The Ballad of Matthew Buchinger and Lew Zealand

In honor of the release of The Muppets, I thought I'd finally post an epic poem I wrote circa 1999 about a duel between Lew Zealand, the Muppet who went around throwing fish, and Matthew Buchinger, an 18th century gentleman, musician and magician who was born without arms or legs (and did cup-and-ball tricks that have never been explained to this day).  I wrote it while bussing tables at a rib joint and someone managed to remember it all well enough to write it down when I got home.

THE BALLAD OF MATTHEW BUCHINGER AND LEW ZEALAND

Matthew had no hands or legs - he lived in Randall's hall.

He entertained the guests with tricks which used a cup and ball

He wore a powdered wig and he had fine calligraphy

He used to say "you'll never find a man as strange as me!"

     

Lew was fat and orange and  wore a Santa suit all year

Throwing fish at people was his way of spreading cheer

If you asked him why he threw fish,  he would say "because

I am the strangest human being that  there ever was!"

Now Lew he moved to Randall's hall one sunny afternoon

Matthew, with his bagpipe, was about to play a tune

The two saw one another and they both stopped in their tracks

They knew that there was trouble and there was no turning back

Lew he looked at Matthew and he said pretentiously

"You are a funny little man, but not as strange as me."

Matthew said quite angrily "You sir are very cruel.

There's no room here for both of us we'll have to fight a duel."

At first they spoke as gentlemen about the terms of play

The loser would get out of town the winner got to stay

They'd first march off  ten paces, and then each would do their worst

A roll of dice  determined that Lew would be going first.

So the rules were laid out and a referee brought in

said "gentlemen get to your marks And then you may begin"

Lew stepped off ten paces and he threw a fish at Matt

Who caught it in his cup and made it vanish just like that.

As soon as Matt began his turn his thoughts were rather clear

He meant to put Lew in the cup and make him disappear

And so he hobbled to the man and even though he tried

His cup was just not large enough for Lew to fit inside.

So then began the second round, a second turn for Lew

This time instead of just one fish he tossed a great big slew.

But though a minnow nicked his ear,  Matt's face remained a smile

For every fish besides the minnow missed him by a mile.

"You shall not survive this round" said Matt triumphantly

"For I have got a trick that's sure to scare you mightily"

He then took out his bagpipe and A new smile crossed his face

He said "upon this instrument I'll play Amazing Grace"

Lew was rightly terrified His hands began to shake

He said "I shall distract you into making a mistake!"

Matthew laughed and said  "I've never made one in my life

no, not a single one unless you count my second wife."

"If you play a note on that thing" said Lew with a scowl

"I'll throw out a secret weapon, which smells rather foul.

I know that you will run away If I throw some fish eggs."

"Now I wont," said Matt, "For you see sir, I have no legs!"

Matthew was about to play and Lew was terrified.

He reached into a little pouch which he kept by his side,

then pulled a ball of fish eggs out (the stench could kill a man)

before Matt played he threw them - and then he turned and ran!

Lew would later say he hadn't  really lost at all

It had been a draw that afternoon in Randall's hall

Matthew technically had won - but he had lost as well;

He won because he stayed but lost because so did the smell!

Now the story's over, it's time to say adieu

but before we get to that let's do a quick review.

Here's the story's moral, if there is one at all:

you don't need arms or legs to do tricks with a cup and ball

Atari Haikus

In my day, video games took some IMAGINATION, yessir. You had to use your imagination to convince yourself that the thing you were moving around the screen was an airplane, not, say, a naked woman (or the other way around if you were playing "Porky's"). But imagination worked. In my mind, those Atari games had massive backstories. Even the simplest games became epic. Of course, I played Nintendo every chance I got, but we had Atari at my house through the mid 90s - and I got another one in the late 90s, when Star Wars collecting got too expensive. The days of finding Star Wars figures at garage sales and flea markets were over, but Atari games could be found mixed in with the eight track tapes at most thrift stores.

2600
wood grain machine of glory
matched the rec room walls

We could play some games
with our phones, back in those days.
Like "Choke Your Brother"

Space Indvaders screen
would get fuzzy every time
my mom would vacuum

Was E.T. THAT bad?
I played it for hours and hours
exploring, hopeless

Sixty-four big levels
to pass in Demon Attack
new guys every time

Difficulty switch
black and white or color switch
gone with the joystick

That one sound effect
for new games in new movies?
atari donkey kong

Get the ball up top
on super break out, sounds like
Baba o'Reilly

Sword Quest Really sucked.
there, I said it. Again now:
sword quest really sucked.

