a malediction and a prayer

(A slightly moldy souvenir from more salad days)

* * *

Exorcism IV

This madness comes and goes, a casual guest
in my roomy house, where the gales freely
skirt curtains and depress cardboard protests
from meandering Intellect who merely
concedes--nothing can be done, that the thirst
will not cease as the want for oranges
in winter does not wane for some who nurse,
even if given snappy cartes blanches
to the simple apple, noble melon.

How to rid of this difficult guest whose
name leaves me fevered as ears rent open,
whose absence lets in Sense and lesser truths?
Old ague, adieu: this heart has weak walls,
wearied of you who do not pay its tolls.


* * *

A Selfish Supplication (revised from a two year old draft)

I cannot take off
this seamless coat
to swim as is

I am not yet
a loaf risen to crust
a melon to loll off the vine

I am not straight
to stand
an arrow docked with purpose

Do not knick that nimble
strand between me and she, kin
cut by your own design.

Yes ashes fly and new souls
rush to surface to keep the world
moving through the great diorama

Of birth and burial. But she
was my first uttered word
says my heart the ancient hook.

Yes everything
is on loan: I have none
but the abstract things

she placed in me as certainly
as the constellations you
put to sea.

Yet, do not
vanish the beam
from navel to navel

arc. Or else we thirteen left
to winter in coarse linens, slunk
too low, will not know

That new lumniary
more Polaris than Polaris--
Not my mother. Anoint

another, tender of this garden,
and for what morsel it's worth,
I'll return your ancient hook.