Matina Stamatakis
Apollinaire: Un Poet dans la Courbe
-O’ my pestilential, my ill
the “evening delirium”
kept well hidden
(& wept about daily?)
(yet again)—miserable
beauty
where you, & lascivity,
meet under the covers
a ritual—a fasting—a cherubim
—define the soul
as humanities deepest starvation
always striving for the perfect cube of fat
the subterfuge for distinction,
a languished bone
to His poor art
where the sparrow’s awe is unheard, just
out or range
“emergency”
Planted seeds in the tumbleweeds, her cunt
called you “father” and sung of the universe
as a manifestation of one man’s rage.
The afterward of a hungry tongue
*
alas
the poet cannot satiate—nor be
satiated
to surmise an event near-carcass,
opiate-
visions of sexual tapestries, strewn
once old age sets in
—an excess of skin & bile
—excrement
——pictures of Henrietta near the hearth grasping mangled
silhouettes as
the lamplight plays tricks
on the cat.
All laid to rest
the heavens & halcyon:
at one point, leaping to another,
might awaken rhetoric
or respond to palsy
a/ struck/ note/ perhaps
out of context/
periodicity
completing things in all what’s next—doom
is scattered on the page—in what sense?
will I take pictures to remember this glorious flight?
great heights; to leave softly like the scent of a lover
departed
(& yet, it is impossible to not imagine
the reconciliation of our flesh, say she)
Of want, won’t
my son shine brightly? Especially bright in tragedy?
In time, is to learn the elements of loneliness
&
Where a man is laughable
psalms
are too rich, so
sweet days drip ink
from pen
onto pillow
will eventually engulf
the self wholly—being cautious of desperate
Attempts to play hero to oneself
no longer—
heart is an owl, an Orpheus in dream
where no boundaries lie in the lyre plucked
from
sweet turbulence
nerve & the calligraphied
not quite the presence of armor
nor clay the object of a sculptor’s madness
A feather in the shadows.
Perhaps…
Matina L. Stamatakis lives in upstate New York as a freelance photographer
and writer. Some of her works have appeared in Big Bridge, Coconut,
Free Verse, and many more. She is the author of Metempsychose (Ypolita, 2009).