4.05 / May 2009

IT IS THE FUNCTION OF NEW BRONZE TO SPARKLE

FOR my foyer sculpture, I shall incuse upon a monstrous bronze cone
An image of my hated father, clothed only in the spirals of his hair.

For it is the function of new bronze to sparkle, and of a young patriarch’s mane
To give luster to the beautiful shoulder set on crime.

In my mind’s eye, Horatio, I see the stones of the double-tonged river:
That river that closes like scissors around the foundation of the palace.

And I see my father conjuring an image of me, by magic. He sees
The dotted lines in the air—the projected shape of the slander monolith.

And he sees a commonplace copper dish scrub, hanging in the air at crotch level:
“It’s like a topiary bromeliad affixed to an invisible tree!”

And from there, in his mind, the effigy telescopes upwards and downwards;
Every eyelash quill and knuckle rib glitters like a new-minted atomic particle.

And he sees me giving instructions, sees artisans plying tools; each one has
Golden crook-and-flail antennae projecting from the front of his helmet.

And my “cold and critical, infinitely alluring” father opens his mouth. He says:
“Tomorrow I shall use violence; I shall deploy atrabilious force.

I shall rout my son’s demon army with my twice-fifty best bowmen:
Myself shall be the thirty-fifth archer on the lion-riding front line.

But tonight, I shall send this apostate boy a dream well-contrived to despoil
His strategic invention, that he be defenseless—and even complicit—when I descend.”

You see, Horatio, I find it easy enough to play both parts in this comedy.
Like every self-righteous rebel, I have internalized the seminal tyrant.

IT IS A PERFECT DAY AND I MUST WASTE IT

IT is a perfect day and I must waste it. I have to sit in a vault
Beneath the palace, counting other people’s money.

My job is teaching virgins apostrophe and comma.
But, for this all-consuming work, I’m paid in poetry.

I trust the poetry of the naked people, river culture art. I like the
Shamanistic animal poetry of the uninhibited hunter-gatherer.

But when I see cameras going up at every crossroads, I foresee
The approach of universal colonoscopy.

Universal colonoscopy!—the very word is like a knell: It means
The end of all pleasure that doesn’t know how to defend itself in court.

And so it’ll be in my apartment that I write my dissertation.
I hold my pen up to the light and squint into its fuselage . . .

Strange! that you can see people so much better through binoculars
Than by sitting directly across from them on the train—

That’s because people behave naturally when they don’t know they’re being watched.
It turns out the same is true for material objects.

Nay, speak not lightly of my association with that famous jewel-like beauty.
For it is on her behalf I have learned to speak in verse.

I have the two-thousand-year-old classics, the old books; I have the
Three-thousand-year-old classics for companions;—

But never have I known any satisfaction better than this.
The memory of a star-crossed Platonic friendship.

A CHILD WRITING A STORY THE PAGE CURLS UP

A CHILD writing a story? The page curls up. The child writes too hard,
And her hand is moist with the effort.

I’ve been asked to judge in a dispute between haughty beauties; easy to see
What a humiliating fate awaits me if I comply.

Are not all women beautiful? Babies seem to think so. And I too have been caught
Indiscriminately admiring the hills of northern France . . .

But I have come to prize the virtue of coming off it.
My mother was a genius at coming off it.

She taught me arithmetic’s deeply false, and so is logic.
She said that lever lacks a fulcrum, that seeks to move the world.

And so I took a slingshot to the alligator in my basement.
I felt safe at the top of the stairs, with my aboriginal weapon.

Braced against my radius, my wrist rocket spoke for me. Ah, that eloquent
Schoolboy ricochet, so much better than any boomerang!

How can the mudball, the peashooter, the flicked thumbtack ever compete
With a penny in the crotch of a tense strap of rubber? And how can the

Illusionist’s baton, full of twisted paper flowers,
Ever replace the branch of a tree, literally exploding with vital hormones?

THE HAVING A RICH STOCK OF WINE

MY judges have bruised their gavels, and now my punishment is fast upon me.
I have to play fosterparent to a superabsorbent baby born out of wedlock.

O Lilac! you loveable roll of toddling paper towels! Come and let me teach you
The art of poetry: the radix and the omega thereof.

For I am eager to pleasure babies; I am eager because I trust
Their approbation is a litmus for human goodness . . .

The ghost delusion is founded on a five year old’s self-centeredness.
With regard to the works of the father, we are most of us five years old.

We imagine malice flowing through objects, vengeance in the speed of light; we think
The color wheel is against us, and the list of simple machines. And indeed

The human spine is a priming rod, but the brain is not the bullet.
Lunatic, can’t you see you’ve holstered your six-guns upside-down?

We are all of us walking in blood. You want to know just how much,
Stand on your head, you’ll feel the heat of it as it gushes into your face.

Who trains herself to bottle her passions will one day have quite the wine cellar.
And, in truth, the having a rich stock of wine is itself a heady drug . . .

Through an administrative error, Madrid has managed to escape his just punishment.
No matter. As you can see, the trial itself has destroyed his mind.

BECAUSE IT LOOKED LIKE A CASTLE IN SPAIN

BECAUSE it looked like a castle in Spain, I had to book “31’ for extraction.
Melissa had to stand behind me and brace my head in the crook of her arm:”

She had to rock my jaw back and forth, like drawing a nail out a floorboard.
A big nail! but, oddly, I was as comfortable as a kitten being petted.

There it is, you either relate with the cat, or you relate with the petting hand:
Oh! the hand suddenly deprived of the pleasure of giving pleasure!

I won’t praise rationality, that bootlicker to the passions.
Better praise the passions directly, and in a language they can understand.

In the volcanic heart of a wood louse is a snowflake-shaped candelabrum:
An ever-diminishing crystal of original sin!

And now we are on an open raft on the surface of Jupiter.
We are riding on a twelve-hundred-mile-deep ocean of liquid hydrogen.

We are directly under the canopy of the Great Red Spot. It’s like being
Under a turning parasol that takes up half the sky.

A slowly turning parasol made of water-damaged silk with rolling
Octagons of light opening and closing along the edge.


4.05 / May 2009

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