Deciding (firmly, I was a Yoshiwara umbrella-maker, ages past)
What’s winnowed from warbling waters wearing
skin and splintered stubble—
an eolian harp or a scrambling tardis,
a tarsus teasing a maundering measure
of molten jazz or disfigured,
leathery hymnals packed
in a crackling shaft of dis-
sembling fireflies, dandling
dollops of dirging
dust?
I was a monk some years fordone and dammed
and a doctor, too—was
a grumbling plumber,
a wastrel strewn about
toping leaves who’d loved
Li Bo
as much as the moon or the Ganges swoln
by a secretly stumbling star
and here I’m
winnowing sigils from sliced tomatoes,
groping a buoyant breast reborn in dough,
dissevering shells of the wine-blushed whelks
that reek of the seizing seas and repugnant onions,
floundering root bulbs,
parroting—
Águas de março
Cad Goddeu
some birdsong stuttering coarse as a hailstorm,
thrum of a cringing crick deformed from the
soughing of sewing the skin of a parasol
6 thoughts on "Deciding (firmly, I was a Yoshiwara umbrella-maker, ages past)"
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Adore this.
It literally sings with imagery and language, dancing the tongue!
Thank you!
Yes, the word choice and what you do with it is all so stellar. A marvelous poem!
Thank you!
Like peering into your specific life experience here, now, through some collective human history as told by the ancient bards. It feels like mirrors reflecting mirrors…a great way to think about who you are through past existences.
Thank you! It seems like mirrors reflecting mirrors is always where I’m trying to go—or where I awake having written some very exhaustive script to a sea of scribbling.