FABRIC

FABRIC

was born
death pale

take this fabric, for instance,
test its texture
tell me
what you feel

under your fingers
do you read
it as
a Wordsworth, or would
you say
it strikes you
as far more a Keats

all the synesthesia of silk
though never
on its way
to eclipsing
Rimbaud

I wish

this on the other
we might find it closer
to hessian

switching metaphors
not the smoothness of
Scotch, more Irish
or Bournborn
         (Sigmund slip, meant
to say “bourbon”)
          
the cross-hatching
something though
it must be
said

could convert into a shroud
turn it into
a tapestry

let it run
and run
          give it epic strength ditto length

SHRIKE

SHRIKE

first laid
eyes
on
you

you love
imprinted me
like a
new-born
chicken

and here I
am
  stuck in
a novel going
nowhere

sprearing
    useless pages
on a spike
as if
   I were a
horrendous shrike

tiny
   but different bird
altogether

Vlad Impaler
of all
   God’s little
creatures

come
   pull this stake
out of my
heart!

I am
   not a patch
on Shelley’s
Skylark

Keat’s
Nightingale

his
   consummate Hyperion

or novel
of other worlds infused
with these mythologies