Phaethon

PHAETHON

Swimming in ale,
bathing in beer,
wading in wine,
weeping in the wind
we assess our world.

The word Love
is scrawled out with a stick
on a sand dune
lost in the Sahara.

Sirens wailing far off in the distance.

Young mothers and widows kissing
caskets,
abandoning loved ones
to the worms.
Corpses stirring in their graves,
bone against silk.

Dogs run over,
lying alongside
great gray highways.

The man upstairs dropping
one shoe,
and sleeping
with the other one on.

The terrible anguish
of the many
sleeping in alleys,
huddled together
vermin-like,
hiding
from the weather
and other men;
sucking on brown bottles
and fondling flasks.

Garbage cans clinking.
Children in winter without shoes.
Roller blades on rough concrete.
House cats and bankers choking
on fish bones.

Applauding defeats,
as men murder other men.
Crickets rubbing their legs together,
and merriment beneath the stairs.
Fish spawning in mud puddles.
Bright sprouts springing to bloom
from blackened stumps.

Brothers in brothels.
Eggs with no yolks.
Priests eating apples,
and defiling young boys,
with rain falling
from cloudless skies.

Goddamnit,
I tell you
I can hear
bullets bouncing off buildings,
sewers sucking silt,
air hammers battering,
papers blowing,
tires squealing,
waves pounding,
kiddies demanding cotton candy,
groin gears grinding,
cash registers ringing
up blood,
hounds hosing down hubcaps,
beans bursting bowels,
and hearts hardening.

So,
poignant paralysis trillion-fold
allthatis,
even if I fail
to drive the Sun God's chariot,
the ants remain
forever,
and the German cockroaches
serenade me
as they mate
in the walls.


Glenn Buttkus 1966