By the time I earned
a patch on Decatholon
they stopped making them

I found jungle hunt
at a garage sale on Fifth
already had it

try up up down down
left right left right B A start .
It'll never work!

Harumph! (or: in my day, we had to go all the way to Tosche Station to pick up our power converters) (a poem)

Harumph
When I was a kid, we didn't have no digitile downloads
that was a long time ago, and far far away, too
and we sure didn't have no one click purchasing

And we didn't have Nintendo, either.
If we wanted to see some Italian guy bust his head on some bricks
we'd call Vinnie.
That boy would do anything
for a quarter.


In my day, our Star Wars figures only had
five points of articulation - shoulders, hips and neck.
Sometimes not even that, and what passed for
a Death Star playset doesn't even bear mentioning
let alone the fact that the small-head variation of Han Solo
looked like he'd run afowl of a witch doctor on the fourth moon of Dathomir
and the big-head version bore more than a passing resemblance to Mary Poppins.
In a vest.

But I wore them all in my bandolier strap, with little compartments
for the weapons. I made my own Aunt Beru figure out of a busted Bib Fortuna,
and made do without a Grand Moff Tarkin or a Slave Girl Leia
or any of Jabba's dancers, if you don't count Sy Snootles
and I've never owned anything I was happier to get
than that Frozen Han Solo.

Why, even one of THOSE isn't hard to get anymore. It was hard to
get in 1985 and 1995 but NOW it's easy.
Costs a lot more than 1.99, but you don't have to scour the
flea markets and garage sales, and if you ask me,
kids today don't understand what it MEANS to be a COLLECTOR.

But you kids nowadays, you wouldn't understand.
With your nine variations of Grand Moff Tarkin, six resculpts of
Zuckus, who in my day was called 4-LOM, and your proper names
for Walrus Man and Hammerhead, and probably even that black Bespin
Security Guard whose one leg was longer than the other and looked like he
had the rickets.

Expanded universe, my foot.

And video games? We played Jedi Arena on the Atari, and it was a truly
dreadful experience. Empire Strikes Back was even worse.
Some lucky kids had the 5200 version of the arcade game.
But you know what?
We could go to the mall and play
the cockpit style version of the
arcade game itself,
and no amount of digitle downloads
or even playing it at the video game exhibit at the museum of science and industry
is ever going to match the feeling
of wading through the crowd that had gathered around Dragon's Lair
sitting in the machine
hearing the VIDEO GAME TALK
over the blaring sounds of Billie Jean and Girls, Girls, Girls
and the wocka wocka wocka of the pac man machine behind you
watching the vector graphics
through the red glare of the neon signs reflected on the screen
as you slide the grubby token,
fingers still greasy from the pizza hut in the food court,
knowing you sat through an hour of your mom combing the racks at Yonkers to deserve this, and you've EARNED it.

So there.
Harumph.

City Limits #2 (Traces of Charlie)

(a seven-year follow-up to City Limits )


For Dickens, London was a magic lantern
he'd stomp through the muddy streets, ten miles every night
watching the faces, reading the names on the gravestones
hearing the voice of Mrs. Gamp prattling on in his head.

Now I look for traces of Charlie in Chicago, where he never set foot,
but where I moved when the ghost told me to keep moving
as if I ever needed convincing.
I walk up to the cemetery where Charlier’s no-good brother is buried
and to the library that has all the first editions
across the street from Bughouse Square
but that's not where you find him.
It's in the gnarled and peggoty faces of the men on the Ashland Street bus
going home from work on a rainy evening,
the snowy rooftops of the townhouses the roll slowly by
beneath the windows of the brown line train,
the smoke coming up from the smokestacks of the riverfront factories
and the neon lights that are like ruddy smears against the fog.

You can see the same faces he saw if you know where to look.
There's Uriah Heep on the #65
Micawber on the blue line.
Wackford Squeers driving the little red bus
and Bentley Drummle oozing out of every Lincoln Park bar.
Esther Summerson in Andersonville with Tattycoram
and Dr. Marigold operating out of the trunk of his car
underneath the El tracks on Lake Street.
Reverend Chadband is preaching into a microphone outside of
the State Street Old Navy,
and Mr. Krook is running one of those smelly crud shops
on Chicago avenue, down the road from the wig district.
If you listen heard enough you can still hear the foghorns
coming off the lake
and lord only knows what else.

