I was supposed to have died
five years ago so I wouldn’t outlive
Apollinaire but they found me
a cardiologist who said Stop
exercising, eat more salt. Now
I’ve got to watch a thousand more
perked nipples while chewing
my gelato spoon. I’ve got to tell
the telephone solicitor I don’t care
how cheap it is to fly to Disney World,
Disney World better fly to me.
Only one tuft of snow left
with its snout in the tree crotch
and the world is not gentle with its mice.
In another five paragraphs Apollinaire
will be finished, measles in the lilies,
chorus bashed back and forth like kelp,
that wonky smile collapsed.
Picasso, when he gets the news,
draws his last self-portrait
as close as he’ll ever come
to a black rectangle. The merciful
god disguises his way in random
accelerations, nattering pathogens.
A giraffe goes knock-kneed to drink.
Some things can’t be bought,
they can only be paid for.
Gussied for a wedding, his mother arrives,
lavish as a flare and lights into
the pretty redhead wife for not
letting him know sooner but no one
knows sooner, no one knows now,
yanking the jewels from her ears and neck,
throwing them in her purse, amplifying
dirt’s little ditty until it sounds
like a castle being bulldozed.
And would you sound any different?
Tomorrow: armistice, puppets on crutches
ringing the no-one bell, faces torn
and reglued half upside down. End
of the war Apollinaire loved preparing for,
falling from his horse, saber practice,
detonations like brassieres unsnapped,
the same love poems sent to Madeleine
and Lou, calligrammes on birchbark.
Darling, if you were here, I’d try
to lick your heart. My pace matches
perfectly the litter tugged down
the glutted gutter. In front of all of us:
the grate, the journey under then release
into the minnowy gears of the sea.