The cold ironist forgot himself
in the marsh of his thought.
Only the marl, the tangled oakweed
of his intelligence had swam
out from the safe weeds of his disdain.
His attitude became an exposition
of exploding light. A chronic sedition.
The green-and-yellow fire leaf.
The chair of the garden, etc.
He was torn between two truths,
neither of which were of vast import
to the writing that lay blank before him.
The more he wrote himself out,
the blinder light became by the page.
So he started writing the history
of wurzels, massaging the gellatin
solution of his coral teeth
in a brandy glass, which
set him dreaming of the proverbial
convolutions of the rotted mind,
of which each unholy word is part
as the swift banality of blossoms are part.
His stride from the neighborhood
was in fact the neighborhood.
Comely, full of vulgar properties,
and politest indifferences.
Only the scent was juniper, hayseed
and even some bitter vitriol, like a briefcase
opening on the sea.
MAY 2007