Aficionados of this blague know that I'm directionally disabled. I don't think that I've admitted that I suffer from frequent nightmares in which I'm totally lost in a strange city or building.
Last night I experienced another such dysgeographical dream. I was trying to walk north in some unidentifiable but mysterious city. A large building, which seemed to me to be a junior high school, blocked my path. I decided to cut through the building and continue on my way. I traversed various confusing corridors and staircases until I was satisfied that I was about to exit the correct door (one of many). But I couldn't get out because there were wires (which looked like electric fencing for animals) strung across the doorway. I attempted door after door and each one was wired — chicken wire, barbed wire, all sorts of stuff. I started to panic, as I often do in such dreams.
At last I decided to force my way through one of the doors. I tangled myself in various wires which had somehow metamorphosed into thick chains. The chains rattled loudly and I said to myself that someone would hear them – it was as though I was back in school and had gotten myself into deep trouble with the principal. And sure enough, along came a guy who seemed to be either a janitor or a detective. He was speaking rapid Spanish and I couldn't understand him. Although I begged him, he would not untangle me. I cried out, "I'm tired of this basura (basura is the word for garbage in Spanish, which happens to be a language I've never studied and don't know). I shouted, "With basura, with basura." And then I thought, wow, the phrase "with basura" could be used as the basis of a parody of Ezra Pound's Canto XLV, "With Usura:" ("With usura hath no man a house of good stone/ each block cut smooth and well fitting/ that delight might cover their face" etc. etc.) A person could substitute the word "basura" for the similar sounding "usura" and make good fun of Uncle Ez's economic theories — theories which are in fact nothing more than a great big load of reactionary pseudo-medieval poppy-and-lily trash. Inspired, I decided to wake up and get to work on the poem, but I wasn't alert more than a few seconds before I came to the realization that the great world is probably not exactly aching for a parody of Pound's Canto XLV. Even an exceedinglyl clever parody.
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