When he's grown old and removed the gothic armor,
Groomed his macho cogs into a moth's whisker,
He'll become less fictional and more fat—like a droopy
Canto with poor prosody—
A prudent endomorph, deposited and arch.
How many loved the cupid's dart he torched,
Caught between arc and circle, like a riderless tiger?
In truth, few loved—he was a prig and a jerk and a rake.
And all his corpus juris got bent to smack.
That business suit he wore—it was a subset
For bondage, efficient as a bunt,
Something he stubbed into himself, like a tune,
A crisp huh, an all-star rule, an autumn lust.
Neither prizefighter nor pig, seldom jealous
Or aled-up—he didn't know a spliff from a jailhouse.
His launch pad began with mea culpa—
Unpaunchy, glad-handed, marinated in aloe
And cups of lemon water. Therefore, he burrowed
Into dogma, bonded with orange dreams, and wooed.
If he could hop scotch through the epochs, bend
Toward echo and hope and prophecy,
He'd embargo the gnomes along with the grannies,
Plant a garden of blue weed, spritz his warts,
And think ugly about the girl from the launderette.
The Book of Men and Women
University of Washington Press
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