Daughters of Anomaly
for Traci Lords
All the cock-sucking,
all the cunt-lapping,
all the butt-fucking
in the world
can’t forge a bond
that lasts beyond
the bounds of flesh and boredom;
time, a river with
Charon waiting
patient as Job,
shuttling busy
as a bee
from bank to bank
carries us all.
Thrice holy,
over the shivering waves,
the sauce of life
sets all aflame,
spurts all over the place;
Traci rears up
pretty and weary,
her face not safe
nor her backside either.
Apollo, bright
as the day is long,
casts his shadow,
on bush and brake
and then departs,
serene and singing,
the lyre pinging
like sonar.
Traci gapes,
her comb drips honey;
pendent the homunculus
in her hand’s saving grace.
Evening.
The god of the sun,
red as a rose,
makes off
with Venus roving
ahead and behind;
scary night falls
like a ton of coal.
Holy cow!
All the tits and ass
in movie bedrooms,
all the hired roosters,
loveless and uplifting,
not more foolish
than the knights of
Parsifal, than
Parsifal himself,
spent and sinning.
Daughters of Anomaly,
pierced through and through,
make me pay
like Faust;
between the lines
the lamp stinks still.
Traci was
cute as a button,
rode like a queen,
and was ridden;
Christy was
sweet and thick
as marmalade.
What do they do
to make us make
them live and live
in the memory
like caryatids
standing in a row?
Something.
That touch of
easy abundance,
ripe and serene
as the lazy summer sea.
Daughters of Anomaly,
let me give you,
each of you,
lauds, metaphors,
words lost in time
and space.
Naughty naked girls,
straight out I say
I love you truly;
forget the lines
the limbs
we never knew.
Daughters of Anomaly,
anomalous, anarchic,
my treasures, hunted forever,
all the cavorting and bumping,
all the laws of life
and death,
the brave remarks at
gunpoint,
can’t make us forget
it’s only skin in
the flickering fucking game
that comes and goes
before the lens,
meaningless,
without terror,
without love,
without us thinking it’s
error this human act
doesn’t support
the innocent flowers
and daughters,
Horus’ penetration of
the beauty beneath.
Mary, Astarte,
maiden of the moon,
crown of flowers
come for me!
Daughters of Anomaly,
get close to me! Or close enough.
Asphodel, wine and
sleep please;
sleep without end.
Time, ladies,
dull as dishwater,
is up,
praise is done,
your patient labors dismissed.
Jack D. Harvey’s poetry has appeared in Scrivener, Mind In Motion, Slow Dancer, The Antioch Review, Bay Area Poets’ Coalition, The University of Texas Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, The Piedmont Journal of Poetry and a number of other on-line and in print poetry magazines over the years, many of which are probably kaput by now, given the high mortality rate of poetry magazines.
The author has been writing poetry since he was sixteen and lives in a small town near Albany, N.Y. He was born and worked in upstate New York. He is retired from doing whatever he was doing before he retired. He once owned a cat that could whistle Sweet Adeline, use a knife and fork and killed a postman.
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