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Poet's Still Life
Six eggs in a bowl
are
the uneaten young,
a hen’s sacrifice,
our uncracked dreams.
Six eggs in a white bowl
are
a heap of smooth,
a half-dozen dead,
our scrambled potential.
Six brown eggs
in a white bowl
are
sleeping food,
kissing cousins.
our oval lovers.
Six brown eggs in a white bowl
on a round blue table
are
the axis of the earth.
a ship of fools,
ammunition.
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One Day While Sunning at the Plage
Georgette inspired a firm massage
There she lay upon her towels
making sounds full of vowels
as Andre rubbed her fuselage
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Some Basic Fallacies of Humanoid Desire
Every Carl or Judith meeting a Kate or Samuel
wants escape. The message in the bottle is
'Get me out of me — be quick. I'm trapped in a tribe
of mutinous selves. Open the jailhouse door. Give me
your light and share me your heat — I'm cold and it's pretty dark.'
Would-be amorous entanglements, our observations tell us,
reveal a consistent cross-cultural pattern. Ninety-
nine percent of all first meetings fizzle out,
go nowhere, fail to develop, remain singular.
Take Angus, slightly balding vegan, forty six,
and Bella, seeking affectionate friend, similar age.
What are the odds of lift-off here? Like millions of others
before them, they meet by Eros in Piccadilly at six.
Eros knows immediately it's not going to work
because, again, they're standing in the wrong position.
•Like new-born turtles fleeing over an open beach,
desire seldom makes it to the sea of conversation.•
How can his arrow strike if these couples stand too close or off to
one side? Can't they see the trajectory of his arrow, where will it land?
•Illusion, boredom, fear - these birds of prey swoop down
to seize the driven yearnings of our lust, our turtle tide.
Who calls Nature a friend? Watch that fox lope
from dune to beach, snagging cheap lives galore, flipping
them to the sky, gagging them down her lunging throat.•
Angus and Bella ignore the arrow. They assume
that similarities are what matters, that chemical bonding
follows a mutuality of interests - that if they both love
ballet, rock climbing and South India, their identical valences
will magically fuse them.
•The turtle faces blur in the desperate scrabble of flippers,
inaudible piteous baby squeaks and grunts as the young die
trying to get older. Who did you meet and when? Where are they
now? The softness of cheeks untouched, the kiss to the eyes
of ghosts. We flee together, drawing-board
lovers who meet but once, a wisp of a glance and gone.•
Eros knows they have not heard of intervention,
or fate. They want to fake it, to demand love as their right —
to be loved rather than to love, to bargain with God.
Bella and Angus, the drawing-board lovers who met but once
and died without further connection, their bouquet of roses
a sameness littering the beach.
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