Poem For Bunko, the 'Disaster on a cracker'

Bruce Isaacson at "Bunko: The Lost Archives" in UNLV Grant Hall I Photo by William Shea

My MFA midway is all but done. One highlight during the Participation Reception for the exhibition on a street artist, whose whereabouts remain unknown, was a reading by Bruce Isaacson, Clark County's Poet Laureate. He sends along his prose written in honor of the "installation on the lost artist 'Bunko'" and performed with the impassioned cadence of slam poetry.

B-B-Bunko is the ad that walks off the poster
The carney who waves us into the funhouse
Where we’ve lost all sense of proportion
Bunko walked through the world
Found deception and dissembling and
Tagged it
Bunko’s the most modern artist who did everything he could
Then couldn’t do anything else
Went to back to living in family basement
Became an adventurer in Africa
Lived unrequited and fell off the Brooklyn Bridge
onto the deck of a steamer clutching
a tube of Lifesaver candy
Bunko is the artist who made up the idea about
making up ideas
The work is here but the artist is gone
     She’s here but she’s
          Someone everyone loves but
                No one knows well enough to
                       say what really happened
Yet Bunko glows like a fire burning in the
shell of an old tv box
Bunko’s still fresh
Bunko’s remembered fondly like a dream where you’re young
Touch a certain smile on a certain lover’s cheek
Bunko is asking me—‘is that a poem or just
something you made up?’
Yes. The answer is Yes. Bunko
is Yes, salvation is yes, the solve to modern angst—Yes
The tallest ideal ever worn
on a chain around the neck
Bunko is freedom
Bunko was there in ’76 dumping tea
and again at The Wilderness ’65 and maybe even
wand’ring the Haight in ’68
Bunko’s a spirit
Bunko’s a postman delivering the
news the boss wouldn’t sign for
Bunko’s in peasant whites
talking to power--
     dame—dame algo--
          dame la verdad
               dame corazon
Bunko is freedom
Bunko’s Shiva disaster
Disaster on a cracker
Tonight Bunko’s a bit late but
no fear maybe’ll show
soon.

© Bruce Isaacson 10/28/16