I
Death dulls the gleam with posed
Solomonic green.
Breath’s exploded hush, from between crushed
lips, kissed back by petrine air.
Gowned with fire the shadows balk,
humiliate their audience of one.
Rehearsed, glimpsed, and led astray,
Nothing’s specter chokes
on its own dust,
silhouetted in the cat-like curl
of guarded sleep.
II
And on an April morning
a pale pretty man
grave his painted prettiness
sat silent at her knees.
And read her from the book
of himself, in his walk, in his madness.
Absentminded deathsman of whom
what artifacts, savaged in what field?
Peatsmoke in his princely head,
forcing the child who bites his chest
among the invisible lilies.
III
Some surrender!
Of faint Cordelia-cries,
Ophelia-orisons,
lapis lazuli girlfriends,
sullen in their wisdom,
mythic to the sensual 6th degree.
‘Oh my Lord, accept the brackets
of my anticipation, my response.’
Once more ensnared,
hauled down by pretty witches,
virginal spittle dishonoring his wound.
He smoothes his torn jacket,
observes the dry bob of his reputation
(himself a ghost’s son …..
….. and a calypso of cool pudeur).