Promethean Kat

cecily brown on the rainbow

the splendid table \ darling \ can can \ the cutter \ untitled (shipwreck) \ nocturne in blue \ ?? \ untitled

You spoke of a spiritual hecatomb The sacrifice of one hundred oxen Offered to the Oracle The god of truth Poetry and music You spoke of a song The children’s crusade Death and the mountain Helicoidally spliced Now we the worthless Unsolicited revelators Overturn all tables Cash in our chips And speak of this Infiltration Canonization Apocalyptic celebration We spit seed scrub hands Sprinkle barley meal pray Before the altar of your tome The world that is all worlds And the broken lyre of Apollo And slaughter’s curving saw We speak of the iron circle A holy hecatomb in your name Though not butchered all at once Methodically three-minute intervals A finale of one hundred fireworks Slowed down shot off one at a time So the spectators astonished mouth Remains open for as long as it takes As for the oxen figure 3 x 100 A rite of three hundred minutes A poem of perpetual death Trumping the Greeks In the precinct of the Muse These oxen are as birds Transitive barely rehearsed Long legged grey as elephants With sad spasmodic gestures Each a poem spread eagle With a multicolored skirt Hiked over the face Wrapped in the wings Of swollen laughter These oxen are babes Wallowing in the dust Pining the woodcutter Whose axe was alive Their tears evaporate Like sweat on the back Of the neck of a laborer From the southern border Where there are no borders Where bards and assassins Scrape encrypted soles Of incriminating shoes And crumbling hearts Write of your St. Teresa A city shaped like a dress Pierced at the breast Dripping wands of blood A retablo of sacred laundry White limbs white feet Skipping indiscreet fires Pale hide swaddled thigh Quivering upon a spit Beneath the moon lamp A spreading horn sounds We are slaves reborn The lowing of oxen Strung as a menagerie About a giant’s throat We are his proud head Bursting like a bubble In a golden syringe We are oxen of the sun Tossing burning shirts Upon the gravest course A poet’s coat is skin With pockets of chasm Lined in iambic verse His knife is a toy Spiraling the universe Tagging a curving sky A trilogy of numbers Sealing a wired skull He expands his bony torso Dives the lifeblood pond Unleashing for all time A hundred laurel wreaths And your body conjured Raise your crosspiece Rise through the center Dance upon the water A slow tempo dance Quaking the earth With your ecstatic fury

© Patti Smith 2016