James GRINWIS

THE SCORPION KING

And because there is lust there are heroes and fruit.
The heroes are made of drums, televisions and algae.
They wield swords and daybooks.
The daybooks tick. The daybooks whine:
ou se trouve ma petite tombeau?
Ou se trouve my buxom etcetera.

The distance between things is sharp.
The distance between things is sharp, hard
and full of rope. An ozonous tooth
which wears like rust, a thorny nightshade
between the dots. None of the dots are like me,
I'm made of stones and dragonflies.
I've been around for millions of years.

Scorpions pivot about. They snap their joints at mates,
they plunge their forks into sparrows.
Nymphs are smote by toads of flame
and the tarantulas in their anthracite coats
hurl down poisoned tabernacles.

At dawn things get rearranged. Fields break open.
Fields choke and thrust out sick flagellates,
Eye-sockets, the private-parts of iguanas.

I enter the tribe of cut-throat assassins. My scorpions
pillage the houses. They devour the babies.
They rape the breadboxes and fill the temples with urine.

The glass hurricane is container of moans.
It shatters all of my enemies. Out of their shards,
I make mosaics. I squeeze into my motes
the pulp of their hearts. From their bones
I carve spoons and instruments.

This is my fortress of pomegranates, my smoke-dwelling
my titan mollusk exhumed from the deep.
A ferocious Oort cloud, and I am its king.

Revolting dromedaries sweep across the sky.
They maul my cigar-boat clouds.
They fall and slither through the swamps.
Theclouds are serpents.
The clouds are poisoned aeronauts.

My castles are jammed with withered horsemen.
The fill the goblets with my wives.
They instruct my putrid children.

 


Copyright © James Grinwis, 2002.  All Rights Reserved.

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