Fever Poem
after Arthur Rimbaud
While Ophelia floats,
Mad with love,
I diddle myself as if
I could fly, as if I could get enough
Speed to break through
This gravity of depression
And fear then it would somehow
Make me OK to be and be with you, OK?
***
Something inside you melted
You to him and now you’re stuck.
Something grows inside your snowy white belly;
Meanwhile the devil’s paladins
Lie in wait for more than a thousand years
To get you get you get you!
***
The vision of her big breasts – nipples like dark lilacs –
Of her long black hair, the people in the trees and
The beads of their loves
Still dripping off their backs.
In a slumbering alder, great conquering black eyes
Look out to see the giggling girls bathing in the
Black water.
Dear — , please bathe my bare being like a goddess with the
Fire of my enemies to somehow make me stout
And impervious to any and all perversions.
***
You melted to him, anyway, on the calm black water;
And the vision of this amalgamation is the nymph with her great veils rising
That mounts my soul with heavy breathing
With other heaving mannerisms like love will do!
***
As I’m floating downstream men call out eternally, riding black sea-horses,
Stronger than alcohol lightning and the eyes of panthers hang from fresh
Delirious skies, which are more damning spoken in French, so I’ll hang here,
Waiting for absolution.
