 (trans, Eric Mosbacher) The master started looking more and more often at his watch; and the boys started looking at their watches more and more often too… Oh, the endless repetition, the excruciating boredom… the pupils at their desks suffering from an acute sense of… boredom, boredom, boredom! That’s the way it goes, Reader jus’ dustin up the ol chalk bored rust And you say, whoa, doan be droppin those ’od·damn, ’od·awful Gee’s you break ’em you flush ’em, right? — they’s aint the only ’host you’ve swallowed whole You need to Calm down again, pls (gag w/ Maga too, fer dumb luck) Get yr self back to old school Rules (tedium di’dum, dolor o’rama’dam) Get back copyin blah·board scribblin’s — it were ever So Got Schooled flyin drip wet spit wads crisscrossin blow-’n-release rubbers zig-zaggin… And someone said, Ferdydurke, you have been written by a masterpiecer… There’s a new day a’dawnin’ By ‘n’ By [sic]… Ick, zee said And we wuz watchin thud y’all spitball trails oozin down walls in sum excited states of esoterica [1] [1] Second stanza reprised from SongBu®st, p.87; So Got Schooled (a memoir): penmanship, spitwads, rubbers; a hint of Theodore Roethke’s “Dolor”; italicized quotes are verbatim from a previous owner’s marginalia in our first edition Grove Evergreen reprint (1968); was hoping on two more G’s (Robert Grudin & Pierre Guyotat) but couldn’t find anything readily riffable Stephen Bett is a widely and internationally published Canadian poet with 26 books in print (from BlazeVOX, Chax, Spuyten Duyvil, & others). His personal papers are archived in the “Contemporary Literature Collection” at Simon Fraser University. His website is StephenBett.com
Website: StephenBett.com Image by Robert McGowan
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