MEMOIRS OF ANTEROS PROVENCE

1/

I rub a bruise of clarity

on the misted windowpane

having overslept the frost again.

I’m writing from a high tower in an evil city –

run your damn finger down

the delicate pagoda of my spine;

nightsweats and dawn reflections

have taken their toll

on younger days when we remembered

our flesh was starstuff.

2/

Here is the church,

here is the steeple:

a bald, faceless congregation of ten

have gathered around

for tonight’s service dedicated

to this month’s deity,

anxious

to be baptised. Curious, is it not

that chrism rhymes with jism. The hymn

begins:

Manus stupare…

3/

Little silvery maps of Indochina

flake off my black sheets – maps

of all the places we could have been

together, travelling in the dark.

You don’t need to learn the local dialect.

In the past these maps have taken me to more places

than Magellan ever visited. A to Z:

accost, bugger, cunnilinguate,

deflower, ensnare & fuck,

gallivant, harrumph, irrumate,

jisimify, kink, lesbianise,

masturbate, nidify, occult,

pedicate, quelch, ream, scrote, tup, uricate,

violate, waggle, xiphoidify,

yonirise… zoogonise. (recommence)

Every lover is a soldier

and Don Quixote is exploring south.


Earlier version published in Glottis 5, 2001.