I promised to keep moving
but put the keys on the chimleypiece
and let me put my fingers to them
when I am disposed.

Burglar Haikus

The other night, Claudia Gray told me she had a dream that someone broke into her apartment, stole her stuff, and replaced it with poems. Here are some haikus from a burglar who stole your stuff:

As the autumn wind
carries the old leaves away
we stole your TV

VCRs wither
Take up space and block the light
Don't worry. Gone now.

All things pass away
the wind, the sea, the snowfall
your good silverware

Where does old time go,
Never to be seen again?
Same place as your plates.

Cry for no lost thing
that was not of pure beauty.
Your stuff was ugly.

We took your music
But we're just stealing it back
Downloading is theft

Leftover pizza
wrapped in shiny silver foil
We ate the whole thing.

Art belongs to all
You hide this painting alone.
Well, not anymore.

A Game of 66 (by Adam Selzer)

The old men all play sixty-six
Humming bars of that old song
About all the things you could get to eat in Romania
While they chew on assorted stale pastries
(“we all had worse during the war.”)
Dealing out hands with the same beat up decks
That they used on the old Odessa trains

Only now they sit in the corner of the little damp café
Across the street from a brown leaf cemetery
That quietly reminds them of home.
They sip black coffee
And barely say a word.

One day I’ll be the sort of old man who remembers holidays
That felt like winter
And tasted like warm harvest spice

I’ll grow my hair as wild as it can grow
And I’ll have a coat just like that one, there
And a scarf like that one, only red or brown.
When I go for walked I’ll mutter silly curses at God on the steep hills
(“old codger, filled his world with roads like this one!”)
and when I get to the top I’ll shake my cane and say “ha!”

In the summer I will sleep all day
And spend every night in a little damp café.

I’ll pretend that I spoke Russian when I was a little boy
While I sip black coffee
And chew on assorted stale pastries.
We all had worse during the war.

One Face In the Moon, Another Among The Trees (or: Yeah, but isn't a sestina more of a parlor trick than a poem?) by Adam Selzer

In times of year like this when the last of the leaves
mingle happily with the cold but calm October ghosts
in a little barn dance under the typical harvest moon
swing, promenade, alleman, the caller an old crow
named Horace who left his home and family in the trees
for the gig, that is when your hair is the color of the sky

I don't mean the days when there is a crisp blue sky
or anything, or the days when it's as dark as the leaves

and makes every street look like the perfect home for a ghost
so dark that most of the time, you can’t even see the moon
at night, the sky is just as black as so many crows
but the days when it's the color of the bark on the trees.

Yes. At just the right time of day, the sky was dark brown, the trees
dressing up like skeletons for Halloween and reaching for the sky
as they gave up what was left of their deep red and brown leaves
letting them fly from the twigs, sending them off to the moon

or else letting them fly through the streets to dance with a ghost
and replacing them on their branches with a new crop of crows

I could have painted you into the scene, surrounded by crows
your hair contrasting against the nearly white skeleton trees
that rose up with your flowing hair into the dark, brown sky
well, in the picture it would be flowing, blowing around like leaves
above up above your head, making you look like a ghost
in an old movie, appearing on nights when the harvest moon

is shining like a flickering penny. I'd paint your face into the moon
so there would be two of it, surrounded by thirty-nine crows
one sitting on every branch, ready to fly out of the naked tree
all at once when you turned and shouted, they'd leave for the sky
while your blue dress, that was slowly being covered with leaves
clung to your legs as though it were a sad and lonesome ghost.

When I finished the painting it would be called "Portrait of You as a Ghost
with One Face in Front of the Tree, and One Face in the Moon

and the Branches Filled with a Murder of Thirty-nine Crows."
Tomorrow, I want you to stand outside, out in front of the trees
and I'll bring my canvas, and if by some chance the sky
isn’t brown tomorrow night, I'll just start by painting the leaves.

But I can't paint leaves dancing with cold autumn ghosts
I can't paint at all. Not even the moon. Or a simple crow.
Just stand in front of the tree, let me see you beneath the dark brown sky.

