Spleen: Two Versions
After Baudelaire
1: Ancient
I’m like an aging prince who is out of touch with fun
in a land so wet, the people subsist on suction.
No longer amused by two-faced regents in cahoots
with duping him, or his pack of hounds for beastly shoots.
Nothing cheers him up, nor falcons savaging doves,
nor hopeless supplicants starving within his alcoves.
His favorite jester with idiot jingles can’t bring
a sickly smile to smooth the brow of a would-be king.
His chaise longue is bedecked like a tomb in fleur-de-lis.
And ladies-in-waiting, who’re always ready to please
a lordling, can’t tempt this miserable specimen
to even twinkle with the raising of a hem.
The goldsmiths forging his money have not alchemized
a coin to enrich his spirits, for base corruption lies
in the mint since the blood bathed by Roman ancestors.
Memories of gory glory days cannot bestir
the living corpse to nostalgia. All pure fluids are gone,
What flows in the veins is the waters of oblivion.
2: Modern
I’m the ageing Prince of an unkillable Queen.
I’m bored to tears with being a king-in-waiting.
My butler tells tales, and hunting days are threatened.
I’m good for nothing and am not even hell bent.
The Goons on CD-ROMs are just quack quacks.
Bright youngsters who buoyed my spirits with their knick-knacks
should get a job. No more Mister Nice Guy robbing
rich for poor. Since my wife died of excess shopping,
Les fleurs du mal strewn on my bed do naught for me.
Nor ripe gals called Camilla with lingerie
at half-mast. Nor the lure of a Lady Gaga.
Though the Royal Seal warrants me free Viagra.
In this rain-sodden isle my gold reserves are blood-
money. Still the sins of my father should be good
laugh in a Roman bathhouse. But whoever is any more
cares a toss about glorying in gore of yore,
or hygiene? Pour yourself the absinthe of this green
and pleasant land, a pint of Pim’s. God Save the Queen.
Verlaine Inhales Rimbaud’s Last Breath
(1891)
‘I had to get out
of the house. The bar
was as bad as you could get.
Drunks shouting their heads off,
artists fixing for a fight. Just like old times.
I’m at peace here. Other people absorb my rage.
‘The gross blond of our nightmares,
the Fuseli succubus, is now a Renoir.
The true life is cut short. And I neglect my drink.
I’m reading a letter about the death of Rimbaud
from his sister. Of course, it wasn’t to me.
Mallarmé took pity. I’m only a PS.
‘All he wanted was to get back to Aden
to his African friends, ‘unfinished business’,
and to be able to stride out in the midday sun
(on one leg?). It was as though the past did not exist
and the future was the present. As it was in the end.
The pain was such that there was nothing else.
‘In Paris his poems make mine unnecessary.
I, who grazed his wrong hand with my worst shot.
as an artist I always aimed to miss. But this time
he declared himself left-handed and gave up poetry.
In his memory I think beautiful
thoughts of elsewhere. Anywhere but here.
‘Absinthe is wormwood. I’m a deadly warning.
Yeats, an Irish poet, envies me for my vice. I’m a living
statue for the tourists, and shameless as the bird
droppings that blotch my balding plate. The gold in
his eyes were to lighten the horizon to establish trading routes
between rugged reality and the True Life. His last breath said ‘Suez’.’
Schopenhauer for Beginners
Elsewhere is all in the mind. Forget it.
You are here, a terrestrial body
that responds to touch. You inhabit
the living centre of infinity,
a fixed point that’s neither here nor there,
and puts time in its place for space to share.
Enjoy the quiet moment. It stands still
but moves within itself like a kiss.
Life is daydreaming not a sleep. The will
to wake and face reality as it is
keeps you going till a transplant is needed.
And your tender ego is superseded.
The light at the tunnel’s end will go dead
if you forget that it’s all in your head.
Ego Artist
Found Song from the Voice of America
Yes, I feel things more than you do, Ok,
because I want to more than you, Ok.
I’m very demonstrative too. Ok.
As a person I want to feel, Ok,
my want to the full. So, the deal, Ok,
is that the bottom line is real, Ok?
I have no need to see beyond, Ok,
what’s in it for me. Ok. You respond.
I absorb. And get what I want. Ok.
Ontological Exit
O dismal me,
for a small fee
I’ll if you like
cease to be.