#120 The Palace of Curtains, III

I
see the
sky reflected in



this single word
you've left
me.

#119 Le Musée d'un Nuit

It is
an over-
night stop, a
motel of
memory,
where some
of the guests
have the
provenance
to dis-
play them-
selves &
others
stay hidden
& wait
for room
service.

#118 L'Eternité

Everything that looked
on turned
away,
even
small birds
whose eyes acquired

only outline, not
the detail.
Fear
frays
the hem-
line of eternity.

Who
comes to
save us now?

#117 Les Fleurs du Mal

Je suis belle, ô mortels! comme un rêve de pierre
Charles Baudelaire: La Beauté

Sometime
I must check up on
why the statues
of antiquity
had no pupils. Would
have been easy
enough to do, a
drop of paint or
use the chisel as
an apple-corer. In-
stead left blind.
Deliberate. No need
to see who calls. In-
duce the dream of
flesh beyond the
stone through
flower wide open
& eyes wide shut.

#116 La Belle Idée

I start to tidy up
the tapestry. The unicorns
worry me. Not the one
all gleaming white &
shiny-horned, it's the
other, the one with
the shades & lycra bike
shorts who's lurking –
can unicorns lurk? – who's
hanging out then, there
by the castle gate,
waiting for some corn maiden
to come tripping out
on her way to the
fields where he will follow
& (impale her)². Only
just then the Lord
of the Castle comes
riding up with his entourage
who all have earpieces that
drift down into their
chainmail & steely eyes
that scan the crowd, a-
lighting on the unicorn
who pretends he's looking
at postcards in a market stall
before sliding back off
into the background &
back to his nighttime job
in a porn theatre where
the prurient masses pay
to watch some corny maiden
get impaled by a quadruped
with a condom/inium on his head.

#115 Memory of a Journey III

 

I know we sidetracked
to see where the
troglodytes had
lived. Other than that
think bridges gone
over, under, or
danced upon. & lines —
train, coke, telephone.
Somewhere we had
antipasto, & drank. Not
too much, just enough
to make conversation
easy & company
complicated. Towards
the end the waiter
brought a bowl of
fruit. We peeled the
oranges & fed the seg-
ments to each other.
We left the apples.

 

#114 The Interpretation of Dreams

1) The Acacia

The arid regions
of Senegal
act as an incubator
for the
gum arabic tree.

2) The Moon

A soft
moon shuffle
by the light
of the
silvery shoe.

3) The Snow

The bowl of
night is
black
& filled
with white.

4) The Ceiling

ceiling
wax
lyrical

5) The Storm

The sky
has that angular
clarity that
often precedes
a change in
the weather.

6) The Desert

Only when the
last nail
is put in place
does it be-
come apparent
that all along
it was a
mirage that he
was building.

#113 This is not an apple

It is the
most realistic
of his apples.
Slight blem-
ishes, variants
of color. Leaves
& scissor-cut
stalk. It is
what the painter
says it isn’t.

#112 Discourse on Method (1)

Having
suffered
through 17
symposia
convened
by L’Académie
Francaise
on Le Discours
de la Méthode

& fearing
he was
about to be
pushed be-
yond the
bounds of
rational
thought

Descartes
discarded
his wig
& his silk
breeches
& hose
& headed
for the
nearest
leather bar
muttering

“Who gives
a fuck what
anybody
thinks. I am
what I am.”

#111 God is no Saint

Either. It is
an absolute.

Or. It is
an absolution.

The bird
is perplexed
by the shoe
size &
is unable
to decide.

#110 Le Trait d'union

     The male                       There it
       flower                          encounters
        breaks off                   the female.
          & rises 
            to the                      Birds
              surface of             grow.
                the water.
                                            The use
of hyphens with adverbs is redundant
unless an identical adjective exists.

Late-blooming sun.