ALFRED JARRY'S GIFTS
(1873-1907)

In your own dialect
and dialectics
you are caught
red nosed
and you direct your
joy in your French play
" Ubi Roi"
then after midnight
slicking back your hair
into the bed covers
under silk music sheets
left over from a past romance
of your last of lovers
with the last performance
in song and dance
when your Paris cafe
opens early with Chopin
concertos playing inside
offering your erased lips
and legs full of cold cream
not wasted on words
of your own apocalypse
by the snowy window
with the sulking cat
in dark shadows
waiting for a dish
of fresh milk
drawing back
silk curtains
of these window panes
tinting snow
in first light
though it now rains
Alfred in slender disguises
behind pink eyelids
your life in proximity
in the vicinity
of a male torso
and female busts out
of masked cartridge belts
and a mouth is a belly
as the titmouse of a big city
waiting to embarrass every
Freudian stalactite
carrying to sweep away
an annoying Marx plucks away
at a great reptile
anteater and smelts
in the theater aisle
of a blindfolded politician
as mechanical starfish
appear on a bright Jesus tree
or the darkness of a sight
on a lone Judas tree
Jarry's sad nightly pantomime
with a new paradigm
of a backslidden Christian
pleading to look back
refusing Vichy
peas and carrots
as foreign antibodies
to offer a death warrant
for another John the Baptist
not to man pleasing
or being embarrassed
on Salome's platters
when life or death matters.