Epigramsrnby X.J. KennedyrnInvasionrnIn pours the packaged tour. Before its menacernThe Sistine Adam quails, while sinking VenicernPrefers slow drowning in the AdriaticrnTo shooting by a Kodak automatic.rnFor a Friend To Whom He’d Sent His BookrnI wish you’d say, “What hopeless trash, you twit,’rnAnd not “look forward soon to reading it.”rnJust a SuggestionrnWars meant to end all wars breed and increase.rnHigh time we tried a peace to end all peace.rnA FinancierrnHe died from eating dollar bills.rnAnd junk bonds. Sore distressed.rnHe thought himself, for all his ills,rnA safe place to invest.rnTestimonialrnIndulgent old Professor Puffer couldn’trnRecognize in the street a former student.rnStill, those who send him fervent word-libationsrnHe praises grandly on their applications.rnAt a Conference ofFducatorsrnDo not accuse me of old-fashioned pruriencernFor wishing teenaged kids less “life experience.’rnVilmarnVilma cries “Date rape” following a spatrnWith every date she’s thrust her vulva at.rnFiat LuxrnLet there be light! cried Thomas Alva Edison,rnAs though to let the Lord taste His own medicine.rnBut by and by the Lord, not One to flout.rnFingered the switch. And Edison went out.rnCasual ConversationrnIn shirtsleeves, in a friendly game with God,rnThe Devil shuffles, deals, and calls the action:rn”They say. Sire, that Your animated clodrnThinks You and me mere orders of abstraction.rnPsychoanalysisrnEver since Freud struck pay dirt with his thesisrnThat in our dreams loose money stands for feces,rnDown listening ears we pay to flush our woesrnAnd pay. And keep on paying through the nose.rnProposal to the NEArnWere I appointed Commissar of Grants,rnI’d pay some poets not to write but dance.rnMost who now print in Seize-the-Trend ReviewrnI’d pack off to stay stoned in Katmandu,rnBut all who polished more than one good linernTill gray and toothless off the cuff might dinernWhile comely youths or nymphs, or well-trained gibbons,rnPoured them champagne and changed their printer ribbons.rnAPRIL 1996/11rnrnrn