The Prick Kicks

Cocky Paphian, teeth bared boldly, 

savors tastes of comestible booty.

His tactile leer caresses flesh

on Sun sopped promenades.

He struts erect as a rooster,

relishing each coup de foudre.

Reflection

       

The Eugenicist at Home

At his mahogany desk

constructing a standardized test,

calipers dangle from the wall

like lynched relics.

                                                      An unconscious numerologist,

                                                      he avoids six and embraces seven.

His bookcase to the right

stuffed with titles by

Murray, Attenborough,

and Flynn is dusted

by a servant whose name

he never recalls.

Her dark face 

entails an occult

erasure.

 

Philoctetes

Lit a pyre and burned again

for an abducted princess.

To Troy he sailed 

with Heracles' bow

to snuff twin flames.

Hera sent a serpent

to cross his aims. 

                                        He's bitten.

                                        The wound stinks.

                                        The poison rots

                                        as each hero shrinks

                                        away fleeing his

                                        accursed state.

Until twin wits plot

to purloin his bow...

But good faith prevailed

and provided a cure

for all he ailed.

On the Good Foot

 

Draped Pedestal

 

It's Gonna Be a Beautiful Night

The Timid Suitor

 

Save the shaky palm which strokes the brow,

  what can untimeliness do to assuage?

Censure wayward star, contritely pen a vow

  and wish your eyes smile on the page?

Harvest

Breaking the circle of page and path we step aside.

     Harvest Moon, pregnant with soft gold,

                  denudes heaven.

It posts low,

vigilant over spoils.

Pull back the sheets. 

Cover mouths.

Mute pages sleep,

dreams reaped 

by prying eyes.

 

Nightfall

We cannot still desire or silence fear.

This print, Nightfall on pale as day pages.

Sun tucks eye under margin 

to close glaring Tribunals.

We're sentinels of night.

White blanks intimate explicit silences.

Every page a canvas where desire passes

kept breath. 

At Sleep

Wilds of her dark hair
alive with mystery

August's potent scent
steeps still air

As shared breath braces
the hush of chapels.

Parmenides

Only one story and one way
appearing many that is.
Never disparate, but facets
full of all that is.

I turned away from Pythagoras 
and all he learned from the Egyptians.
Parts wise, but the whole
marred by his own
artful knavery.

My chariot Plato nicked
for his treble soul
shall never roll.
And the Sail,
whether white or black,
still swells full
in Sailness.

Temporal Economy

Days short as a breath,
nights lasting epochs...

Youth's extravagance
mints time's mounting debt.

Words written or spoken
hang swords overhead.

Conscience, a shrill picket,
disturbs placid temples.

Articulation's Progress

Born so stuffed with words
all we do is laugh or cry.

Pulse a deviant metre,
resonance sculpts its
scales in the ear.

Whispers inside engrave worlds
to find shelter in or escape.

Ultimately we cede expression and accept
the eternal peace of Heaven's boundless prospect.

Il fait très chaud

Intime oui

Sweet Depths and Splendor

Inauspicious Summer's Face

"Un souffle vague émeut les sphères vagabondes/Mais nul esprit n'existe en ces immensités."

Ode to Button Noses

Piquant and fine, exquisitely it doth blow.
Cloaking within crude hair and buggers that grow.
Peak raised high to savor best heaven sent scent.
These are the noses that tweak mine eyes ardent.

A Hike

Blue above soft as cheek's down,
wake of her scent buoys each step.
Grass bends pliant underfoot,
giving way like lovers' limbs.
Dew decks skin in dazzling raiment.
We stride in time to sylphs chirping.

Vampire's Tango

(all quotes from "How to Quiet a Vampire" by Borislav Pekić---from Postscript 2 "Professor Konrad Rutkowski's Secret Testament, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" and "Editor's Notes")

III.I. a. "An intelligent man must rationalize his murder logically, with higher motives, he must spiritualize it with ideology, complicate it with precedents, in brief---he must give it a theoretical foundation."

IV.4. "Nihilism proceeds in two directions that converge only at the conclusion. On the one hand everything is declared to be an illusion. Naturally, in a world of illusion, not even betrayal can be real. It too is illusory. If the world does not exist, there can be no betrayal of that world either. On the other hand, everything is worthless, primarily because it is illusory, but beyond that it's worthless in and of itself. Everything is empty, repetitive, past....And in a world of no value, betrayal can even be good. Because if this world is evil and condemned to ruin, everything that hastens that ruination is good."

IV.5. "Soon even words will become superfluous.They'll be replaced by the initial letters of concepts and then by numbers. People, of course, will keep suffering and dying, but they'll endure it more easily, because misfortunes will lose their critical significance for life and become logical categories."

IV.6. "Need it be stressed that an intellectual can only scorn such a life? The fact that he himself is to blame for it, doesn't take away his right to scorn it. On the contrary. That right thus becomes even more justified. Because who can know the shortcomings of his work better than the creator himself? But, at the same time, he fears life as well. He hates the life he's betrayed, a life that now, of course, doesn't offer him anything but new betrayals and deeper falls."

V.3. "Alienated even from our sense of guilt and, because that's our sole unmistakable mark, alienated from the essence of the world, we begin to hate that world, as if it had been created not by our own hand but had always been here. We flee from it in disgust into a molehill of personal security. We finally feel relieved. We think that a way out has finally been found and that the dichotomy has been resolved to everyone's satisfaction: reality is happy and all our principles are present and accounted for. Or as the Greeks put it: "Just as the bread is good, the dog is sated."

VI.2. If such insanity is given the opportunity to gain a foothold in history and become one of its driving forces, the results are worldwide movements, religions, fanaticisms, or collective missions, But if, on the other hand, these individuals fail to grab hold of history, they write delusional books or rush through the streets bearing crosses on their backs, foaming at the mouth and brandishing knives. In the first case, the escalation of insanity sometimes even assumes the guise of civilization. Entire state machineries are placed at insanity's disposal so it can create a new world with their help and according to its own warped image of itself. In the second case, the story ends in an insane asylum. When all is said and done, I have to say I don't see any particular justice in that.

Editor's Notes

"In part VI, section 2 of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, in one of his lucid moments, Professor Rutkowski discusses the escalation of insanity in history. This is a significant and bitter confession for a man who openly agreed with Freud that "our greatest hope for the future lies in the Intellect(the scientific spirit, reason) over time attaining a dictatorship in the inner life of mankind."(It has already almost reached this state, but nothing in our lives is any better.)"