Scenario for a Muse Cycle So Far off Broadway There Are Tide Pools in the Wings
i.
he ransomed his youth
from the cakewalks
of everyday evisceration
he spent far too much time
nailing the speculative muse
and getting nailed in return
he built a house with these nails
full of light and truth and bluster
full of mahogany and polished rosewood
a table laid with fish and fruit and fowl
deserted mornings locked in her embrace
jack rabbit afternoons
in the high canyons of his mind
armadillos in his tea
peacocks screeching
beyond the shuttered windows
in evening's golden tide
ii.
he spent far too much time
nailing the speculative muse
and getting nailed in return
nailed on the cross
of speculative imagination
the cross of passionate infinities
the cross of our lady in vain
far too much time acrobating
the combinations and permutations of words
that rumbled in his chest
and tumbled from his pen
like a blitzkrieg bundled in
the multiplicity of language
far too many hours
cat's-cradling the molecular chains
that combine and recombine
to create and slaughter reality
iii.
the gale force winds
of his majority
knocked all of his elaborate
constructions flat
he stood in the ruins
of his eccentric interpolations
iridescent feathers floating down about him
once brilliant rafters of polished rosewood
bobbing out to sea
the tears that coursed his cheeks
were creamy as pearls
crusty as the gross revenues of civilization
hot as the pitch man's inky salve
cold as porcelain after drunkenness
and fierce renunciation
iv.
when the tidewater reaches his chest
he will attempt to swim to the mainland
these shark-free waters may be
the last refuge he will know
the wreckage cast upon the shore
is nearly unrecognizable
in obsessive reveries long-drawn
as a widow's midnight lament
he may discern her touch
in the driftwood that scatters the beach
beneath the harsh caws of the wheeling
and storm-tossed gulls
he may excavate
another worm-eaten truth
only she could understand
Appeared in my collection Cold Tomorrows, Gothic Press, 1998