Turkish delights

Miseries come in stiff and naked slides,

Ricocheting stripped as women looking at the sea

To kiss me profoundly like a bunch of flowers

Putting to bed my wee opium tears

Science unbounded, mandarin of the moon

I’m wearing a kite made of frozen honey.

I wrote this on the transformed bed in the time of beauty

Cuddled by two breasts again and again

In the shut museum

Under balled-up clothes

Becomes makeup on a pendulum.

Alcohol’s cross with blue poetic chin

Unveils a barrier of lanterns,

Redoubtable turnabout

Of a dancer on the trestle stage

In the unforeseen silence of an empty lane

I’m atop a mountain of proud women

Sculpted to the neck.

Francis Picabia