All architecture is what you do to it when you look upon it[.]
—Whitman1
i.
In the secret grotto of deeply erotic,
poison-rooted, pussy-footed thoughts, bearded to the balls
like Whitman, forgive me if I sing
a song of my Self, if I
wrong your thoughts, like Blake I speak
from the innocence of experience, fault not
Walt who inspires my lines, reanimated like
Lazarus if Jesus was Disney, woke up
with two coins on my eyes, no
need for Charon to ferry me on
when I touch the body electric with
this eclectic dialectic, hybrid of sobbing psalms
and wailing walls of moans whose sound
deafens but, I hope, does not drown
out what the flickering beat of this
broken heart is opening up about, vanity
splitting the veins of its marble apart,
going on without qualm or putting it
on, my only concern is to be
true to my art, no matter how
“absurd” or potentially “offensive,” no matter how
“obscene” the things I paint, no matter
how “trite” the sound of the rhyme
with which my words reverberate, to compromise
the integrity of this truth would be
to lie, to deny honesty its worth
no matter the cost, and who gives
a toss about being accosted by the
rolling blindness of strangers’ eyes? their role
or mine is only to inquire, not
define, I have no answers, won’t make
any effort to provide some or comfort,
and I question the intentions of any
reader seeking them in a poem instead
of their own mind, what I express
is mine, my incendiary work is purposed
with but one task, sent out to
ii.
ignite the world, not bring its complacent
hordes any more warmth, truth is only
what nobody denies, depicted decapitated to nourish
the protagonist on memories, enervated getting lewd,
getting loud, remember the sound of former
lives we tried so hard to hide,
let us finish each other off, mixing
together in our trembling hands one another’s
poisonous ejaculate, giving voice to it sputtering
lush oases, bruising modesty with blushing loads
rushing out of our meat-beaten bones, palming
it into our forsaken mouths, snowballing back
and forth, real slow, the froth of
forgotten love, forbidding our Selves no pleasure
our desire can dream up, inking the
cream of crisp pages with what no
one else can rub off, holding back
nothing because both my soul and my
body know the embrace of love and
resistance, spilling and spelling out all until
you feel what you were taught you
should not, the same calm I do
whenever my writing takes off, tangential and
troubling, waking this walking monster which talks
on behalf of what I have suffered
so that you have to no longer,
boxing with his shadow, with the calmness
of a martyr I carry the bones
of my father, I understand the hardest
hearts of broken homes, stones softened by
their own heat, hunger quenched by anger,
I snuff the idle out of the
evening, ignore the crowd crowing, ‘Have you
outgrown it, or has it grown out
of you?’ I do these things to
know that I am not alone, hearing
only those whose pain echoes my own.
__________
1Walt Whitman, “Leaves of Grass[: II: Come closer to me]”, [Stanza 26, Line 92], in Leaves of Grass: The Original 1855 Edition, published at Mineola, New York by Dover Publications, Inc. in 2014; page 73.
Jono Borden 