Guiness
Posted by Alysia Harris | Filed under Poetry, Print
My gums flare into a fleshy axiom
You mount as a crown upon the queenly head of beauty virginal.
We told her, to roll her eyes like thunder so far up as to appear haughty
And she drooled with consent but did not flinch the flinch of freedom;
She was always a payne in the glass anyway.
Believe you me, that year winter left quick as a teenage father
Returned with several more pregnancies that the seasons
Reared into: peonies, no look backs, and something a kin to nostalgia
But which didn’t require as many professional mourners.
I fell in Lolita with the first two,
They were so ungroomed and took to the nakedness of wisdom as easily as expected.
I told them nothing. I gave them suck. They liked the lie of silence.
The latter I adored with all my dwindling optimism.
It loved the secret of my ankles and for that I told it:
“I know I can narrow my gaze, growl my desire, lick my fangs like any trained predator,
But when you hold me I want you to feel innocent, my blood.”
That was as close as I could come to “I pray to God I don’t turn you.”
But I did and when it died
It pumped its final breath out of an opium pipe.
I mixed it with magnesia and to old age be true
I have lived a hundred lifetimes in those last words.
The river of analyses, I’ve played in. Pon de river. Pon de bank.
My head beat like laundry against the rocks and I thought
Of ironing boards and getting everything straight
But I fell inside the wrinkle of another dream’s forehead.
In the trench war – memory versus records- I met Athena
And I’m telling you she couldn’t weave hair (or victories) worth a damn.
She was no virgin, she slept with my rage and I swore not to tell my religion.
When crossing my fingers
I am fickle as a mojito with a twist,
And in the peaceful decadency of Old MacDonald’s rolling pasture
Surrounded by lilac blooms, fastidious bumble bees
And the dainty cough of summer
We lived for the damnation of doing so.
Here’s to choice!
Here’s to the bacchantes!
To the laugh!
To what’s all the rage in the black-eyed skull of night!
To the corpse, she river-dances!
And life’s yawning zipper!
One Response to “Guiness”
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JL Says:
June 29th, 2010 at 9:31 amWOW……..stunning ………… this poem just eats you alive. LOVE IT
