Love, as momentary as a
bird in the subway
is never the same model,
shapeless, pitifully
subjected to the student’s
industry, punishing
capital Love as there are
bathrooms but we’ve forgot
the key in our haste to use
them: it’s Love
and so it must be. Like a grate in your mouth:
Closed for business. I’m glad to begin that both
are as judgmental in
Love. It grates in the mouth
like broken French — take
the I out
and it gets bitter, not
better.
“Fucking is the lyricism of
the lumpenprole
in short pants,” Baudelaire
reminds us
from his bench in the Hotel
Lautréamont’s
hotel restaurant. “Not love, but fucking lyricism
is the poet-in-short-pant’s
French.”
My Uncle Wally thought
something similar
but could just manage: “The
solar chariot is junk.”
A train comes up the track
like a lipstick
called Love, smearing its
knotted limbs
against the tunnel walls,
as if drawing after all
involved no intervening
idea. All the great trains came up
in the age that broke the
French. The train told
its joke one further down
the line, not caring
that we could still hear,
like an orbit that holds
without really meaning
it. The A train comes up
at last like Diogenes with
his lantern
shoulder-high, a familiar
owl, a night-owl
frowning at Love’s roses
like a number came up.
