poem convincing you to leave your wife

hey you, you

of unbuttoned flannel

shirt and untold charm,

if you hear heard that rauschenberg

has had painted a new painting, the wisest

thing to do would be to drop

everything you are

doing and manage

one way or another to see

it. no?

have you dare you see seen it?

(as i was going to st. ives, i met a man with seven wives

every wife had seven faults

every fault had seven bolts

every bolt had seven tries

bolts, faults, tries, wives,

how many were going to st. ives?)

duck is duck, and

fuck is, i'm afraid, fuck, it's you that i miss, that i want.

i espouse that you come here and miss me too.

now.

now, as is: how much to do 'tween now and six.

where o where on this moonlit and dreamvisited planet are you?

are you willing? are you well? are you sick? (i'm sick of love,

nar, nar)

this is just to say:

lover, it's over, and

it's not.

o lizzie dearest (here's letter within letter): i have met with

your old flame

and became unsettled

about imemine. mien.

meow.

who is to blame?

he thinks of you monthly

and would like to meet and fuck biannually

he has had a vasectomy

and sex with other men.

are you game?

funny, what we harbor when we do. and where, and how.

(how long) (how low)

(below, below.)

but, an excellent driver stoned!

i have decided that we do not want other people's (wives')

husbands

as we do not want our own.

as we do not want our own.

(i cannot live with you becuz

that would be

IZ life!)

o liz

twixt impunity and impurity

lie i

and lies my art

so, i will do as i am told:

love your neighbor as yourself

and put your cup up on your shelf

ask the kindly sexton for some kinky sex

on the slide and on the sly on the fence

(if you're brave enough to try)

FOR (listen up!) no concrete test of what is really true has ever been

agreed upon.

FOR SOME make the criterion external to the moment of perception,

putting it either in revelation,

the consensus gentium,

the instinct of the heart (aye! there's the rub)

or the systematized experience of the race (three men in a tub)

OTHERS make the perceptive moment its own test:

use common sense (a la reid)

use synthetic judgment a priori (kant not cunt)

the inconceivability of the opposite (but i was never into that)

the capacity to be verified by sense (now, now, now that!)

the possession of complete organic unity

or self-relation (realized when a thing is its own other)

o brother!

i long to be realized like that!

back to "you," will you come and realize

me? would you could

you?

be my other? now and for a short time.

like b'twixt six and nine,

nine and six.

we may have acquired it by fair means or by foul;

passion may have whispered it

or accident suggested it; but if the total drift

of thinking continues to confirm it, that is

what s(h)(w)e mean(s) by true.

i renamed it and it remained and i remain, yours,

the wife that st(r)ayed and the wife that left(ed), o.

skirts traps wraps thighs . . .

we had stayed up all night, my friends and i

singsaying:

LEAVE DADA

LEAVE YOUR HUSBAND

LEAVE YOUR WIFE

(BUT AUGIE, NOT YOU

DO NOT EVER LEAVE YOUR

DEAR OLD TWISTED MAMA)

for if we leave

it as is

(for) now (for) ever

you will remain cult

and i, poor i, lost cunt,

yours, love, o.

yours so.

o to make the air turn glue and rubber!

science says "what exists" (it's like a list)

but, to compare the worths

both of what exists and what does not

(what thou wast and what thou art)

we must consult not science

but what pascal calls (ya) our (le) (lay) (mine) (m'old lazy)

heart

(le coeur a ses raisons que la raison

ne connaft pas) (shut up!)

my heart is cool

and black

is fool and blank

nevertheless

nevertheless

i remain,

the wife that staid and the wife that left

the wife that laughed and

the wife that slayed

riffs miffs thoughts knives . . .

what exists and

what, alas, does not

what i wast

and what i art

not

word is and

word was (unheard

of!) rauschenberg has painted

a new painting, i dare not

(meet me there)

go!