Declension

Amiability begets affection; a smile becomes a laugh;
Touch intensifies toward caress; glances soon aspire to steal gazes
And trembling beats inevitably erupt in seizure

As René at Etna, searching solemn and alone
For meaning and motion in life pantomimed,
As a catcher caught in overgrown and unclear

Rye forests––the obscure weakening wills that find
Resolve only in abandoning plans for courage––
Withdrawing like a monster from society, dissolution

Of senses cleansing and washing the face of the synesthete––
A visage stained of spat blue-violet retched from grinning lips––
Dreaming of and like blue-yellow Phospor, from lines moored

Led along river shores, projecting green light on blank
Midnight pages expected and to expect, to know or to think;
Subtlety in assonance insulated with anachronism

Amate anomie, the words, the verbiage, the lie.
Avert thine eye to genitive cases and sigh
Subjective affections without object for subjection

The cry, the tapping like 10:15 drip, drip, dripping
Fingers like faucets on keys of the Romantic soul
Learning to smile artlessly, offering bursting heart

Cautiously––apprehension still manifesting in verbs,
Syntax soothing more surely than suffering––
But a naïve clod, born of feet treading can

Heal a sick rose, assist a wandering gardener:
Dimwitted, the green-hatted aesthetician, irresponsible
And lovable all the same, adverbs and adjectives

Finding eloquence finally in cabbages and lettuce.
His own wit and charm (a new discovery), free
Of hypocrisy or pretension––a place for warbling stones

In lovely soft flowerbeds, a buoyant warmth like Montag’s
Burning house, a cleansing altar for a weary emigrant,
At last grasping societal dialect by disregard.

A mind finding patrie in itself, preoccupied
By the voyant, sees the voyant elsewhere
And returns to meager spring puddles

Amiability begets affection; puddles beget dreams.

Copyright 2011

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