Practicing to Be an Old Grouch

Harumph.
In my day, we didn't have "Lego."
If we wanted to build something,
my dad would throw some bricks at us
and say "here!
build us a got-damned house!"

Of course, we didn't have mortar.
We had to make our own.

Out of cow pats and a special brine
that was also used to make pickles.

We didn't complain. Not us.
And we'd never even heard of Earl Grey tea.
We knew who Earl Grey was, of course,
he was the man who owned the cows
that we had to chase when we wanted
to make mortar.

Wouldn't have named a tea after him, myself,
but then no one asks me these things.

We didn't have money to spend on things
like "digitile downloads" or "chapbooks,"
so when we wanted poetry
we'd sit in a classroom
and read it out loud.
And it was cold.

Even with all the candles.

City Limits (by Adam Selzer)

We sometimes speak in what we know as zombie slang
bringing back the dead words, daddy-o
in a last ditch effort to make ourselves feel cool
because this town is not hip, in fact it's a waist
full of overgrown weeds and overgrown faces

overgrown potholes in all the wrong places.
But when the rain comes down on the washed out shingles
what you hear is like the guttural whisper of a passenger train

chuga bompa chuga bombpa chuga bompa chuga bomba bomp bomp be domp bomp
like the lonesome bitter ghost of that old drummer who died on the sleeper
back when the jazz daddies were still riding trains all over.
They say he was lying on his back, straining to stick his head out the window,
wasted on heroin for the last time and shouting out with what was left of his breath
"KEEP MOVING! KEEP MOVING!

There's no way I'm dying in this town!"
But he didn't make it, he bought the farm in the city limits

and the last thing he ever wanted was a goddamn farm in the first place.
This is what we have in this town:
An old town square for the small town faithful, three prisons,
a coupla tattoo parlors where there are never any sailors
and the stretch of tracks where Black Cat Harris finally bought it.
And I see his ghost peeking into windows in the bars late on the colder nights,
or sometimes he's sitting on top of the lonely traffic light on Clark and Hancock

and I can see that he's aged well, though on these random fleeting sightings

I never get close enough to see that certain manic glint in his eyes
that his friends talk about all the time in that biography that Cohen wrote.
But when I see him under the old wooden bridge every time the train goes by
He looks right in my direction and glows a little bit whenever the whistle blows
and that's when I can see, oh, yeah, that's the glint they meant all night
I can tell even though they've never found a good photograph of it
just a murky one that someone took from too far back
in a nightclub full of sailors somewhere in Europe during the war.

Then he shouts at me in fluent zombie slang, but I can't decipher it yet
so mostly we just communicate by banging on whatever's handy
and I never know what I'm saying, except for maybe a word here and there
but he knows what I mean and I swear to God I understand every word he drums.
He does a little monologue about this girl he once saw on the boardwalk in Jersey
and spouts off some famous sayings that are collected in the liner notes of his greatest hits
but mostly he just says "Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving, keep moving…"
over and over like the record is scratched, only not quite the same
and then as the train pulls away he disappears like a slow fade with too much echo.
But if I listen hard enough in the middle of the night when I'm lying in bed
I can always hear the train rumble by in some distant town outside the city limits.
Keep moving. Keep moving. Keep moving.

Howl (For Mayor McCheese) by Adam Selzer

Part I:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by Grimace.

Starving, hysterical, purple, it dragged itself down into the
town from Mcdonaldland like a thief who'd come to steal the
dawn

Looking like a bloated Zorro in the hat and mask he had begged borrowed
stolen from the Hamburglar, he crept into our town gurgling rhapsodic jazz, making noises like a
biker being violated under the streetlights in the great field
of stars

And all of the homemakers shareholders and sidewalk sliders crept out
of their Little Boxes and came out into the morning, drawn like
lemmings into the old Rockwellian town square.

Eyes ablaze like sparkling diamonds, crushing the flowers that had been
planted by the Ladies' Auxillary last year, its mouth a mass of
glowing gelatin framed by an evil grin.

Was this the face that had launched a thousand happy-meals? That burned
the topless towers of Illyium on a sesame seed bun? The smiling
visage that had poured off of every television set for thirty
numb humdrum years?

"Bring me a Shamrock Shake!" he boomed, in a basso voice that belonged
to the thunder, as he laughed like the river below the Brooklyn
Bridge and wickedly demanded that we "supersize it."

