MiPo Poetry Board Best of 2002

Jejune Babble
(For Mikado)

Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew
It was the spirit we sought and knew
That we should ask this often as she sang.
                                          Wallace Stevens


That you not be a seed
in the desert, that you not
suffer the gnaw of vernal locust,
that you not perish
like a bookmark
in the deluge,

go babble.

Dude, your woman is right there,
right there harnessing the cello, shoving the air
with cello, winking, spreading her cobra

mantle. Christ the tiger sits down
to piano, claws the keys, angry sonatas
out, the moon is commanded to drop
like dove shit on your scalp, a heaven
you must immediately wipe. Still

babble, babble so that posies
depose dark lords, babble
so that orcs fall from hillocks,
babble a trillion cauchemares
spiked, brambled, nettled over
with beauty, hard beauty, beauty
that donkey-kicks the balls. All

is beauty, yet your demon is right there!
Not a beast of beauty but of pain.
Take a spoon, soup size, scoop him
up and swallow and maybe
vomit a swallow.
There is no voice like thine.
There is no voice.

Detox

Had you left me with more
than a note and a full pack,
Had you cuffed me to the bed,

pumped a liter of your morphine
self in a pouch, run a tube
from it and stuck it in my neck

dripping--bitch I’d still have you:
half awake half naked airborne
grinding on your ghost, Marilyn

without you my body clams
the sheets, Marilyn without you
sweat puddles the mattress

Marilyn the bedsprings rust
Marilyn the bed tips Marilyn
without you the frame creaks,

snaps, dumps me on the carpet.
I've got fire, but the ashtray's
too high up. Marilyn my lips

want your nipples and neck
Marilyn my lungs pull harder
than ever, Marilyn I will burn.

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