Medieval Romance
1. The bogeyman
(Come to witness)
Skin, 8 lbs in a mordant tub
with eyes and teeth and hair
The bloody organs
That I dragged back from Graceland to Ephesus
Because you asked me to get something.
(because: I forgot what you asked for)
So I plopped it down on the dinner table.
You said, take it back.
You wanted a kiss.
I brought back an entire champagne bottle.
What had happened to the arc, though
the arc of the eyes
that thing coming down from the
Coal chute?
Where was the unconditional,
the golden goose?
What was the value, in fact?
(Didn’t I want to touch
your body? didn’t I want it to be
a real body I could touch?)
They said, you’ll see.
It was all overcast.
I wanted to tell the architect of that thing
“You’re doing a great job.”
2. Sears Catalog
(To have and to hold)
I forgot which sect made this heresy
The Manicheans or the Pelagians or the Arians
the Donatists, maybe even the Marcionites
but it was fallacy
To test the scripture
(will it be whole, will it be broken)
To cherish the beloved
(Will it be beloved–
If the scripture be broken/whole)
Since no oath could resist questions
Since no word could resist
quaestus, quaesitum, quaerere ( to seek/to gain)
(The etymology of things being simple
The plain sense of things being
Mechanical)
And since there are things here
The things that you see on page 20 lingerie models
blue and green chemises
purple camisoles
beige and white
full-figure, 24 hour, cross-your-heart Playtex
Page 150
Garden tractors
The men who ride them more Determined w stamina than I
More Balanced/robust
(Stronger)
And trust me
Nor could I refuse (to see/k you), when they read me the note
you left in the copula
By Zeus and Hera
By her sister
By the twin sheep of Solomon
Recognizable as teeth
I could keep fighting to find a home in that mouth
I could be a garden tractor
I could be a model
A Weasel
You could use me to cut your lawn and
To drag the dead carcass of the dear
Out into the daylight (where it now sits falsely on the steps, buzzing
us with fake plastic flies and brimming over with a safe kind of
confidence: w/ stoicism, w/ idealism, w/ menace,)
And then skin it
A rug for the floor of our motor-home
Hope/Vestigial
This thing not seen in a long time
3. Familiar
(Hermeticism goes underground)
This note seemed to be excommunicated.
Ex-Commissioned.
In code.
I am your friend.
Fundamentally, though, you are branded. You are always wrong,
but now you are wrong like a child, you are perverse, you are again
the prodigal who has not been forgotten–although you yourself
have forgotten–to close the latch. An important object, in this case
a coat, the entire coat of a derelict lamb, a black-lamb lamby-lamb
I am a lamb dost thou know… must have escaped.
As punishment they consign you to the dump (the purgatory)
where you are paid to continue your experiments.
Alchemy 101:
Beaker on beaker on alembic
Surfactant on hydrosol
Black - white - red
The clean with the unclean
godly with the ungodly
fish of the air and fowl of the sea
Matter into unmatter
something into nothing
Something, into miraculous
Aspired to in the apparatus
Conjoined to look like
Liquid
as the state of a gas/
(water) at approximately 39 degrees Fahrenheit at sea level weighing
one gram per cubic centimeter
Our Medicine given to him to whom wee ought to give it,
makes true gold and Silver
The twin horns of sleep…
This doesn’t make sense. Aren’t you a man, don’t you want to perform
your experiments in secret, with a woman? Aren’t you a woman? Don’t
you?
Lie with me
My Life is over
I’m doing a little
It’s complicated
4. Death Penalty
(So horny)
The interventions never ceased, they just turned into other categories
Terror campaigns
Acid rains
(The ivory gate, the horned gate:
Which do you prefer?)
And worry. Worry all the time.
Worry
we were all as chattel to the one high church.
As bloated lambs, as stock
(a flock) constantly led up a green hill
and down
Where was that wolf
how many owls
can you leave the light on
oh god
Much later in history
came history, with George Lucas and light-sabers
a fierce cry for the public good
the private interest
full speed ahead
(such interest)
(notice the light-dark shading his works,
The permanent value he assigns to the village)
Thus spake the Death-Star
the incessant, mechanical chimera
Thus spake Darth Vader
(As opposed to Georg Lukács
James Earl Jones)
everyone in front of the camera
Thus spake the police, too
(Whether they knew it or not)
Protecting us from other disturbances
And distress
Protecting us
O you were fighting a dragon
You were fighting Grendel
Grendel’s mother, God,
Captain Ahab,
Jack Sparrow,
Brad Pitt as Achilles/the Devil,
Chuck Norris and
Jesse James
Now Jail. Now Real terror.
Suddenly, when they need a vein, a Judas, they can’t find one.
5. Medicine
(Besieged)
Enter the speakers.
Speakers we are tired.
Speakers go home.
The ways we would go on speaking.
Yes I will call again
Yea, verily, a whole system against the one or two of them
who protest
Floodgates
Larger armies amassed
We might lose our jobs
The cells:
Call soon
Call
Call poison control.
Call it won’t hurt you.
Call
the thing we are doing we need
to do
Call
they are climbing the ladders
They are here
Imagine that man in his underwear.
Imagine that one.
Imagine
that little role and the frightness in the
(Imposter.)
Imagine the frightness and distress they will feel
on opening you
Yea
Verily, a
White Little Cavity in you
A Parturition
No ache
: No/ Arms.
:/ Excess.
Now the pill-poppers and the pushers
Are jaundiced
They are throwing everything back-up
Prescriptions are no longer Hi-jacked.
This world not
Thrown up perpendicular and hided
Out of our skins
we are lifted
(Or that was one possible end)
6. Topical Genie
(A Redux)
Take Care
O someone to claim you
When I am done with you
O someone / not Onan
When I am done with you
How no one
Has an idea
Of what pleases you
What you might agree to
When you’re not afraid
There are some things you just shouldn’t say
but you say them to me
(How do you mean it)
Unremembered are drops,
Gross vapors and the excellent light up there
which failed to materialize
So often
(Some words are distilling in me…)
These are the drops.
These are the drops.
(Now some planets.)
Now I fear I am going back into the ship
Now I can see you
Now say goodbye
Oh Jacob,
When I think about all that air in a jar it takes my breath away.
I swear, I fall flat on my back.
Not a single false note.