Preterition

So I guess I’m making this into a habit: every Friday, a little break from the grind, a little recreational writing, a little not-quite-so-earnest fun. This here’s a revision of something I did for a surrealist/avant-garde writing course I greatly enjoyed co-teaching in the Spring. Despite my revisionary efforts, it’s still got its goofs and clichés (my MFA was in fiction writing, not poetry), and the rhythm limps and stumbles in places (though some of those stumbles are intentional and useful), and it’s got bits and pieces stolen from other writers (as does the American Tarot thing): but, still, fun.

The Devil in His Birthday Suit

or

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Has Lunch by the Lake of Fire

Blind boy stands before the sea

No sightless gaze no face no window

No cold sea no widow glass or bare

His own son father’s son nude and cold

Morning son morning star bears him flame

Darkening the shore’s soft sand descent

Cast down like clothes crescent robe-veiled

Covers darkened brow his sweetness

Licks the soft bones clean and silent

And the chorus in the sea calls his names

Leviathan Belial Orcus Asmodeus

With voices scoured clean and parched

Dry as bones as gravity as dirt and copper

Falls like sound like wingless clouds

The boy stands and burns before the sea

Naked hides his light his cloak delight

No more garments show than shadows

And by the shore a table two chairs flank

Set and empty windless wet where she

The widow stares past him at the sea

Stares through and past his sightless eyes

Through the sea the paupers merchants

Liars losers drowning in the flame

They sit the boy O the widow veil black

Quiet wise Jackie stands unbuttons he cannot

See he cannot but only lie always see

Light-bringer sees as retribution’s voyeur

Sees as Jackie stoops deliberate

She bends and shows him

Death in her blouse.