Three-lobed Burning I
                                     A Poem
                              By Phineas Altenzauber

          I & I & I--three I's
          Not a nice I spirit-soul self, 
          a cruel I & I to my three-lobed burning I
          I & I Vibration, negative
          Concrete jungle, city of steel erections, city of dreams
          I went downtown, I saw brown sugar 
          A lost angel in the City of Night 
          rebel music thumped out from a boom box
          Living in the city--
          I & I don't need no more blindness
          Sinuous sleekness was always my vice
          Like a mournful dirge Sung in Catherine dreams 
          my submarines make the smoky wraith dance
          until dawn opens her gruesome doors

                                        2

          Dawn's Highway will take I & I all the way to Night City
          If I & I & I really want to go to that plasti-steel length
          All the way is far enough  
          February makes you shiver
          On a lunatic/lithium Monday
          But I & I need I surgery
          & no 1 in the slinky part of town is qualified
          So I lively up myself & skank so until I get to Amtrak
          Running parallel to Dawn's Highway at 3:00 o'clock
          To ride the steel snake to the ocean
          The lizard is long; his steel is cold
          as I get caught in a Dream-Police roadblock 
          Sweet soul seduction, the sweetest taboo
          Won't keep me from my date with a 3rd-party:  
          Destiny

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          I & I await the thrust of the surgeon's knife
          I & I half blind in one I
          Seeing halfway into the afterlife in the other I & I
          & I's burning from I drops
          Until the philosophy book I & I are reading
          Blurs into discredited & abandoned letters like worms
          But now Dr 3rd-party looks at I & I
          & decides this is surgery that I & I are needin'
          So I let Dr Cutter put the ether on me
          & when I wake up I & I have a third I--an I transplant
          Eye can see clearly now, the pain is gone
          In the recovery room I vomit
          Into the waters of Babylon by monorail
          So a year from now eye can remember when eye could see again
          & he shakes my hand
          Then the great Buddha disappears to live to cut another day

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