‘Ainsi, toujours, vers l’azur noir
Ou tremble la mer des topazes,
Fonctionneront dans ton soir
Les Lys, ces clystères d’extases !’
‘On and on like so, in the azure black
Where a topaz ocean trembles,
In your sky there’ll be the functioning
Of lilies, those enemas of ecstasy!’
Ce qu’on dit au Poète à propos de fleurs, Arthur Rimbaud (What the Poet is Told on the Subject of Flowers)
Drifting out at sea I hear canons
firing & my heart, beating
ascends
Oceans of words threaten to
swallow me whole
caught in currents and streams of
profundity,
I submerge
break the topaz scintillating
surface, to say what?
Striking hues
dance off the wall above my
little Melbourne desk
in my little Melbourne study
amber lilies traipse along a breeze
flitting through musty pages
I try Rimbaud in my mouth &
the French, such a Romantic tongue –
rolling, sex appeal;
100
cigarettes smoked;
100 too
ecstasy!
& then there’s that assignment
you haven’t written yet, or
choosing instead
to brush your teeth in a
daze of procrastination for
what purpose I am unsure, but
to spare another minute tethered
to mundanity once more
stop painting! Stop! Staring off the wall
my, my, aren’t you the fairest of them all
flowered palette laughing.
Intended to arouse a tranquillity of mind,
now I’m lost in brushstrokes &
my chakras are not aligned
waves come crashing down upon
their misty shores
trembling in ecstasy
Ecstasy!
There goes another hour…