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Roy Lazarus
30 May 2009, 23:53Vagrant atop the mottled acacia
hanging upside down.
Cloudless sky like sunless sea
opening on the shores of his eyes;
Jackdaw squawks — like a dolphin,
then dives back to his well of infinity;
Brick and cement stalactites everywhere —
clumsy shod on the clumsy earth,
drop men like bees from hives
abuzz with a quest, they know not why.
Rises cadenza, from nearest window —
like benediction; closes his ears,
then spits on the heaven below.
Three hours more —
and the blood is in his head,
and the brain atop the blood —
long overpowe’d its uniformity
and its temperate rational flow;
Pain in the sciatica
like the one in that psych ward
the razzle and tazzle of electroshock
that made him ejaculate
into the open mouth of Nurse Ratched.
“I’m lost”, says he — the boy,
“I wanna go home”,
‘bout twelve, and very pretty —
rosy cheeks like cherry blossoms,
to the lost vagrant.
Upside down, his mouth his asshole,
his asshole his mouth —
‘tis all the same, thinks the vagrant.
“I’ll take ye home to the Lord”
and curls back to the lap
of senseless gravity;
“The bastard, that shattered
my bliss of non-existence”.
Rises cadenza, from the boy’s asshole—
as his hair, like a wig
Is ripped away from the baldness
of his puzzled skull;
as his eyes gouged out
like blueberries picked
on a summer gossamer;
and his skin pulled out —
The flaying of Marsyas — ‘cept,
this Marsyas hath never met Apollo,
and likely never will.
“I shall peel you to your nakedness
from cloth to skin
from skin to flesh
from flesh to bone
from bone to — nothingness,
and then ye shall be gone home”.
