10-02-2016, 06:39 PM
Exceptional Beasts
These are the tired themes:
my love, my sex, my dreams.
O Life, you are a lion's den,
all love is for the children:
there is no sex among the grown,
and all my dreams are wicked.
Slabs of meat glued to the bone
and never fillets -- only enjoyed
raw, red. Water -- how I fear it!
as if my pride can be sustained
by a dry well on this sweltering plain.
O Love, you are an eclipse,
with God the sun and sex the moon
and life in your shadow a dream.
How I long for egress, however rare
these seven minutes in heaven are.
Hell could not possibly be
how plants eat, how men see!
You demand too much of me,
demand I take off my thinking cap,
demand I pull out my taroc pack.
Can't you be content
with my rose-tinted lens?
O Sex, you are a flute duet,
and my dreams are the flautists.
I am bathing naked in a stream,
my long hair (for my hair is long,
the air about my neck is how I hide it)
flowing freely with the fishes' eggs.
The huntress is stunned. I cannot believe
what stuns her is the song my dreams recall.
No, it is lust, red and black,
and the notes we watch dance in the vivid air
land like drops of dew upon her hair.
Now, my love, let us mingle
in this water like hot blood
prefers to mingle in the dark,
on black stone, on the arc
that resurrects the night. Let embers
turn to flame, fire
turn to ash! Let the audience
suffer an unresolved chord
until the Liebestod --
O Dreams, you are a television screen.
Barred by the distance that is sleep, I watch
the old conclusion: Hippomenes winning Atalanta
with golden apples gifted by a goddess.
I cry out: do not forget! do not forget!
But the pyres remain unlit
and the show goes on as written.
In Cybele's temple, they elope,
and in Cybele's temple, Ovid sings
another song of metamorphosis --
the curtain falls. Static
fills the signal. The lesson
sticks out: for us
exceptional beasts,
childhood must end cold.
Now let the summer of my verse begin.
These are the tired themes:
my love, my sex, my dreams.
O Life, you are a lion's den,
all love is for the children:
there is no sex among the grown,
and all my dreams are wicked.
Slabs of meat glued to the bone
and never fillets -- only enjoyed
raw, red. Water -- how I fear it!
as if my pride can be sustained
by a dry well on this sweltering plain.
O Love, you are an eclipse,
with God the sun and sex the moon
and life in your shadow a dream.
How I long for egress, however rare
these seven minutes in heaven are.
Hell could not possibly be
how plants eat, how men see!
You demand too much of me,
demand I take off my thinking cap,
demand I pull out my taroc pack.
Can't you be content
with my rose-tinted lens?
O Sex, you are a flute duet,
and my dreams are the flautists.
I am bathing naked in a stream,
my long hair (for my hair is long,
the air about my neck is how I hide it)
flowing freely with the fishes' eggs.
The huntress is stunned. I cannot believe
what stuns her is the song my dreams recall.
No, it is lust, red and black,
and the notes we watch dance in the vivid air
land like drops of dew upon her hair.
Now, my love, let us mingle
in this water like hot blood
prefers to mingle in the dark,
on black stone, on the arc
that resurrects the night. Let embers
turn to flame, fire
turn to ash! Let the audience
suffer an unresolved chord
until the Liebestod --
O Dreams, you are a television screen.
Barred by the distance that is sleep, I watch
the old conclusion: Hippomenes winning Atalanta
with golden apples gifted by a goddess.
I cry out: do not forget! do not forget!
But the pyres remain unlit
and the show goes on as written.
In Cybele's temple, they elope,
and in Cybele's temple, Ovid sings
another song of metamorphosis --
the curtain falls. Static
fills the signal. The lesson
sticks out: for us
exceptional beasts,
childhood must end cold.
Now let the summer of my verse begin.
