Alexander Jorgensen


An Apéritif of Fotbal Lads
Prague (Praha)

A beneficent Oscar Wilde, XY
was pretty as an adolescent girl.
He’d modeled in Paris, or
so he said, and made his nights
by making others. A daft, little
priss, he was, prone to wordiness
and the occasional gibe―throaty
as those sown by (Tom) Eliot.
My life’s a gentleman’s society,
XY’d say. Are you a top, or a bottom?


Schubert at the Piano
Fear of God is not the beginning of Wisdom.—Clarence Darrow

[Directions—to be read aloud: A exercise in both auditory imagination and Surrealism, the effect is best achieved through the audience closing their eyes. Attempts have been done in dark spaces, but the intended effect is not generally the same; when one closes their eyes, one generally feels enclosed and focused. Likewise, an audience of viewers tends to become distracted by either peripheral stimuli or the reader.]

At a bowery, I hallucinate
to the whimsy notes...of melancholy;
keen, it is a slo―ooww drum
           to my private door.

   .

Listening to faggots
discuss arbitrary distinctions
―cock size, religion of the gene―
I am H.L. Mencken
who keeps it from DROOLING
           infirmity.

I spin on a pin-joint,
laundering sensibility to port wine.
“Let me climb on your back
and sleep a while,” I ask her―
then slurp the measured spit
as brandied fodder.

           And in
stranger worlds, ANGELS
come to me
clad in a NY-style policeman’s overcoat.
These cell block daisies, they
bow their crowned heads
like sunflower mystics,
kneeling before a descending
           autumn sun.

Chasing the bear with a switch, oh yes!
CHASING the bear with a switch.

           We MEET
where Ginsberg met Pound
in eyes breeding Dachau—a kettle filled with bone.

   .

I paint my portraits
as I'm told—in singularity. There are no names. NO NAMES.
And these portraits, monochromatic,
are a study in gray.

   .

“Son,” a street pharmacist
says to me―Washington Square:
“AINT NOTHIN' like a woman in slacks
to get the red bottle cap turning.
Will have yuh chasin' fire engines
if yer not careful. Can feel fat
bubblin' up off my brains just thinkin' about it.―
Gives me the quivers.”

           And did
I ever tell you the time
I fell for this: her ghastly hands
roving my chest till morning,
told her I'd protect her
just as long as she kept good.
(Always in fear).

And the craven god
totters and spins, totters and spins.
The craven god
totters and spins.

           “I make
love to the Word, but the Word
will not heal me. Its great arms
bring no warmth.
I make love to the Word,”

                               smoldering airs
through my cigarette.

   .

OPIUM POPPIES are in bloom!

Their red oily sap our pleasure.

Through Chinamen streets,
we divine the lunar calendar.

These masquerades and colored bands,
more than sacrament—or circumstance?

The Buddha says:
AWAKE! AWAKE! RENEWAL!
gently removing the remains of spittle
from pink folds of skin.

           So I
impart upon the ingénue,
what're little prayers. I persist,
make my entry, then depart—
floating like a paper lantern
downstream, or a firefly
skittering across a violent dusk.

My saliva lingers like resin.
My saliva lingers like resin.

   .

And now                               the rising
                      she’s on


                                  corner.

She's planted a witness tree.

She's standing beside, waiting for shade.

“The sun makes garish...the day,” she whispers.

“It is without tenderness!”—she cries.

Seated by the pregnant hare,
listening for heartbeats—



Alexander Jorgensen's work has most recently appeared or is forthcoming in Shampoo, Van Gogh's Ear, Big Bridge, Black Robert, Vibrant Gray, and Kabita Pakshik (translations into Bengali by poet and translator, Subhashis Gangopadhyay). He currently resides in the Himalayas, India.

 
 
 
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