Bad Modernism: Souvenir

the Garden of Allah is unknown to the senses

Douglas Fairbanks Sr.
flies over minarets
you can almost see the wire,
 
he smiles while looking down,
she’s having the ride of her life,
later, as Susannah
 
at the Well
her alabaster will startle
cigar smoke in Secaucus
 
produce a sense of height
the sense of money and the other
brocades that assist intimacy,
 
an artist on the Hudson
paints the Holy Land
as it stretches to Poughkeepsie
 
sun gilding the Berkshires
like light on an odalisque,
these arabesques make one almost
 
intimate, as the night comes down
drawn by camels,
the explosion could be heard
 
as the absent one
raised his glass
and the building fell on children
 
and the dust blew across the street,
by these slaves naked in the bazaar
we have entered the modern
 
the capitol dome
sports a fez
the Shriners wave from a float.