prologue
boatswain! must our cunts be cold?
must our hips be hips
for children to sit on?
must this ache be ache-not-nearly-ache-enough?
o, i labored on the stubble plain
(long heath, brown furze),
but baby was born in a field of phlox.
i.
fret not, baby, thy mama was
a piece of virtue, betid,
bootless though she was,
she never did take her boots off!
god clothed her for a reason.
what was was not
meant to be seen.
thus her vanity was her virtue
and by what undid her
she was hid.
maybe she dreamt it.
maybe she tempted
fate more than she did them.
baby, if not a very good one,
it was a way to live.
know, though, you were her he-
and her -art.
and ma-ma-me your sycorax,
(with age and envy grown
into a hoop)
your dam, your she.
anyway, bottom line:
the island's yours.
ii.
her body was a piece of work of
art. the kind that made you feel
challenged after leaving the museum but glad
that youyourself were never that fucked
up. still, it was all sort of scary and reassuring,
that somebody else thought that, that you
could too, but for you it wasn't urgent, you
could go home from it, you
would have to buy the postcard
to really remember it. in detail, well and lit.
it didn't live you. you
were for all intensive care purposes
healthy as a fucking horse, it was she
who was sick, as sick
as a taper, sick as a corpse.
it attracted you, being
repulsed like that, it made you
happy! imagine that! wasn't life
intense? so much was hidden!
imagine, also, that.
iii.
in new york the weather took the t-shirt
right off your back, you
in a summer breeze was more
than i could take.
i would always see shirts that i would hang you in.
i would always see shit that you did and it disappointed me
in some totally fundamental way, that you went on
to live.
i was fatal, was i not?
but, i, i was not i. i was
bent.
iv.
come here, fickle-fingered
fate, come here and take your strap, i mean, cap off.
it was a rat that sat in a hat.
a hyena, i'm no madonna,
but, look: the fucking eland,
the baby weaned
before i was.
we both screamed: it's so unfuckingfair!
but what we both wanted was never there,
(was never there.)
the fairies and the tales, you could pin them down
but you couldn't put them up.
i meant the opposite, apposite was i,
was, i sang and supped.
but what was there is there to describe?
didn't don't we have eyes enough?
v.
and if i seduce you with my thin hips
and lips and lips will you spin will you turn
and burn? and run? or will you sleep and keep it?
yum.
an empty house.
and the mailman feeds the box.
and i brew this up for you
(baby was born in a field of phlox . . .)
and you mix it with your gin
and you take it on your chin
with your mescaline and your X.
(you were always busy sitting on a fucking fence.)
and he who's not buzy bein'
buzzed, born (i labored labored labored) bruised
iz buzy dyin'
and she born to be hanged
need fear no drownin'
(boatswain?)
(o boatswain!)
the bards were are barks, were our barges.
we were their charges, but we missed the fucking boat.
o. no. naught nautical,
sank there, drowned that.
and remind me, who who who
have i did i do i love?
who did i do? and who did i that?
(and what in god's sake did i prove?)
vi.
fuck you.
i wasn't airy on the page, i was fucking ariel
on the page, but when where they said tempest i thought
they said temptress (lie there, my art!)
and i could do it (do you) even without
the golden tressssssssssss, but
believe me, more to know did hiss
did mettle in (was metal in) my thoughts,
but what what what was supposed to hang
there (clang!) there (hang that!) there
were a curtain or a sail
once were? once went?
vii. (epilogue)
a dry death for me.
and daily, our father
who art dead, died sorting spinach, after shovelling off
the drive a light
light snow. o. thekingmyfather'swrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrack.
SMACK
no, you're right, was i,
i was the one who sorted, snorted,
sordid was. was the light
that died, that lit, that flew.
look at me: a face
like a worn fuckin' sail,
the brow of an ancient
-ship, -pin, -dom, neither king
(nor kitten) nor kind.
my mind a sunken trunk.
my complexion: perfect
gallows.