Thursday, May 18, 2023

The Romantic agony in a cocktail lounge lady’s room

 

 

I searched my heart, the street, my ex-‘s habits, my family

I searched them all for opportune  neuroses

That I could jot down for my poetry

And calm my nerves and hide the focus

 

Five fathoms deep in  something posy sounding.

For after all, don’t I claim to be

Some seashell bard, some grounding

Mama, some prophet of the salty sea

 

Minus the albatross around my neck

(come to tell you all)?

-          No?  I’m here to sample wreck

I’m here to smear the large and small

 

Until disproportion proposes

That we go for a little walk, you and I,

A little walk with pretty poses.

A little truism, a little lie,

 

Logos burning a hole  in my pocket

“Like her fair eyes, dude,  the day was fair”  

I was going up like a rocket

A perfect movement in the down and dirty  air

 

And heard myself gibbering like a bat

while the air grew ever more blind

and thick with those who  flew, shrieked and shat

panting for the breath we’d left behind

 

 

until at last I found the perfect  line,  filled with blood

and sucked it all dry and fell and understood.


-Karen Chamisso

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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