Frankly Uninterested.
A quick poem
and that the leather shoe
bent, bent, made a furrow
persisted the furrow
marked, marked a vein
and that I grew to hate
the words
at the end of the first and the sixth lines
of the first stanza in the sestina
which demarked, which marred the rest
and that he, he being bathed in sunlight
knew himself anew, knew a bend
In the Okeanos
creak, creak of oars that beat
plash, tap, the moon making
making a thousand silver hairs
on the water tendrils tense on the stern.
he knew himself anew, he was
he was many men and none and the last
he fixed his hairmop and fixed his collar.
no, can’t be this, can’t be that
certainly not a damn’d tryst
or the cherry, or the light in the colored glass, the light in the colored glass
refracting into a cherry tempera around
your retroussé nose or
your hand cupped about to décapiter
that little silence after the crotchet
mercilessly, always was like that
swelled the violins
and the cello
like a dying breath of a lynx
the furious orgasm denied in ritardando.
the thing is that I’m willing to renounce
this for that, pending that that is better than this
I pressed my knuckles ‘gainst my eyes
and saw a kantharos
in it there were many things, charioteers
libations, muscles taut, eyes wide with gods
there was Theseus drawing sword
from hip, there was my retreat
and in the midst of this, you were Helen
how trite.
the waves retreating like a gathered up skirt
no, this neither, see I thought
see, I thought it would be a gyration of
planets around the roof
a crib mobile
or at least that it was a hundred stars
beating out a teensy sprinkle
of fairy music
like crotal bells fixed in your tresses
no.
in medias res, that's how it is by now
when i peeped my head out the pink mandorla
i was caught in fraganti by god:
the morning
horrible pallor
your head turned the other way
départ pour Cythère
a thousand curses
on my father’s foreskin
a thousand curses on the foam
she thinks she is so grand
so regal, standing atop the conch
départ pour Cythère
they have gathered up the sails
they have bunched them up now
like a poet blouse.
silks flow out on the hill
the cupids in a goldspout
and tender strawberry lips
no, they are too thin
tender ribbon lips
to touch, touch now, touched
these idiots, they really are about to
know the pangs
of unrequited flower-wilts.
no, this neither
neither here nor there to begin with
but
there is a horrid baby
yelping, whimpering, mewling
perhaps he is ours
he will not know the air;
there is a bedizened glove
(oh how gaudy it is! how gaudy
how many emeralds
and rubies
how gaudy! like rhinestone!)
with which to touch his sex
and a disk cut in our living room
is the whole of this wretched business...
you spilled something on Gaia.