April 16, 1977 (Viewed from April 16, 2022)
Night was Vanta-black as Manischewitz voluptuous purple—
serving as minor-fine, adolescent contraband—
squalled and squandered,
thundered and bolted—
unbottling two thirsts, our throats;
while her hair was gold varnished platinum
due to the streetlamp gleam wafting across the harbour strand
to where we were stranded on a blanket,
our morals tarnished by a tape player crooning
Springsteen’s sultry, “New York City Serenade”;
and her hair—each gold-silver strand—
glinted like the stars tinting the beach sand,
where our marooned selves edged
lonesome toward pseudo-marital Coupling—
the sabotage of morals for the sake of warmth—
each of us conducting a marronage
that’d allow each pelvis to rampage, savage,
not-at-all under-age
as we’d discover is true for all lovers….
The incoming tide was a bassoon—
sounding our bass needs:
To moan, to groan—
like forlorn foghorns,
warning us,
“No longer lie alone!
Go on! Go on!”
Verses Adapted from Sor Juana de la Cruz
71: Para cantar a la música de un tono y baile regional….
Upon Lisa’s silk, white-gowned front,
Love has scrawled a protruding line—
A love ballad saga pregnant
With Virginity’s curved decline.
Her tan recedes as her wardrobe
Expands with ivory this and that
To dress with white the half a globe
Whose state belies her virgin stat.
(Without protection is her state—
A certain condition a man
Prevents if he be celibate,
Policing lusts before they spawn.)
Now, white is Lisa’s Purity—
An alabaster Camouflage—
A tale that ends with Security:
The newborn’s a virgin Mirage.
50: En que responde la poetisa … al conde de la Granja
That devil plays incognito
who drafts a fiendish poem—
quatrains inked blackest negro,
to craft Hell as “Home, Sweet Home”;
so indelibly indigo,
laughably hyperbolic, diabolical chrome.
Arrogantly seductive?
Defence against the lewd
suggestion’s unproductive,
cos “pretentious” is the “prude.”
The Clamour hammering ears is conductive
to l’amour wherein four thighs get glued.
So cunning’s the quartet
coupled in unscrupulous Glee—
of fucking none forget—
Succulence tucked twixt each knee
feminine, where the jocund male may jet
cream conducting Fecundity.
What is the Attraction
that pulls the sexes to join
beyond any Distraction,
to grind groin into groin?
It must be Satisfaction
of Sin’s debts via each newborn’s coin.
19: Puro amor….
Attracted to a pencil—
(as I’m separated
from ink’s utensil)—
I’ll see this page placated
by grisaille strokes and streaks
even if “gross Disgrace”
may seem my lead-shade peaks,
curves, and furrows that place
dull letters ambitiously—
at appreciable Risk—
on sheets where, religiously,
lyrics fade to feints arabesque.
This writing lands feathery
on vellum that’s arid.
Ink is tough, leathery,
but pencil’d script falls flaccid.
And yet I must protest—
in black words—holocausts,
splitting wide each struck breast,
turning lovers into ghosts—
shades shorn of all lustre—
turned fog-dull or cloudy ash,
whose brightness is now bluster—
like lightning’s gloom-struck flash.
The purest love needs ink?
Well, I pencil sharp Truth,
lest Love be lost at brink,
where ink fades fast to Ruth.
For Guy Mizrahi
Either as angel or as vampire,
the poet procures wings.
How else to enable
the fellowship of flighty horses?
To spur on the animal’s
unfinished evolution?
To be workhorse, then warhorse,
then Pegasus.
“Trancelating” the Verses of Agnes Fong (Lucero)
(pace Agnes Fong)
XI.
Love’s muscle? The heart:
Pure conglomerations of stone—
so many minerals pulverized,
marbled,
into a volcanically forged mass….
Or is that muscle my manhood—
livid—
liver-coloured as the heart—
or the shade of once-fresh-fallen leaves
gone gangrene—
secretly black where earth
has bitten?
No matter how iron-like is my manhood—
that spade—
it is decapitated giddily
when Coitus-justified
(so snugly, smugly fit for that endeavour),
so my vocabulary degenerates
to grunts and moans,
so unlike the swishy speechlessness
of Ralph Gustafson whisking the leaves
from his North Hatley (QC) porch,
yet ogling the azure beauty
of his Betty’s eyes—
an inheritance from the Alhambra’s grottos….
They say that orgasm is kin
to abrogated Death—
or to Death, abrogating;
that we thus disembark—
even as we park—
in the midst of a maelstrom
that liquidates language—
so that we’re swallowed up in that storm—
sunk down fathomlessly,
if not abysmally….
Still, I wager that my body’s not merely
a meaty penitentiary,
nor any woman a widow
(perfumed merchandise),
so long as the marbled heart
never dilutes its magma,
nor my iron-hard manhood
ever delete its molten core,
and never morgued is our nakedness
(always plain is our nakedness)—
our eyes open, our mouths ajar—
even as Gustafson clears away the dreary leaves
besetting his porch,
then fires off words hitting paper
as jetting, jetty lava,
so Betty strips off widows’ weeds
to lounge—
such virgin, GILF snow,
in her husband’s epithalamium—
herself eternally beautiful,
so my eyes peel away,
tearing….
[23 novembre mmxxi]
XLV
Like a tiger’s avocado eyes—
like the penumbra of a lime—
like the sombrero of an olive—
like a cigarillo gone gangrene—
like stippled drops of absinthe
(that character a bar counter)—
like Othello, green-eyed demon
facing off against green-sleeved Mona—
like the Quietude depicted by Van Gogh—
like the trembling balance of green grapes
gone Native in retsina
or in vinho verde.
[22 / 1 / 22]
Après Dennis Hunkler and Gregory Stasiak:
The volcanic gutsiness of the horse forcing hooves to bear your eyes along this line
collapses your suspended Belief,
and the torment of stopping short
shivers your eyeballs—
in elegant Turbulence:
the partition between you and the stallion
is quicksand…
Difficult brightness is that page Gregory and Dennis shadow!
“Riders on the Storm,” not at all cunctatorial,
in their Canuck tweed,
they tease eye and ear
like a tsetse fly,
as their black words
get whited out—
just as lightning
obscures storm clouds via resonant brilliance.
