DRUG OF YOUR CHOICE

And so I write, "Love paces out its exile
beneath an Arch of Triumph." What the meanwhile
does that mean--pacing is going nowehere
and the arch is built to remind a war

to bring tourists. Overhung by that shrine
(till infantry is the prose of pavements)
time remains a frieze from a waxworks famine--
vista in which we cum, sweat, become silent.

Like a monkey caught in an orange pharmacy,
love conditions the fool to riot reason...
But from the corners that climax has not stirred, coldly

a cacti acrobat holds the horizon forth as
an ideal of what constitutes refuge, pane
deposit, distant, though its cuppings could kill us.

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