I submit this new poem in response to this week’s Poetry Rehab Changes prompt https://wordpress.com/read/post/feed/31982590/864794694 , on the grounds that it refers to one of the most symbolic and pompously celebrated global events in the transition to the modern electrical energy-dependent world. It also forms a companion piece to Expo 51, which I submitted earlier this year https://oudeis2005.wordpress.com/2015/10/02/poetry-rehab-exposition/ , and may also reflect some underlying thoughts regarding the upcoming Paris Climate Change Conference now overshadowed by terrorist attacks.

Relatively obscure or deliberately obscured and conflated name references in this poem, torn willy-nilly from both erudite history and popular culture, are designed to stump older and younger readers alike. Both groups nowadays can easily Google them and I like to think that this is a way of bringing them together and forcing them to reflect on the reasons for my juxtaposing such seemingly disparate characters, even though I am not quite sure why I have done so myself.

I am intrigued and inspired by the role of supposed erudition in a world in which all superficial knowledge is but a click away and yet ignorance and philistinism are upheld as a socially useful norm. It is a situation at once very similar to and yet very different from that of the world of the Hellenistic Greek and Latin poets who influence much of my work. This was also the intellectual climate that engendered the first inklings of the Christian faith and which, in some murky parallel, is inspiring a revival of various faiths today, often in their ugliest forms.

I have a very clear idea of the kind of divergent and clashing rhythm patterns I am aiming at in this poem and the way I would like to thread repeated phonemes—especially a sort of choking sequence of /k/ and /g/ sounds—through the piece, as a substitute for rhyme. I would, as always, welcome any feedback as to how well I have managed to achieve this effect.

 

Expo 1893

 

Columbo was a shabby cheeky cad,

shacked up with a Canary princess,

till Bea chucked him out

with a sprig of sugar flower

and egged him on his way,

shoved off, like Theseus and Aeneas,

to found a New World.

*

The lights light up & everyone claps.

AC beats DC.

A confetti of intellectual property lawsuits ensues.

Twenty-seven million folks check

cheerfully in to friendly local hotels.

An effigy of Benjamin Franklin is put up

like a lightning rod. Saw grinds on bone

in the dungeons of a dingy guest-house.

And, as the grand finale,

the town Mayor is mown down.

*

Dr. Holmes figures logically that his pathology

will affect only 0.001% of the visiting population:

far less a toll

than that of tuberculosis, childbirth, syphilis,

or accidents in the building trade.

A death-rate akin to that of electricity.

The odd shock of a new technology.

An acceptable, statistically insignificant drop

of poison in the frenzied ocean of enthusiasm

and suffering of the birth-pangs of the modern world,

in the name of Nietzsche, research, science, freedom and de Sade.

All that razzmatazz.

Sherlock was stumped.

*

The obelisk fizzes with energy

and transmits its power around the world.

Paris, London, New York, Cairo.

Slums, palaces, Chinatowns, Bohemia.

As if Dr. Dee and his army of occult angels

were still at the controls.

Pharaohs stir and toss and orgasm

in their formaldehyde graves.

Dr. Holmes hooks a buzz-saw up

to the new electricity grid

to hack off living limbs.

An incandescent bulb swings from the ceiling

like a flower,

casting color and shadow

over severed bones.

*

Folk go home to their farms

on carts and trains—

the dead are always the fewest among us—

to gabble excitedly about their experience

like migrating geese.

*

We like Ike and David Icke in equal measure,

Eric Cartman and Eric Blair,

Suleyman, Sid Vicious, Che Guevara and El Cid.

*

In fourteen hundred and ninety two

Columbus sailed the ocean blue

& Spain was cleared of Muslims and Jews.

Sugar seed, small-pox, slavery,

genocide & intolerance

wash up in the galleons’ wake of spume and scum,

Aphrodite-like, on Caribbean shores.

*

The shadow of a bony-fingered hand

hovers over the apocalypse switch.

Mocking Noah’s single dove.