when i am but a name and date,
etched on the broken tooth headstone inside a graveyards mouth,
splintered by a murder of crows,
with weeds that rustle drunk to dry winds next to a
fading of anniversary footsteps,
i,
all by myself,
will have my own heaven.
the softness of it shaped to the voice my mother owned
when she called my name on those sunset streets where we played with our hearts.
in my heaven,
i keep the insanity of routine.
that being, my own dinner party that repeats itself over and over and over again.
a collection and catastrophe of souls
that monet paints and canvas’s into perfection.
oh look! it begins!
baudelaire is dressed in opium and reading unedited entries of poe’s
sojourn inside dante’s summer nightmares –
instantly pillowing up to bob dylan’s first epiphany on that cold minnesota night,
as it leans up against a
woman that quotes from the shadows where solzhenitsyn’s flickering vigil of exile
births
soft revolutions.
bukowski,
in stained op shop shirt and protruding stomach,
is drunker than a hundred irish men that dance on the graves of english history.
he stumbles into his nonsense and recites from old fante manuscripts,
gravy thick in dust that anne frank’s attic kept.
but flinching and still sore and swollen
from the bar alley brawl he had with machiavelli the night before.
something to do about sherwood anderson it was rumoured.
sylvia plath,
heavens poet laureate and at last and forever my wife and mentor,
is plating mushrooms with lady lazarus,
dusting her wings in red tulips all shaped like oven doors and open windows
whose soft winds eddies inside her drowning dreams.
rimbaud,
too smart for a childhood and inking a magic in the army of our senses,
is shooting verlaine out of dillinger’s pistol,
the one he kept in sentences wagoned under african heat, hiding.
oh!
here come the spanish bulls hemingway pounds
from his fat fingers on old typewriters under a matador’s hot summer –
scented like a shadow under tolling bells.
freud and kerouc are snorting lines of illuminations off salvador dali’s paint brush,
next to ghandi who travels
with the children mengles tortured in the death camps,
skipping while smoking unpublished ferlinghetti poems.
(the ones written in old italian parks amongst the grey water fountains.)
oscar wilde is nursing a fresh nest of clichés that chirp
under the eyebrow of picasso’s daydreams,
the ones that talk in colour and voice soft images.
like children who laugh at the rainbows.
e.e.cummings is chasing the escaped truant of his inverted comma’s
and exclamation marks that
gather near the chicken’s inside william carlos williams
water-glazed red wheelbarrow.
woody guthrie and che guevara,
smelling like old guitars and cheap scotch,
throw nietzsche’s aphorisms at freight trains and monuments
they stole out of the un-numbered paragraphs of ‘human all too human’ –
spring-boarding on top of wagners overtures that
now soak into bob marley’s lyrics alongside indian snake charmers,
the ones used by the christians;
with voices whose promises gave no heavens but sodomy soldiers
and wasted sunday sermons.
pound is here!
wiping a piece of edit from eliots war bruised metaphors
with the exact pen marrianne moore wrote the bulwark with
while sipping cherry under a broken moon.
anne frank’s lost tears are a no show
but only on the account emily dickinson won’t come out either.
they live in the solace collected from the last thoughts
that remained after the gas chambers festered their lungs,
mothering their souls like one does memories
and instilling sentences that melt gold and truths.
walt whitman is scribing frantically in addiction,
drinking robert frosts legend and juggling sentences as thick
as james joyce’s last glimmer of sight.
blok and the other shivering russian poets are all drunk on stalins blood,
farmed from dead villagers and discussing at great length
the empathy they carry for ned kellys noose that slumps meekly beside them.
and right on time in staggers dylan thomas!
fresh from picking up a barrel of henry the 8ths royal whiskey
rod mckuen blessed in a poem religion cannot find.
everyone is here!
the same time and in the same order.
all accountable in my heaven,
who now raise their glasses,
circled in calamity around the dinner table and
all shrilling in unison ‘ hoorah! hoorah!’ at the blazing campfire that explodes as
i push adolf hitler into it,
six million fucking times.
