They moved to the suburbs. Got pools
got fooled;
their own tricks used against them.
Peacock’s nothing more than an ornery hen.
“The neighbo[u]rhood of poetry and rhetoric.”
Party at my place tonight
Wander down the block to the house with the red door,
with the painting of the peacock
crawling up the edge on the east side. Its rising. Its raising.
They get together and play word games. Eat flambés, say beautiful
things for their own sake.
Quote Elliott and Joyce, flirt like little
girls and little boys, all curtsies and courtesies.
‘Wait til she sees my new publication: On the Word What.’
Just because.
The neighbourhood went up in smoke last week.
Rhetoric has to speak to the insurance company;
poetry never got insurance. Thought nothing bad could ever happen:
the place was too beautiful to burn.
So all the fucking paper burned.
Smokey maché churned the words and up they flew, mingled with the smoke, forced up by some physics they didn’t understand: They’re rising, they’re raising.
Now the clouds are full of smoke and words. And all the clever
tricks that were written, that had to be read to be understood
are gone.
are gone.
Free, honest again. In the clouds where they should be and
where they began.
And poetry and rhetoric are naked.
All their clothes burned.
And their neighbourhood is a pile of smouldering ashes.
Atop the pile sits a particularly elaborately-coloured peacock, all
proud and calling, his Tail spread wide and he’s tramping the dust with strong claws and toes and its rising its raising.
