Crocuses
TO HART CRANE
Surely the moon’s white Benzedrine
rinsings look’d aslant and glorious—
like sun-shafts direct’d at
the manger boy’s halo’d knob—
pouring cloud-interrupt’dly down whilst
the Gulf deliver’d up its
final oceanic caul to fetch
you under. In an austere
lot behind a wide-porch’d
and white-paint’d Chagrin Falls
Victorian, black liquid overflow’d a
rose. Stars fell like czars.
Who recalls Verlaine extract’d with-
out tact by a yielding
sailor, half-riant in rain?
Who the seminal casuistry of
of the anguish’d bellying up
against a friendly lick, liquor
in the offing? Who bled
off the saintly excesses of
the groins into such prodigal
verbal sync and synth? Gargantuan
the energy that gather’d, unpatented.
That querulous eyebrow-arching word
circumflex got rhymed with sex.
Hart Crane, 1899-1932
TO STYLE
Brrrrap. Sorry, my bad.
Something disagreed with me.
My essay got call’d
“Hats” by the editorial
collectif. I submit’d it
under the title of
“A Malleable Dander”—no
joke. Whatever comes up
out of the un-
tend’d brute mouths of
the unconquerable gets jettison’d,
automatiquement, is how I
see it. I hate
that kind of talk,
so boilerplate apeshit, so
rabbit-in-a-hat
or scrotum-in-a-
knot, so Little Nemo,
so bounciest baby in
the “pram,” short for
perambulator. I like lying
under the tall tulip
trees and allowing small
tatters of sunlight scissor’d
by the tulip-shaped
leaves to cover my
inappropriate places with honey’d
light. The history of
prudery begins with sloppy
indifference, yak, yak, yak.
It’s like deciding at
the tender age of
nine to toss off
the obduracy of veranda’d
parentage and scoot up
into the hills with
the retriever dog, oh
the slavering yellow dog.
