Poem

Vitruvian Man


The promise of the body
at the fingertips of your lips
on the nose of your elbows, funny
bones give symmetry
to your immortality. Your body
a temple, a recess so precise
in my imagination: a sugary bear
claw, usurped and swallowed,
ursa minor and gone.


The guidelines on the palms
of your hands curve at the needs
of the mighty oak tree that lies
like a cherry tree armpit, subtle
and crimson in the small of your back
divided like hubris, humility: hu-
man and that tattooed promise: a kissed
cinnamon tongue.


Your body exposed to the elements
of my eye, of my tortured design.
The poison of speech and the mind
of my love in letters and paper hearts,
an arrow like a matchstick straight
and rubbery sulfuric tip through
the heart's Rubik's cube
rubric promise: A Light! Alight!
Alight!


the promise of the body:
a way in, a way out, a sinister
vessel, let down, lit up
desire frown smiles like a clown:
big shoe, big shoe, white face
paint, big glove, big glove,
red nose, red lips, giant plastic tulip,
polka-dot dress, lace garter belt,
lace garter belt, white stockings, black
belt and brass buckle, big love,
big tear, split person-
ality gestalt.

W.B. Yeats - The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight; somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?