THE JOLLY TUPPER
Sun on the eiderdown
breaks tiny corners off the bedspread,
declares green plants its bidding
before summoning Fragonard's maiden
off her swing--so richly dressed
in picture from the sunlit wall.
Expensive tabac from an imported humidor
etches tiny leaves
their stems as faces against the glass,
rich aroma, trèsor, like the Jolly Tupper print
preparing his bowl,
drawing on the clay stem
as if from a height watching ships come in.
Smoke cold as blue fungus over outside buildings
follows horses with hooves to split cobblestones
stuck in the city's eye,
more than mountains around
the stone filled ravines
of the rich man's heart.
[15]
VERTIGO
We're travelling down a carnival road, are met at intersections by
varying faces: poets as eyes in collapsed black holes, even the
universe as extension of the stellar poet. Then, they are transformed,
become worm-pickers, masons, longshoremen who subsidize their
poetry with the real task at hand: making waste, laying trestles
instead of women to prove a point.
This is necessary. I'm defending it, find it both believable and
interesting. Meanwhile, troubadours and wandering minstrels eke
out a living on storybook memories, join Marco Polo if he ever
lived. Seek out the Great Khan in a box of cookies or within a
magnum of champagne depending on circumstances.
The Grand Lunar is watching. Her pallor commands true poets to
roll over, gaze at silver buttocks make a commitment to the art
beyond spray painting, ghost watching, navel gazing.
The sky is the final home of the soul, the Sage himself a wanderer
announced.
It was a warm spring evening. Lilac bounded from antler brown
twigs only recently inert. Everything dissolved at once into crying.
The world itself became a tear.
[16]