Strange and Poignant Botany

Who in his twenties felt diluted,

And sold himself to some strange and

Poignant botany.

And so I was fed with these melodies;

I was born and brought up awkwardly.

And on this I lived, I seethed,

I loved and sang and died

And putrefied.And all my elements unravelled

To a golden dry and pallid cold,

Elements unhinged from their helixes.

What clung about could remember

A brooding bodice and a simper,

A clothes line,

Applause,

And tiny monsters growing in a bathtub.

An infant writing harmonies of a broken history

And laud coming after the moment.

After a sickness of the mind,

Or perhaps the heart, or blood,

Or guts or fingertips

Took me on my lips and in my youth.Was it strange and poignant botany?

Or was it cardiology?

Or was it irony?I can't remember.What remains forever is the temper

Of a pater

Who used a strap before the hand

That broke nirvana's neck.

Infancy died then too.And in flashes back and forth

I can recall some white and grey.

A mass of people behind a dirty wall

And myself wearing their coats and failing

To find a decent fit.There were some pens,

Some dog-eared paper too,

And a shining box I transferred symbols through.

And little vestiges came and went and

Were thrown away,

And that mass knew it and wrote it once

And named me things I had to name myself.And all those names were fleeting.Under wooden arches

I wrote heavy parchment love-notes

To failed music makers and psych wardens

Who drove me down to brilliant lights,

And Chinese towns,

That looked perhaps like Europe.

There were store windows,

With giants O's,

And weirdos just like me.

We ate English food at French cafés

And spoke Esperanto to each other,

And wrote it down on paper airplanes

Made of crepe ribbon tableaux.Four years and two years were united and alone

In a diametric distance to the universe.

Some clichéd men found my airplanes and let me post them;

A little by little by large my name became remembered

To the sound of ruffled pages.

Posted, reposted, sent back to a hangar

Certain words were out before me.

This I am certain of.There was this song that satellites played

For a few narrowing ages.

Old-age by the inverse

Re-fed this notoriety.

Not fame, for some brazen phrases

That left you all so incensed

That men with suits thought they

Needed recompense,

And sold me more.And I consented.

Until there was a dilution,

A dissolution like one in his twenties

Whose empty name was everywhere.I was let to know some faces and some bodies,

Some firsts and lasts and maidens and marrieds.

And knew that I was all or none

If only one would have me,

Only me, and not my lovely notes.It was praise and derision,

It was my first and last many times over.

It was grace and precision,

And never you.A copy sold and a salty dissolution

Were the contrast of my judgement hour,

Where I could swig champagne

And feel sour.

That was the solitary day,

The one I keep forgetting.

Was it accepted fate or acrid regretting?

Was it a fibre or a barrel or a coughing fit?

Or did my mind collapse just short of seizing it?Was it strange and poignant botany?

Or was it cardiology?

Or was it irony?I can't remember.