In imitation of Baudelaire

 These two poems were written sometime in my mid to late twenties, around fifteen years ago, describing the fun and games my sinful lust-worm subjects me to from time to time.

I

 

I create her in images perverse and false

A direct intent as her eye meets mine

Bending by will my steady decline

 

I create her in images perverse and false

A wicked smile curls her lip

A cruel light in her eye is lit

 

I create her in images perverse and false

Her laugh clasps him in its embrace

A smile plastered upon her face

 

I create her in images perverse and false

A vicious anger flashes from her eye

Her fist clenched at her side

 

I create her in images perverse and false

First exultant then cruel

And then the flower dies

Leaving sweet sick scents

Softened petals stirred by soft wind’s sigh

I create her in images perverse and false

 

 

II

 

Bless me doctor for I have sinned

By submitting to uncertainty

To the vagaries of Fate

Being beckoned by the arm

Pale and flabby in weight

 

Bless me doctor for I have sinned

Sinking slowly in the brown gash of her womb

Kneeling to her foot

Like a bitter yellow bone

 

I give you my blood to throw in the bin

Its curse has ripened with the passing of days

Bearing fruit of hunger

A field of waste

Bless me doctor for I have sinned

 

A Knife

She plunged a knife into my heart

And as I die

I know not how or why

I was mad in trusting one unknown

Unknowing till I felt the relentless drive

Her eyes were cold

Her face a mask

My own hand holds the knife

And now I can but gaze at the pool of blood

Unable to wonder how or why

Fey

Fey from Rocky Street

With her brother Jay

Who had gold streaks in his hair

Black

She was joyous, she was fey

She stept to me sedulously

I ran away

She pronounced ‘Bullshit!’ incredulously

At all romantic displays

(addresses to Venus

In the darkening day)

She read a lot

Mostly magazines

She thought a lot

Of Sharon Stone

She was lit by the light of the city’s florid rays

How does she look now,

and how in the light of day?

untitled

gusty wind

clear light day

empty blue sky

green

Winter

The clouds grow thick today

This wind calls the bitter cold night

And over these drab faces falls a pall slate grey

Twill cast shadows upon a murky world

 

Shorn and closed fast is the limited way

Pushed through close mire and diminishing light

“And at the end a precipice” sullen voices will say

And you’ll heed them and be chilled

 

Over flowing streams grow an oily glaze

They’ll slow-thicken and deny you bitter respite

Even in blackness there’s the thrill of minds’ fey

But all is cold and dull in these misty curls

 

Let us not then talk of the joys of Spring

Nay we must trudge

And hold life within

Autumn I

 

She looked out the window

Where leaves sway and shake

An instance of light

A softened glance

Through this earth’s moving tilt

All is golden and clear

 

The swelling light now clear, now dim

Lit again in its pulse

Rose fluffs in a sky shell blue

Or a yellowing path of parchment rustling

 

Some books glow with their inner light

To meet the dimming light

 

Almost

Almost remembering

Almost in flight

An ancient age

Awoken in this light