From How Many More of Them Are You?
By Lisa Lubasch
1
Enough!!! I will not stand in line and gawk and gabble
like a goon! If the soul speaks, then that's that. And
that is everything. And by extension, why are we
always asked to hear a song just to get at the wrong
note? So what of the redhead in the supermarket?
Shouldn't we put our carrots in a basket first?
Shouldn't we choose a basket? Take the fromage
and head for home! . . . Why this lingering?! This
commiserative clutch of cackling cloons! Ordering
the soul's mad music isn't everything.
2
You've got rhododendrons in my pockets and a
pocket full of verse. I'll be kissing in the snow when
you come home. Your majesty!
3
July! Wisteria! Monseigneur's tower is hot! Dear
Mnemosyne, so delighted with these interruptions . .
.
4
Oh my darling, can't we go away and be at once in
love? In one white word-come-back. It's early.
Must I fix myself in milk-and-water rhyme so soon?
One more hour and Merganser will take a fish. Can't
I have one too? Must I admire endlessly?
4a
Mercury, take this message.
5
I am a dried-up prune in a Cartesian universe. Today
I left my love inside the longhouse on the lake . . .
playing rummy. With whom? Sacrée fille! Wearing
slopwork from Belgrade. A carrot's on my heel. Ah
more delightful than most philosophies in France.
Were it cooked correctly! Hippocrene, take this
oath. Feel my lips. I am dry.
6
Morning. The first eye opened. Outside in search of
eggs, the city hot. (Salad days?) Moreover, I am
convinced that Joan of Arc once did something here.
7
My darling, with you I'm but a basking shark. Are
you the sun? Must I die knowing that you saw me
squint?
8
Come-let me see your loose shirt lift. We are so
uneasy this way, side by side, with our
chrestomathy laid out on the linoleum. Picasso! We
have little film so please work fast! S'il vous plait.
Oui, ça me plait. That's the idea. Coupez
9
Now that spring has come, can we let go and
wander to and fro between the panicles and pines?
Or must we move the way these thorns are rising on
their stems?
10
Fools we are who fancy that our flowerage is
important. Were I to doze all day indoors, not one
fine libertine would dip her head in to restore me!
Note. Folie à deux. Picasso could eat a fish without
disturbing any of its bones.
11
Think don't think. Imagine yourself in the fall. Is it
spring? There is snow on the ground. Is there not? If
you think. Pensez. Entre nous, a word is a bestial
thing.
12
Isn't this a disappointment, love. This that once I
thought you were have you turned out to be notatall.
Have you overheard my hasty screaming in the
heat? Or has some hoyden harnessed your
attention? Had we played hare and hounds, I'd have
pursued your papers strenuously. Illuminati! Tell! I
have inhaled high clouds and exhaled.
13
In my fever, I work to dissolve meanings. Does
nothing around me beckon to be said but that which
has already attained a graceful petrification in the
mind? We being as such (petrified), we must
prepare to follow forth with more than faithful forms.
A man comes running at me wearing a suit and a
tie. Do I hinder his progress? Do I present myself as
a great barricade? Do I question him?! Yet he is my
fate.
Sometimes, if I am in sore need, I will ask "do you
have a pencil?" Today la dame replied "it's eleven
ohhh three." Thank you.
14
Do you not know that I conceal each time I cry "Life
is a spectacle!" You there behind the window, let's
have a look at your "changing face."
15
Dear , been thinking of declaring you inconsequent.
And concerning the distinction between bad art and
the rest. No, I've not a thing to help. Sincerely,
sansunn om.