As though in Cupid’s college she had spent
Sweet days a lovely graduate, still unshent.
Ungeschändet. Unspoiled. Still virtuous. Unhandled. Wrapper intact. With the bloom still on. Plummy. Keep your grimy mitts off my unblemished epithets. A girl with loose accommodations.
Human flesh liable to spoilage. Unspoiled youth. Refrigerate to prevent spoilage. Morgue locker. Age. Liver spots. Discoloration. Like darkened banana peel.
The air was full of seditions, discords, Islamic fervor. Boiling out of my blood.
Patterned animal. Tattooed floozy. Pale smoke. Smooth skin. Curved white instep. Sandals.
Saracen moon. Her voice was at sweet tremble in mine ear. He rose like a throbbing star at those voluptuous accents, ethereal, flushed. Divine high piping Pahlavi. He melted into her dream, solution sweet, as the rose blendeth its odor with the violet. Mid the sapphire heaven’s deep repose. Thank you, Keats. As she dozes before her iPad, hard drive crammed with medical knowledge, criminal justice, political science, Eastern languages, medieval romances, radical declarations, terrorist chicanery, recipes for explosives. Robust youth. Fair maid. Planted at the Hunter College Classics table, kenning Ovid with serious mien.
Splinters From Exile. Name for a volume of poetry. Vituperation, sparks and splinters, flashing bile: splendida bilis. Splinter XXLVII, dated July 6 etc. etc.: “I carved this splinter out of my flesh while sucking down coffee in the College lounge” etc. A grey old man in a caravansary. Accredited seraglio for those seeking advanced disgrace. Institution of higher leering.
A veritable produce aisle full of plump, perky comestibles, untouched by human hands, blooming around the room in air-conditioned contentment, in the apple orchards of knowledge, releasing their odor to the air vents. Refrigeration to retard spoilage. Scented soaps to retard "soilage." And here and there a few well-preserved (or just plain retarded) old parties, as transparent as soap bubbles, trying to look invisible as they punch the return key on their laptops, staring grimly into cyberspace.
Splinter cells, revolutionary cadres, political assassination.
A brilliant poet and scholar ("What Heidegger wrote on Nietzsche makes everything attempted since—extended efforts at least—without exception, seem like fluff and blatherskite. The field of Nietzsche scholarship/discipleship is strewn with dandelion clocks like Homer’s Contest") a wise and thoughtful teacher, and a man of deep and abiding kindness and quiet modesty, said the author in his fake obituary.
Hunter College. Young women stretching like panthers all over the place.
Orangutans and kudus. The Hunter College zoo.
Things I cleave to. Caterpillar eyebrows. All fur and ripple and electric rustle. The haze, dust and bloom on things. Young women.
Cold indifference. Face painting. Age. These things do me despite. They make ruin of my charms (carmina, little songs). Disappointment all I endeavor ends.
Lost in reflection, I plunge headlong into smooth tabletop, Lake Formica. The floor disappears, the ceiling opens above my head. I am spilled, poured out like water, surrendered to the earth. I flow into intricacies. Mighty in girth, a tall milk-white cloud towers like an ivory and silver god behind the Seagram’s building. I feel the sky printed on my skin, I cleave to it (surface adhesion). I am tattooed with clouds, moutonné.
Go, little songs (carmina). Let me not rub the bloom off you.
7/6/2014
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