Bruce Boston
A LIFE IN THE DAY OF
The majestic blooming
of the century plant
reveals petals of pure yellow
and stained cream,
distinct pistils and stamens.
I will love you, she said,
as Freud loved the id
in its trammeled fury.
The jaws of my brain,
adrift in opaque bestiality,
question the integrity
of a Pythagorean
reclining nude.
The heel stamp of my pen
assassinates the art
of nuclear mystics.
I will love you, she said,
as Darwin loved evolution.
Things change.
In an algid moment
the final consequences
of the abominable resonance
of a soft and hairy
architecture are revealed.
Diacritical exclamations!
The ravishing comprehension
of cannibal imperialism
by a paranoid critic.
I will eat you like the peach,
she said, I eat every Sunday
in the sky black morn.
Having teased
the sensitive mimosa
in the circular greenhouse
late that afternoon,
afterward,
he would drink peppermint tea
with the ghost of morning.
THE LATERAL ECLIPSE OF BOUND SUNSETS
Never believing the awkward
scalpel of an invidious paraclete
or the razors of those recently
consigned to public scrutiny
could carve intaglios of flesh
deep in his paramour’s arms,
how could he have imagined
the fleet collaborations and
juxtapositions of stained youth,
such a veritable inheritance
in the swelter of the moment
during a long dusk in Tours,
postprandial espresso and
hot buttered croissants
cooling on the marble table
of a crowded hotel balcony,
only a scattering of candles
and glowing cigarette ends
and unintelligible voices
to assault the shadows,
to light the closet of the sky,
while back at the atelier
you’ve rented for the summer
an impertinent Beaujolais
breathes a heady bouquet
of charcoal and roses,
and unconsidered lives,
an inconsiderate choice
for an after dinner wine
when a beautiful mad poet,
a Rimbaud in his prime,
waits to whisper mystic
mythical verses in your ear,
while the inviolate legislature
rushes through high doors
of the burnished capitol,
demanding further restrictions
on the travel of holy spirits
and bound sunsets by the score
across international borders.
SURREAL SHOPPING LIST
the autobiography of a trellis
a brisance of laughter
so loud trilobites pause to listen
noctilucent bridge mix (2 sacks)
a guerrilla theatre staged in ragged flesh
hallucinogenic cutlet with flies
ravishing inversion of sunflowers
stretching the skin of the eye
the burning bush
3 lbs stonehenge
Bruce Boston is the author of more than fifty books and chapbooks. His writing has received the Bram Stoker Award, the Asimov’s Readers Award, a Pushcart Prize, and the Rhysling and Grandmaster Awards of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. www.bruceboston.com