Saturday, December 19, 2009

Primeval Wiseguy*


* e.e. cummings
238

Stolen mud a fancy horde
Born as an oriental sham
Everlasting and sticks to everything (except sticks)
Damn! We missed burnishing our foul beards and instead
Exchanged them for fields
Of wheat-elemental to the dancing of our bellies.
We watched from a distance as they burned.
Now I say- see us shattered sniffing
Some fancy drug throbbing
While the butcher regards what’s left of the brain
And snout and root of all evil.
You snipe, you blade, you happy ape,
The earth awaits a whiff
A vision of a stunned and roaring sun
It flaps against the back of these mere words.
As windows fade the finger hands
Play with fallen sailors like rubies
And other darkened stones.
The famous toil rightly large
Bright and singing morning’s shoulder
Where Moses waves archangels, enslaved.
239

Father hours
Late of old shabby book
You are as dear to me as you
Can be, resting there in the flames.
Paris came too late and all the secrets
stolen, soft Helen now
Lies beneath the beekeeper and
My love is only a folding feeling
Waiting in the Shadows
Learning to live a life without fire.

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