What if?

What if I opened my mouth
and spilled some shapeless rigmarole
like tongues, but suddenly it changed to Mandarin
and woke up dogs that slept by monoliths
inside their perfect circles?

Grapes would drop like punch marks into clover,
write manifestos with their stems
and burn the vines, exalt the trees, posit flames
that cannot soften Billy's ice-cream
tipping its sugar cone, his hair

tousled by flatbeds on a rural highway. Houses put on
their gaudy plumage: gray stoles, orange feathers.
Flat tones stink, ash bleats its siren.
Abstracted to a giant room
the monkeys hammer into oblivion.

The mad king makes his quietus, words wrested
from his throat, betrayed at last by you
that suppose a world without objects,
relations without boundaries. The bishop's
lips curl, the smug dimple

a few mere inches below the eye winking
its satisfaction. A suicide slouches
close to white cliffs, a demon fudges
with a handkerchief. He will say nothing
in the end and in the end he says nothing.

Nonetheless tall camels
sidle through the eyes of needles
at every imaginary prick
brandished as a bodkin.
Pigs circle or form a wedge,

platonists lick their pencils. Clock-hands
spin berserk, dogs revolve,
sink to the shoulders in tenuous loam.
The towers melt
but Billy lives.

x

Art Schmart

The snow-capped mountains make me lean sedately,
and in those silver nets the scalloped fish
make spineless u's, their O-gapes yawning brightly.
The lights splayed on that wedge of water flash
in all directions, and the boats are laded.
Past banquets or at cornucopias
I get no appetite; by many-shaded
apples and pears I only hear the buzz

of flies; at Titian's nudes I'm merely wanton.
I read the sacred names, but just get hotter;
I need the sheen of sweat, that primal odor.
A sonsy woman at the water fountain
leans down to sip, causing a sudden gush
of adulation, and a secret blush.

x

Faking it

The fudging happens right under your thumbs,
precisely when you start listening. Can
you hear the clarinets, the brown bassoons,
the grainy umber of flutes?
Such sylvan tones denote
particular images: at sleepy pools birds
flutter and drink. The trees themselves, of course,
are essential, but even more so the odd modernist
enjambment. The forest,
the pastoral instruments, vanish.
The birds are pretty props, the pools
merely contextual, and presto,
the tink of hammers rests
and a shanty
looms like a stadion.

But you are paying attention
and your determination
should pay, though it won't. The sun impales itself
on a weathercock or crucifix, night settles
over a church or silo. So what?
Somebody's blonde
opens a basket under willows. The lake is orange
and surprises, like fire. The swans swan
in lazy flotillas. You want a waltz, that's
up to you. I'm sure you'll make the obvious choice
and I thrive on such distractions,
nudge you through a different doorway,
famish you with pears
that dangle inches from your mouth
which really should protest.

Since you insist on playing the soft touch
I will admit something: Beyond the hills
where pines bristle, in a mauve
oblivion occasionally relieved
by the spit of contrails (fake clouds
ejaculated backwards) which might spell
some sweetheart's birthday
or an adman's hook, in that nearly twilit
pinkish space, lies no answer. May you ponder
tarot cards and tea-leaves, may your pulse
find calm in omens, your lips
make ovals of aums, may revelation come.
In green pavilions Tudor horsemen
kiss thin horns
and splendidly expire.

x