Gauguin
Christopher
Mulrooney
contents
|
forms nous n’irons plus au bois the first thing we do spat Van Gogh many happy returns the manufactured past boiled beef animal crackers solidus research work fold the grand schemata upper berth flotation device shop lily marchpane nonchalance borough a cozy comfort bucket Otaheite simulacrum Gauguin |
forms
good and bad take root
variously we see
not our signs anymore
along the roadway until
there is the sea
there the captured condition
is as far as possible undone
nous n’irons plus
au bois
we’ll to the woods no more
this day and any other
the green stink is not for
us
the shrieking owls and shitbirds
and lair of pard and bear
we shall not go there
the first thing we do
I will make it felony to drink small
beer.
we shall have it just and so
right now the engine’s
warming
never any then as when it
might not be
the eternal conjuring minute
when I pull an egg out of
your ear
and hatch it on your face
the whole human race shall
be
subservient to the likes of
me
spat
the long dilemma eats up
years
same as anything else that
goes right by
speeding as it were on
bicycles
the gilded trolley and the
design space
on four wheels the mere
discourse
of light and air is not to
be encountered there
Van Gogh
in a little market town
‘twas on a night like this
when everything is stretched
like the heavens
around an empty drumhead
that beats and is beaten
upon
like a poor tom-tom for all
the world
to gawp and spit at
and say where is his God He
certainly
can’t be bothered
many happy returns
the victim there on the hot
ashes
come let us eat and give
thanks
the rest is a quarrel I
should not wonder
without end and without let
perhaps
meanwhile let us go
incognito
the manufactured past
oh no that is say not so
Pozzo
the gimcrank
there gives flibbertigibbets
out its maw come sir let’s
have ‘em
as ‘e equals M.C. square
come on
we can do better than that
boiled beef
it is a strange trencherman
mystificates
about his bully
why I’d have his cap off’n him
whippin’
about in the breeze
of the roaring shells before
he could sneeze
‘ere ‘ave
some more I cooked it in this ‘ere ‘elmet
animal crackers
my solitude conforms to the
happy accidents of
birth and breeding in the
zoo
this zoo of mine with its
proud beasts
that all go in the soup the
whatsoever in there
a congeries of the kitchen
menagerie
solidus
wherefore the geometry forms
on the right and the left
it is the Melancholy and we
are bestmost bereft
o hunkier male who Domdaniels in the carrying-out of laws
whereby the mail is
undelivered to the fertile slot
and we are never born in a
work signed Albrecht Dürer
research work
the cannibal tale you have
heard it whole
regurgitated in a sort of
ring of tellers
like the Monkey God chant or
recitation
you have heard it a thousand
times
and still it is always new
to you
fold
now I’m poor thinks it is
now he does
but never had a sweet sou to all his name
so why now why this
nothingness to him
whose degradation is so
utterly complete
even in misery his neighbors
are replete
the grand schemata
the forlorn hopes gather in
the marketplace
it is Jesus teeming in his afterlife
on every tongue in every
gullet and the whitewashing of the village walls
the trumpet-gathering of the
Fascist footraces
the bloodletting down the
central piss-alley
and then away to the wars
home by Hogmanay
upper berth
gliding along as if on rails
snug ensconced sung
to sleep as if by waking
angels
of the system of
transportation
richly fueled as if by
dreams
conditioned by the railway
in the right-of-way
throughout this
transcontinental railroad
flotation device
this is Mercury’s skirt
attached by frogmen
and the gallons drunk with
water wings
and the company and solace
of Mae Wests
this is the astronaut’s life
raft under vans
that beat the air to cool
him in the Pacific sun
and fetch him up as by
extension cord into the vacuum
shop lily
it shows traces of pollen in
fine increments
on its fine fleshy tissue
that’s for laughs
as who should say we want it
gilded
and again the melancholy of
a sad occasion
and Kate spouting of them on
Broadway
again for the cameras in
Hollywood
marchpane
it scribbles done in the lanework
over a piece of puff pastry
yum says the dough in the
oven
why practically hatchet the
pie
with a trowel all made of
silver
and set it on chinaware with
a silver fork
nonchalance
the very diction of the momentaneous momentary
momentous occasion gifted me
ha cross it out
bestowed upon me loftily the
key to my city
which had to be somebody’s
idea of a joke
and whenceforth
warily I slipped out the occasion
borough
on the same small days to
write what is an epitaph
for the golden joys that
follow and sprays of flowers
a touch of champagne a very
few solemn words
a very kind embrace and then
the throng full of merriment
upends the vestibule in
which we are thoroughly rapt
a cozy comfort
in its plush-lined box of
black velvet
the bauble lay exposed to
warm rays of sunshine
and the rest writes itself
in lapidary description
but for the turn of an eye
the loupe wherein
is manifested every facet of
the stratagem
bucket
an absorbing incidental
mystery supplies
indeed a whole history for
where is the gait
can figure that elliptical
trail down the hill
to Pandora’s wigwam and
trading post four bits
a dance to the surface music
of the spheres that are all gas
Otaheite
slim white-hipped schooner
off
the shell-crackling beach
ahoy
the waves never simmer only
stew
and as for you seething on
the boil
there’s rubbing down with
coconut oil
simulacrum
some poor shanty town
grimacing though its dirt
some wretchedness miserly
tended
down to seabirds at the
docks
corkscrewing in updrafts
Gauguin
it is the letter not sent
home but written
carefully patiently polychromatically
to oneself and the generality
of all mankind
in the sense that it’s not
you at the same time
feeling the wish for all
concerned to be at ease