Sunday, November 04, 2007

Clawfoot Bathes the Baby: Installment the Second



3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Work is in progress
On how bifurcation of the phallus
Led to a bride's wild confusion
And a bridegroom's mute distress.
Meanwhile, do inform Dino
How he too was once abdominal
And phenomenal until successfully
Dislodged. Studying Clawfoot's
Iconic probiscus, one's obliged

To conclude that someone you knew
Drove or collided headfirst
With a Dodge. When fears, as such,
Are nominal, they're poetic and nutritious.
But actual, they're merely abominable,
The soul in ethereal, wordless paralysis.
Kudos to you, smart tootsie-wootsie,
Whose soul, O ganders, loves verbal, visual
And visceral baloney, and therefore flies!

Anonymous said...

PUTTING IT MILDLY

Wanton, be thou the porcelain,
Luminous and triumphant dolphin
Of my gong-tormented, dong-tormented
Sea, in love with every freak
Of utterance and desire, a boy
I knew when I was nine
Who used his cunningly cleft thumb
To disentangle fishing line,
Which craves, like words, or worms
On hooks, a temporary lack
Of meaning, so someone can take it,
Shake it, come awake again,
Either to live or die, and lie gasping,
Mortally amazed, half mammal,
Half fish. Wanton, a flying squirrel
Seizes your girdle, its nose
Nestled in your navel, it body
Your blurred escutcheon, its tail
Cleaving your cloven thighs. Once
An innocent bride was disquieted
To discern at first a pale, grimly

Slotted plum angering to emerge
From the prepuce of her chum,
Hitherto gentle and decorous,
Who now explained softly his shame
At this phenomenon, purple, almost
Marble, and unique to him
In his experience among men,
But if she promised to maintain
His secret, he’d demonstrate
How they could use his peculiar
Deformity for unimaginable fun,
Which they did, and for quite awhile
The Innocent Bride, now a wife,
Wandered the village, shopping,
Laundering and so forth, aglow
With an enigmatic, pickerel smile,
Which attracted her husband’s
Closest friend when the former
Was away for a month on business,
Who plied her then with a brandy
Made from the sweet odds and ends

Of his grandmother’s orchard, until
Dizzy with invincibility, and eager
To brag about her bliss, she explained
Her husband’s uniqueness, and when
Her husband’s friend demonstrated
What he too possessed, she discovered
An absence of appropriate defenses.
They met in the fields every night
For a week, and she saw more stars
Than she thought she could bear.
When her husband returned, she blurted
Her victorious truth, and in anguish
Her spouse–-a youth, but a saint!–-explained
He had actually been born with twin
Appendages, and so not to be selfish
Had given one to his careless friend.
Whereupon his wife began to weep
And pummel his chest with her fists,
Crying “Idiot! Why did you give him
The one that was best!?” flinging
Away her ring, that token of his skin.

Patricia Lockwood said...

It's true, I am so multimedia. As for PUTTING IT MILDLY, how heartbreaking!