But April had already sprung forth with all of it's false hopes, March
had withered like a rose at the gates of hell, and where were
the snows of last year?

....et ou sont les neiges...et ou sont les neiges...ou sont....

They were gone, gone into the sweet grandfather goodnight, and with
them the last of the seasonal Shamrock Shakes.

Our mayor stepped bravely forth to tell the beast that they were gone,
and the Grimace grabbed his velvet lapels and thrust him forth
toward the volcano of his red mouth screaming.

And his head vanished between the great teeth, and then his arms and
torso, and all at once his screams were extinguished like the
weeping flame of a candle in the sweet December rain until all that
was left was a purple bourgeous blur dripping red

And in a sudden blinding flash we all knew the answer to a question we
hadn't even thought to ask. We knew why we hadn't seen Mayor
McCheese in years.

And the Grimace wasn't finished yet, it moved forward and grabbed
Mrs Carlson the kindegarten teacher in her nightgown and devoured
her, too.

And he then devoured the old lamplighter of long long ago, laughing as the
blood poured from his mouth like ketchup from a stomped-on neglected foil
packet. And then the minister, and Mr. Stiches and Mr. Thomas crying holy,
holy to the Burger King for help.

And somewhere in the back the angel-headed hipster pinkos cried "we
told you this would happen! We told you so! We told you!" and
the streets flowed red with their blood, too, and now the revolution
wouldn't be coming after all or maybe this was it.

And the vegetarians laughed too, laughed even as they were thrust into
the purple jaws, laughed even though there was no meat in the
Grimace, at least as far as any of the screaming victims could tell.

They bled, they bled, they bled.


II

Howl! Howl! Howl howl howl robble robble robble. It ate up their brains
and imagination for want of a Shamrock Shake!

Mcdonalds! where he graced the face of a thousand cookie boxes.

Mcdonalds! Solitude! Capitalism! Extra-Value Meals!
Mcdonalds the Cheap! Mcdonalds the plentiful! Mcdonalds the clean, oh what
can it mean that Mcdonalds is clean?

Mcdonalds! where the mourners gathered in the wake of the Grimace,
trying to call mayday mayday to Ronald, who had packed off and
gone to India!

Mcdonalds! where the $5.15 an hour nonunion heros dug in the back for
the last surviving package of Shamrock Shake mix!

Mcdonalds! whose stock fell several points as the shareholders were
gobbled!

Mcdonalds was your kind of place! They served you rattlesnakes!
And stole your underwear the next time that you went there!

McDonalds, I've given you all and now I'm nothing. Mcdonalds,
$4.49 cents for the value mean, $2.99 sandwich-only.

Mcdonalds! where Grimace was arrested at high noon, broke the
handcuffs, and slithered off laughing on his way to your town!

Mcdonalds! where the plaque on the statue in the playland read
"My name is Ronald Mcdonal, King of Kings
See my food, ye hungry, and despair!"
And despair
and despair
we
did!

PART III

Mayor McCheese, I'm with you in Mcdonaldland.

I'm with you in Mcdonaldland, where you counted the money you
made off of the Muppet Babies Happy Meal

I'm with you in Mcdonaldland
where the battered corpse of Captain Crook lies tangeld in
the arms of the corpse of the Professor, and the Early Bird flies
vulgar vulture circles above

I'm with you in Mcdonaldland
where the hamburgers are sliced to the thickness and glimmer
of a Roosevelt dime.

I'm with you in Mcdonaldland
Where Mcdonalds Pizza is more than just something I was once
tried when I was in Minneapolis or was it Cedar Rapids?

I'm with you in Mcdonaldland
Where Officer Big Mack and the Hamburglar finally sit together
for Lox and Bagels on Sunday morning, and the Fry Guys also
sit.

I'm with you in Mcdonaldland
where still you forge the yellow signs, the glowing Capital M's,
the beacons that signify the presence of the Quarter Pounder
with some Cheese
the glowing idols that light the highways of the Plutonian
American
western
night!


24 March 2001

Poem Index

Howl (For Mayor McCheese)
City Limits
City Limits 2: Traces of Charlie
Practicing to be an Old Grouch
One Face In the Moon, Another Among the Trees
Haikus Left by a Burglar On The Occasion of Stealing Your Stuff
A Game of 66