The Incinerator
by Sean Garcia  /  poetry  /  7 Feb 2009
And so is smelt down childhood,
Unalloyed and golden,
To twist
And pound
And warp
Molten in the furnace of desire.
Beneath blind passion's white-hot flame
Smoulder jealous coals in agony;
The tender mornings
Turn quickest to smoke,
A lucky evening's embers
Glow still: the ash
And dross of yesterdays,
Never to rise.
Smoke clouds the mind, a mess
Of sparks and nervous blood,
Turned to grey matter. The eyes
Grow tired of their searching, yet
Cannot rest:
Which fragments are really diamonds,
Which mere shards of cutting glass?
Only time will tell.
Gone all boyhood ease and
Girlish modesty, ways true
And lit with love,
Swept clean.
There are no proper directions
For Fate, a road uncertain
Of cobbled intersections right and left.
Now everyone's smiles are so crooked, somehow.
What is this shifting parade colorful,
Dark and bright?
What are these
Searing feelings melting frozen,
Melting gently awkward
Something wonderful?
Pointy tongue tasting
Aggloopulous sweetsour
Pastries and salmon hands
Kissing tea
Steeped in greasy spoon
Goodness fucking til half
Seven pulsing inside and
Out the steamy window
A siren and trashmen
Coming
To bear it away,
Pierced right nipple
Lemiscate and triangle and
Unfinished Lillith
Seven handwriting styles
English Hebrew Italian
Thesaurii by the bed whose
Sheets are a map of the world
Antarctica and Radium
Bejing and Casablanca
Moscow and London
Rome and Pondicherry
Tel Aviv and tiny Honolulu
Paris
Making banana pancakes
HEA VEN her
First date dress
Crooked spine
Fisherman's trousers
Chipped nail polish
Mascara moustache
Falling asleep inside her
Artificial hips to come
Top to toe
Really holding hands
Margaret Lillith Shintaki
Worth EVERYTHING
Liquid gold unalloyed
Beauty and Grace
My beating heart
And all.
Come then, Trashman Sunrise:
Take EVERYTHING in sight!
You'll never see Margaret's eyes
In that shitty little light.
And so the Sun came up to me.
"Take EVERYTHING?" he said. "You're sure?"
"I am," I said. "Margaret will endure."
"Why must she?"
I paused to consider how goods are sold
At auction to bidders with the most gold,
But no true greatnesses are bought:
They must, in painful fire, be wrought.
Then like a kid I blurted out,
"The flames are meant to burn away
All fear of failure and self-doubt.
What's left behind will not decay."
"I thought I had seen EVERYTHING," he said,
"Until I met you, Sean Garcia. What
Are those Ray-Bans still doing on your head?
Or is Margaret worth EVERYTHING but?"
I gave them up, and with them all the pain,
Dead weight of heavy years that crushed my wings,
And thundered laughter. It began to rain.
My prose guitar I tuned to poetry
And played love sweeter than Apollo sings,
Fresh heartstrings honey brighter than his beams
For you, Margaret, woman of my dreams.
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