“—Hypocrite lecteur,— mon semblable,—mon frère!”
—Charles Baudelaire
O, Baudelaire, My Brother!
Is it easier to drink bourbon
than to get drunk on poetry?
What Dionysian folly must I
indulge to feel your ecstasy
in an old whore’s tit?
You condone each ecstatic
moments’s origin anywhere
in a romantic equivocation
of a syphilitic vision with
ennui on a Sunday afternoon
if Eternity is called to frenzy.
Some days the light ignites
the sycamore’s broad leaves
with an electric green glow.
I am debauched in wonder.
The moment passes without
an augury, other than doubt.
The fleeting vision fades
into the deepening night.
I begin to believe the lie
revealed itself as a dream,
and I am too old to dream
beyond the rumbling hearse.
A prayer exists inside the dance.
The day to day slow rhythms
weave through bees and flowers
to entrance, blinding all
we could know if only open
to what the moment shows.
Is a lifetime enough to fill
my hands in that moment?
My vision blurs if I bend
to the garden too long,
the world’s weight whorls
forcing me to my knees.
(April 19, 2024)
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