the lark ascending

" 'You think people are silly to believe in ghosts?' an old man had asked Fred Foley a long time ago. 'Boy, you should hear some of the things that ghosts believe in!' " --Fourth Mansions

Sun Ra does Batman soundtrack.

"We must respect other's religion, but only to the extent we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart." --H L Mencken

Asimov in '71

     "Sonnets to Chango: I."

Tangled in the heraldry of tungsten
impossible to construct some other valve
under the lash of storm-tormented April.
Plywood in the road my turn to gouge
or dodge, inshallah. Bitterly i object
to phantomnation, shadows that are lonesome,
& three legs walking t'ward liquescent evening.
Suddenly it's not evening. Paint by northern
pillagelight, or panoply of bebop:
fires so fierce steel melts, & steel is stubborn.
My poetry gig that started as a junior
has emptied into flatlands sere & ancient,
& i am as a twy-tentacular mollusk
lost amidst the aliens' faulty edict.