Poem-ry

The incomparable Miss. R has once again sucked me into her Charybdis of literary shenanigans.

Please do contribute suggestions here or there to brighten my dull February, darlings.

Doggerel, Seuss or Donne. My sponge-like brain welcomes them all.

wet dream

Last night I'd hoped for oneiric copies of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili clustered flapping around dream towers like a parliament of tumescent fools (beans? birds?)
(What do you think: Would dream books of dream books cancel each other like doppelgangers or only move on into infinity?)

Instead there were vampires.

But not the "Crime, horror, bitey people and shagging, by God" variety, nor yet the worn velveteen and aphrodisiac-laced spittle kind. These were frightening in the way that only things half-seen can manage.

Sensibly, I locked the door of my neighbors house, ran for the linen closet and hid among the cerements.

Pillow book

Things to be avoided:

Water mills of effluvium pouring like Gin into a prostrate and sodden Gargantua.

Empty and full.

Empty and full.

(His mouth is becoming a round of snoring and scum in burbling parallel.)

Things to be eaten:

Madelines.

And Heartsring plectrums.

Things to be adored:

You

W rencontrez

In the neighborhood of St. Lazare, humming a line leaked from Dowland, I met you on the street. A Cuban hairdresser warned me in no uncertain terms of your approach but, fool that I am, I grew distracted by brooms and erotic trimmings and paid her no mind.


But how strange it was! You'd cut open your knee on a cobble thrown through 1968 and into this day, to that precise instant, when you could fall, wilting into my arms. You licked blood from your hands with a patient tongue and I pulled out an embroidered hankie.


Sixpence and silver. There were prickles lighting the sky and I had been expecting you sixways, I now realize, though the last place for an unexpected meeting is Paris.


As like as Siamese peascods we were and half as green. I invited you into a steaming tea shop run by a wartime bride with carrot top hair and bad teeth. She spoke execrable French, which flattered me exceedingly, and cooed over us with hard biscuits and sticking plaster.


We slouched in our chairs and sipped the teeth-rotting brew. I told you fairy tales about marionette shows, enchanted photoplates and Stendhal's Syndrome. We marveled at the lines in our palms, glancing furtively at their well-tooled embroidery, and feared to press them together. As if we might find witches hats there, tesseracts or some uncanny meanderings of a future tense.

Der Vogelfänger bin ich ja

The scene: A small kitchen table with checkered cloth. Two small and furry creatures argue back and forth. The table is strewn with house plants, sealing wax and a golden record circa. 1977

Monologue 1 (in a furry and distressed tone):

They told us growth was like an aubergine, difficult to pronounce, but beautiful to behold. But I have partaken of that tender vegetable, darlings, and found it nightshade.

And I am flummoxed by the impossibility of being interested in normalcy for more than the time it takes to twirl a lock widdershins. I would much rather be exploring (with recent linguistic acquisitions and with minatory exposition to my poltroon brain), the realms of hey-nonny-nothing.

This eternal parturience wearies me sore.

alack.


Let me be that I am and I will a contented shena maydele be: variously (though not exclusively) a born again birdwatcher, thoughts floating even keeled through night drives and into the sunset.

(Enter a bear. It eats the creature in three bites and smacks its lips.)

disconect the dots OR what I tried to say

Memory mansions and rabbit holes seem like inversions of each other but really they interrelate beeeee-utifuly (the world upside down, the world inside out, the world upside-in?) and in ways so mazey and intestine that only a fantasamagoria of media starts to get at the heart of them.

But I truly fear that considerations keep me from the full exploration of the same consideration. That and exhaustion so deep it feels like a slow conversation with the different states you are in--am I like this? (like this, like THIS?)

Suggestions for a sestina on electronic despair:
failure
permanent
sorry
error
box
daemon

And were DOES that daemon reside? He's in there for sure though I've never dared to lift the lid. Schrodinger would have a hissy fit I'm sure.

A Cat with Hands (or some minor archana)

I owe kisses to my daring cinematographer who slashes me with jagged shadows and brings passing street lights to streak against the taxi windows. Some 3rd rate cortex homunculus now has decided that all streaky greys are unbelievably alluring and the park bench denizens are disguised Lotharios trapped into their own circular plot lines. I'd smack him if I could, but you see, he's a bit too small for smacking and much too slippery.

Morose contemplation suits you, says my reflection and I tilt the hat veil sideways and shrug on an overcoat in faded mauve.

The poetics of nightwalking are my smoky oblation and they burn up unwritten into the air: Please, you un-unknown Gods, bless yourselves in whatever way you know how and keep reality far, far away from us.

This way I forget that most times I stay in, dress up as the Page of Cups and doze.