pith…

A HISTORY POEM

Inside this? A ballade for the popinjay—

Inside this a ballade of her blue china—

His blue of an enphebe prince-ling, bulls and mountains

And her white of froth and fountains in a park

Where peach blossoms grow

As a bookseller baits his breath for April—

And the princess wouldn’t shed a tear for his swift dismissal.

The poor man is fearful and forgettable.

He waits, making sure she hasn’t ignored him.

Chilly and dripping, with a porcelain moral

And her heart is rubber anyway—

Unbreakable if it exists at all.

So she pulled away from the small water—

The towels crushed her shoulders

Under lissome shadows of white mountains

That touched her ankles at the rapid bath—

(Contrapposto’s ill effects on the cuckhold.)

I was uxorious. Isn’t she the ship, her head proud

As a prow gone down slow in a room of gracelessness—

From the internal oblique to the toes?

The wind wipes her neck and rotten cheek.

Whatever is there in her fluttering hair

The curse compels.

Ticklish and thin from crinoline and mint

Those locks ungathered and untamed as wind—

They wipe her neck and rotten cheek again

Though diminished in swift extremity, still extant:

On point she puts me in, our tongues were numb

She rendered me hindered and dumb

Like steam she made me rise off

The witless weather and come back quickly—

Foam tethered fast to a thin tree.

And just as florid I am woozy and tired

From the drunken bustle I alone desired…

The chisel drifted, carving her throat to drink.

Rendered her in mid-air and light, distinct.

Here is the blush and sward, the clang

Of hammers and clang of the forge, the armor

Of her word— a nocturne’s worth, a sorry alto

In sandy wind, an expiring grotto of sea.

Because she did not step but rather lit

Upon each pad— so paused in mathematic pattern

(And geometrically dismissed the same).

Simple, but for the spray of hair that sways

To and fro and stops— her turns intended

The music is bellowing cadenza full of bowings and slaps

These blowsy money notes—

Sachet and stroke

Spin a delirious twist and I stand by

From the thistles and bushes, the darkling thrushes

(And all the little insects at her feet)…

Anima is the wind against me now as clouds endow

Other clouds with a flourish to and fro, drapery

All around her like folly twists around a graven tale

Unraveled. Grown dim with snow and dangerous—

I couldn’t know I was in for her deeper textures

Like a chestnut shell or the nectarskinny sea’s translucence.

Waveless

I am absinthe-minded with my swollen musket.

I held her whole through blue glass. I gripped my hale

Palm forward, without one bone mote of a moment—

She gripped me back.

I fell asleep while she walked away smooth and curious

Hands running along empty drumlins—

A bubble moving through her blood.

I misunderstood the middle throat of her stupid song.

I saw her from three trees deep—

Her eyes rimmed with hurried aplomb.

All thanatopsy-turvy as lace on the agate gates—

While a wind lifted her exquisite veil—

Like a breath from the flapping of devils tails.