A Little Giddy (for T.S. Eliot)

Critics won't die from explication,
though the burden of their explicating
is to arrest what others stargazed
and recognize the pizzeria is the Promised Land.
Past the unkennelled gastropod
whose earthly remains encourage
turf wars between beggars,
through the soup kitchen of the lollygagging ritualist,
around the vocational school of the hidden water cooler--
unacknowledged and unwanted
by all but headstrong stigmatists
who thrive between waterworks and scuttlebutt,
here, now and forever--
in this condensation of complete single-mindedness
(costing not less than everlastingness)
illusion and allusion suffice;
all mankind's thimblerigs suffice
when bits of bone and flakes of stone decoupage
can be crafted into regal knockoffs
to be studied by freaks and fools;
fine art and the Rorschach test are one.