III. Negative Capability

 

wish I had a fan in this room,

I’m a part of a fag generation

I respect fag poesy, once dismissed it

something faggy about poesy, period

lyrical voice recalling

itself at end of each line is faggy impetus

how did Traviata Trovatore Rigoletto emerge from Verdi mind in

            one spasm?

 

fold life in half, step into center’s crease and make it a universe

sick of impediments in the path of happiness

I am not the only person on this planet

reading Dickinson’s letters

 

“I love you goddamn it!” Liz says

I bought a bag of madeleines in Paris, ate them in Père-Lachaise

on bench across from Wilde’s desecrated grave

ate madeleine at graves of Chopin, Stein

wish I’d bought an extra bag so I could be eating a madeleine

            right now

 

why do I love to sightread rather than polish a single piece?

Beethoven is greater than I’d reckoned

sightread three sonatas

in deployment of fag idiom I am not alone

in seeking continuity between mystical expansion and fag idiom

even Dickinson in her own way used fag idiom

 

I guess I want to shock the ladies

I’m a lady, too

in white gloves holding Paris-Match at Aux Deux Magots

            feeding water to my Pekinese

I can only do so much to help the English language

 

I write about longing

expectations of the falling rose

it’s difficult not to depend on names of authors

I like dropping their names

it’s as if I’m dropping the whole oeuvres

middle-aged I for the first time

sympathized with white emeritus flab ass

 

white lusterless pubic hair, pointless cock

no value in aged penis, penis isn’t confit

in pictures my shoulders don’t seem broad ass too big

is my heart a locked ten-year diary?

it would be interesting to read Liz’s poem about the perfume

            industry

she might never write that poem so I must do it for her

 

maybe because it’s raining outside it’s also raining inside

fuck quatrains

here in exclamation’s midst

I don’t care about autobiography, I only care about aggression

 

dreams and storms

becoming restless because of rain I don’t want

my life to be a waste

Dickinson’s wasn’t

she spent herself

is the performance of my own personality a sufficiently

            abstract enterprise?

I said I’d retire, now I’ve retired

time isn’t simple even after you’ve retired

 

reading Dickinson’s letters on the cabbage rose couch I

            wouldn’t mind a few lone moments to rethink time

 

— Wayne Koestenbaum, selected and re-arranged by the composer