Song of a Tarnished Eidolon

 

I asked the locust leaves if they were lonely.

They replied,

We are restless.

An owl on a branch of the locust tree

wept silently.

I have looked in all directions.

At home, I found my future in a spoon's face,

and my melancholy in the strings of an oud.

I haunt myself.

Indigo is the night sky.

Indigo is the sleepless sea.

Nun-white bird,

I will meet you beneath the locust tree

wearing a veil of Point d'Esprit

and holding a torn carnation.

_____________

The Ballad of Agnes Lumpf

Agnes Lumpf changes her name to Dakota Descartes,
and starts haunting the coffee shops. 

"Don't I know your name from somewhere?" people always ask.
"You might," she responds mysteriously, putting on a face she copied from her cat.

THE CRUEL PASTRY by Dakota Descartes

Light the slipknot of brusque temptation!
Immediate zoology! Feet talking ropes in hemisphere duplicity!
Highways of dough!
Icing made from the text of dead letters!
You are the planet I cannot plumb, no matter the tenderness of the telescope.

Soon, Dakota Descartes has a cadre of rapt followers,
squinting at her from behind clouds of tobacco smoke.

She learns what the famous poet must--
how to say "In night, no sun; in day, no moon" as if it were the Gettysburg Address,
and to do so with a straight face.

"Where are you from?" her fans ask breathlessly.
"Rangoon," she replies. (She is actually from Muskegon, Michigan.)

"And your parents? Were they artistic, too?"
Dakota looks off into the half distance, 
her smile as ethereal as an Enya song.

"My father was a painter, (a plumber)
and my mother a sculptress." ( a soap opera addict and part time nail tech)

When Dakota Descartes wins the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry,
the President of the United States calls with congratulations.
"Oh, him," she says distractedly, waving a hand and finishing her black tea.

Global melancholy, manufactured star,
all-knowing duffers at the drop-off of aftermath's postmaster,
weary the practical nurse of philanthropy
into a crying stew of the celestial jeremiad!

This from her masterpiece, FUSION OF DOLL AND CYCLONE.

One dreary morning in 2015, 
Dakota Descartes dies from huffing hair coloring
in bathroom number six of her palatial estate.

The staff finds her.
Her tragic death seals her place in the pantheon of immortal poets.

Dakota Descartes 1977-2015. In her own amazing words:
"Death, wearing buskins, treads darkly toward the pyx."

Oh God.
Total brilliance.

Wow!
____

Image at top by Toril Fisher. Posted for Artistic Impressions With Margaret.

The words used in Dakota's poetry came mostly at random from the dictionary.

However, I made up the telescope line, and I'm kind of liking it now. Lord above.

And now, Lambs, off to "camp" with you...