Behind the ambiguity, the cloaking metaphor,
the language used is indecent,
it sets bear traps, leers at logic,
claps ears.
Poetry drives a train through heaven and hell,
box cars swaying behind
full of
rowdy, rouged delinquents.
Some have mothers who weep for them,
some were born from mud wombs
as wild as unbranded cattle.
A poem may well bury its dead alive
in front of our eyes,
recite a lullaby backwards,
then plant sweet nothings
over the heaped earth.
Lines of linguistic train wrecks
crash their coupled words
into snowy fields,
then out will come the scatological oaths,
the unglued bawdy survivors
of their own gypsy jargon.
Here’s the sleight of hand,
here’s the real indecency -
we are gulled into assuming
we hear only the shy murmurs
of a deeply respectable muse
dressed up in its Sunday best.
So, you think my poems obscene? Read Catullus.
Graffiti-ed lavatories are more apt sites
for his scatological puerile poem writes.
Yet, today his leather bound tomes enthrall us.
Vicariously momentarily shot
back over two thousand years I get to watch
as he skewers harlots, fools and others such;
poetically, of course; who strut what they ought not.
Lesbia and her sparrow charm both him and
me, but she runs off with another; his sharp barbs
pursue. Now's my big chance; might my modern garbs
catch his eye? I'll boast he my poems scanned.
They don't; more's the pity. But he's so witty,
I fear he'll read my lines as merely pithy.
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