"Hot Pressed" (FOUND POEM)

Postcard to Melissa Poem

FOR THE OSAMA BIN LADEN DEATH-SONNET CHALLENGE

for Jay Huddleston

Now that you have failed I’m free to try

ANYTHING and win. Love and fame

to somethingness arise straight from that dream

of bullets swarming round your eye.

My muse is good for a few more fly-

overs in her cheap unnecessary drone.

That desert is my park, my pleasure dome,

my vomitorium,

my Versailles.

You’ve failed so utterly that I am free

to fail as well as thee, and to rejoice.

We’ll swag it over the country, this drunken load,

our wild doxology sung by every voice;

our strangely-worded boast; our plea

to the lost explosive, not to explode.

look and see

My poem "SUPERVIELLE" on

AFTERLIFE

I think the afterlife
will be a comedy,
but if it's not
that will be funny too.

ORDOVICIAN FRAGMENTS II

the ‘Holos’ Papyrus

‘Holos’, if he in fact existed, was the least saturnine of the Ordovician poets.

--Nicanor Huerqueque Húesped, Los Poetas Ordovicianos, Mexico City, 1922

1.

I am Holos the poet

I can predict the movements of squirrels

the behavior of mountains

the speeches of half-wits

and, if you like, the waywardness of girls

2.

…her smile

a forced, minimal painfulness

to gauge the absence…

3.

and will you turn upon wine-stained sheets

for a riveting tale told by Holos?

…the smell of incest,

that rank folly,

the wealthy divested of slaves

and terrible murder

4.

She is like an estuary that sleeps not

in the vastness of its bed.

She has heard too many of your songs,

and those of too many others, in many an accent,

in dead and dying tongues

made further unintelligible

by shifty regional dialects

5.

so you have heard

6.

I wish I’d never met your mother

7.

her skin…

breathing…

secrets from the future

8.

And has all joy, therefore, been erased

from the world? No. But enough

to make random things poignant.

Childhood joys? Yes, Holos,

they were the first to go.

9.

You can’t conquer me: I’m drunk.

10.

like ravenous chickens and goats

11.

leaves…

shining bright, all forgotten…

they conquer me like whores

12.

What are you doing?

Never mind. I was only asking

as a formality. Go ahead,

finish what you are doing, whatever it is.

In any case,

your silence told me everything.

13.

…always hypersensitive

to the absence of food…

…she sent up a quiet groan…

…after the war

14.

Remember the body parts

we found in storage

15.

Juno will be pissed

I heard her cough

I saw her wing

behind the mountain

ORDOVICIAN FRAGMENTS

I’m not entirely convinced there ever were any Ordovician poets.

--Odaxius

*

Undiscoverable metrical principles do not necessitate non-existence.

--Schülerin

1.

We counterfeited ourselves

for your disport

*

2.

the paper shield

cut a marvelous dash

but the real test was too much for it

*

3.

emboldened by crashing noises

they continued

*

4.

fainting

in the drunken verdure

*

5.

he was but

an exaggeration

of dust

*

6.

that noisome freight

long abandoned on our shores

*

7.

I don’t know any

girls named Cosima

*

8.

I did not even mind when you thrashed me

sneaking up on me while I was asleep

*

9.

...criminal.

...on the other hand

these are all qualities I admire

*

10.

these Milanese sirenes

*

11.

her brilliant procedures

*

12.

the slinking baroness...

….upside down

.....bitch-house

*

13.

...degraded...

rural vats

of dodgy wine

*

14.

the monster’s eye…

dwelt too close

to its nostril

*

15.

corpses everywhere

*

16.

they linger at or near the shrine

*

17.

O gods! the self-importance

of those in mid-career

*

18.

a great priest he may be

but I don’t like his children

*

19.

the bitch whose fingers

smelled of sulphur

*

20.

I am not completely insane

*

21.

false entertainments

wrong enchantments

*

22.

something soft

falling down the stairs