New Onslaught

Pastoral:

The Territory

Uluru: from all sides, a giant. Its silence
a darker crawl than ordinary earth. Above the dim
blue rim, Venus observes. Those strict
cactus men. Were their mansioned shoulders
burnt after all, moss scarcely
more so than the serrated cirrus,
empty rings of heaven-—
Soberly beyond, a clean shot
through and through: the Moon.

How could I not be here, swaddled in a brown swag,
face chilled in night’s open casket? This moon has no memory
of firming the sands into this place,
of my small print.

In a bush to the right, a more constant
clarity: all snakes in this territory,
incensed, green-green, coiled or not, are mortal
& can render a Eurydice out of any body.


* * *

A Historical Incident:

An Origin of Theatre

I

Catherine the Great dragged her great dresses
around the young wooden deck as he, the favoured
Potempkin who’d spent her golden apples
on springtime whimsies, caught the staccato
of her wooden heel for signs of ennui
at the play of peasants’ cavorting
in the green fallow fields.


II An Origin of Tourism

—At least until the next day,
when the same peasants (at a stable rate
of imported grain) would arrive on an earlier convoy,
doff their new stiff hats and take to dancing,
rousing up their redressed horses, bartering
for borrowed goods propped up on shiny coppered
barrels, boistering with the expected Ukrainian
gestures.

Tired red boots kick up from under
the bright bucolic skirts. Unscripted
embroidery on their part may have occurred.
An imperceptible bow for the faceless
empress on a barge (whose name lettered
on the prow they could not fathom)
whose genuine Venetian fan was fluttered
above her silken ears during a springtime repose.


* * *

The Body:

Post facto Honorarium

You look like
the rest of them
Now, a cracked
plaster head
nodding
on a shelf
of retired Caesars


* * *

Three

Baoding the simple slaughterer,
so manifest in the Way, no longer
saw the mess of gristle & bone, fat & flesh
in heaving sacs, perspirant furs—-the ordered
universe was apparent to him amid the sangfroid
spray, in the unclouded quadrant of a calf’s eye.

I have sliced open the silver envelope of a fish
from tail to throat. Run toothpicks across the gelid spines.
Symmetry and translucence in both acts. I have caressed
the spoon-like curve of a cat skull. Noted placement
of the two eyes, finish of nose, pink mouth & pale incisors
that point to the chambered heart;

You wrote to us outside about life
in your practicing desert--alfalfa, rousing
the dead white men, how brown cows
are quartered into beef: “Incidentally,
most of you would make excellent
candidates for dicing.”


* * *

Persona:

Persona

The mask has held many tongues.
Some crudely, others with the slicker
intonations of a native singer.
Straight, expensive teeth.
Lips used to rouging. Eyes desiring
like any man. Brows and back stoic for the road,
cool lips and feet for the rewards of the road.

Complete, its pout touches food and drink
with reverence; its clerestories look clear
to this soul; its cheeks are where real
tears descend their quivering stair, where
my mother, after another homecoming,
kisses me goodnight.


* * *
Lines breaks a bit arbitrary and tardy, mostly due to silly Blogger's refusal to honor tab placements, untrimmed thoughts, and 14-line limit of assignment (which I've tried not to flout--not with full fans unfurrowed at ubiquitous moons anyway)...

And where are those glorious colours I used to be able to steep in these jottings and lend them an air of flair? Blogger has hidden them and refuses to acknowledge they ever existed: "EastAsia has always been at war with Eurasia".