Help Me

 

Ausgeschnitten - Carved out 23 x 50 cm pastel - available -

THE POET

This executive of eloquence

and he’s empty as a spoon.

Still, he’d like to mount the Erechtheum;

the Himalayas to know his weight; dip his toes in the Seine.

Nobody would dare ask him where in God’s name

he was taking them ( thematically, stylistically, wherever)

or why he can’t find anyone to iron his shirts.

He dreams of fireflies in an enchanted wood above Camogli.

He dreams of tenure. He dreams of liberating

an exotic waitress—Surinam? Macao?—enslaved

by a pancake house in Soda Springs, Illinois. He dreams

of one bottle of “Opus One” Cabernet Sauvignon. Then of two bottles

he dreams. He dreams of Cordoba, the orange trees there,

the white courtyards with tiled staircases that go

nowhere unclean, whiffs of jasmine, roasted chicken, garlic.

In his current day dream

lights are being strung from everything

in a dusty piazza, Calabria, baroque village, pagan celebration

   of some Christian holy day,

1957. The air is dry. Black haired women, warm

and moist, wearing floral-print dresses, their elegant

men dressed in white shirts and woolen slacks

with hideously elongated flies. We have no idea why

we’re here but the wine is cheap

and a few of the girls, appearing to need love,

pull us down with delicate urgency

to their talcum-powdered breasts.

In the light of a bonfire, and just what one

would expect, the village church is a

crumbling wedding cake; for about fifteen-minutes—

thanks, Andy—everyone’s a poet.