are carnivorous. Even
the birds.
Whenever our
splendid hero Mackie
Messer, what and honest
man! steals or kills, there
is meaning for you! Oh
Mackie's knife has a false
handle so it can express
its meaning as well as
his. Mackie's not one to
impose his will. After all
who does own any thing?
But Polly, are you a
shadow? Is Mackie projected
to me by light through film?
If I'd been in Berlin in
1930, would I have seen you
ambling the streets like
Krazy Kat?
Oh yes. Why
when Mackie speaks we
only know what he means
occasionaly. His sentence
is an image of the times.
You'd have seen all of us
masquerading. Chipper; but
not so well arranged.
Airing old poodles and pre-war
furs in narrow shoes
with rhinestone bows.
Silent, heavily perfumed.
Black around the eyes. You
wouldn't have known who
was who, though. Those
were intricate days.
A Terrestrial Cuckoo
What a hot day it is! for
Jane and me above the scorch
of sun on jungle waters to be
paddling up and down the Essequibo
in our canoe of war-surplus gondola parts.
We enjoy it, though: the bats squeak
in our wrestling hair, parakeets
bungle lightly into gorges of blossom,
the water's full of gunk and
what you might call waterlilies if you're
silly as we. Our intuitive craft
our striped T shirts and shorts
cry out to vines that are feasting
on flies to make straight the way
of tropical art. "I'd give a lempira or two
to have it all slapped onto a
canvas" says Jane. "Have like
lazy flamingos look the floating
weeds! and the infundibuliform
corolla on our right's a harmless Charybdis!
or am I seduced by its ambient
mauve?" The nose of our vessel sneezes
into a bundle of amaryllis, quite
artificially tied with ribbon.
Are there people nearby? and postcards?
We, essentialy travellers, frown
and backwater. What will the savages
think if our friends turn up? with
sunglasses and cuneiform decoders!
probably. Oh Jane, is there no more frontier?
We strip off our pretty blazers
of tapa and dive like salamanders
into the vernal stream. Alas! they
have left the jungle aflame, and in
friendly chatter of Kotzebue and Salonika our
friends swiftly retreat downstream
on a fowery float. We strike through
the tongues and tigers hotly, towards
orange mountains, black taboos, dada!
and clouds. To return with absolute treasure!
our only penchant, that. And a red-
billed toucan, pointing t'aurora highlands
and caravanserais of junk, cries out
"New York is everywhere like Paris!
go back when you're rich, behung with lice!"
Jane Awake
The opals hiding your lids
as you sleep, as you ride ponies
mysteriously, spring to bloom
like the blue flowers of autumn
each nine o'clock. And curls
tumble languorously towards
the yawning rubber band, tan,
your hand pressing all that
riotous black sleep into
the quiet form of daylight
and its sunny disregard for
the luminous volutions, oh!
and the budding waltzes
we swoop through in nights.
Before dawn you roar with
your eyes shut, unsmiling,
your volcanic flesh hides
everything from the watchman,
and the tendrils of dreams
strangle policemen running by
too slowly to escape you,
the racing vertiginous waves
of your murmuring need. But
he is day's guardian saint
that policeman, and leaning
from your open window you ask
him what to dress to wear and
to comb your hair modestly,
for that is now your mode.
Only by chance tripping on stairs
do you repeat the dance, and
then, in the perfect variety of
subdued, impeccably disguised,
white black pink blue saffron
and golden ambiance, do we find
the nightly savage, in a trance.
A Mexican Guitar
Actors with their variety of voices
and nuns, those arech campaign-managers,
were pacing the campo in contrasting colors
as Jane and I muttered a red fandango.
A cloud flung Jane's skirt