It was an inevitability that, at some point in Bean Newton's career, his verbiage would collapse in on itself to the point of near incomprehensibility. It happened in the spring of 1998, just a few months before his mysterious death of an apparent Bibb lettuce overdose.
What we can understand of the following poem, exemplary of that period, indicates that it retains the forward-thinking and even prophetic vision of his earlier works, but through a lens that twists and distorts language like a plastic funhouse mirror left too long in the sun. -- E.W. Wilder
Bean Crosby (A Love Song About the Radio)
Soothe me in thine barnacle
light, the seeping brine upon
the unguent see. Descryptify
me to the sun's glamorous gloming,
the foaming belches of Poe-
side-on's musing stew. Here
we sea thru blessed muskins
of puffed cheese, veils of
veils of corn-chipped to sleaze
of fry-mica, the trans-fat-
ulence of earnest gallows.
Manufilgulant lover, you
bought to me, proctoring
and gamboling, a flyerside
chat room, broadcasterly
wedgwide and catooed
athong the muzzle-ins
of blessed efty pee.