob is, his flagellant notes stink.
And when some borrow-or-rob panhandler gets off,
I fine-tune my radar and sit next to the door.
I switch to my doom mood as the farts continue,
I can't tell if it’s a mister or a madam.
Whoever's smelling like a bucket of dumb mud
their pungent odor is worse than dog doo, good God!
I should refer this to someone; it's hard to breathe
it’s getting out of control, and dammit, I’m mad!
When the awful smell follows me to street level
I begin to question, is it, I? It is I!
for J.C. Alldridge
Flagellant!
Flexor of the Temple's
Flexuous moulded walls
The high reliefs sallying through your
Flaunting fingers
Wrap the holy-comer with your
Invocatory maul
While word of Vedic prayer
Seeps from some steepening Brahmin wall
O stretched bowel of your potted paunch
In perspiration's puffing piped paean
Rivet the eyes of man and god
Outside the walls of priestly palaver
Monotonic bell and OM
OM and monotonic bell
OM
OMM
OM
©: T. Wignesan - Paris, 1957 (from Tracks of a Tramp. Kuala Lumpur-Singapore: 1961; first pub. in "Forum Academicum", University of Heidelberg, 1957)
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