Mythopoeia
(i)
The phallocentric epic enters
the gynocentric counter-epic,
& is all but swallowed up.
(ii)
Modernity, Myth, Sign are a fugue-
experiment, trying hard to forget
that flux is Necessary Angel
who arrives: ironic, blunt as Asrael.
(iii)
Parian, plastered, admiring ‘rosy fingers’;
marmoreal is my liquor-dark ocean.
(iv)
Slough off Mauberley’s skin,
shed your Odysseus complex.
A phallic oar suffices,
marginally better than limited
edition print-runs to the elect.
(v)
Literature’s no friend to sinecures,
Mr Nixon advises from his gilded deck.
Friendship only with equals,
opines Kung fu Tcheo with know-how
of the obvious; so take down this memo
which still mesmerises millennials:
We dock with little-known circumspection,
latterly dine with asphodel-ridden scops
during the lock-down. Why not turn down
that radiophonic poem because it carries
on appalling your sensibility?
(vi)
Helen’s currently in high definition,
all her hermetic traces are occluded
by the airbrush’s scythe.
(H.D. faints in Elysian cornfields).
The Mysteries are common or garden lore.
No-one manufactures ethics or a praxis any more.
Indiscretions are de rigueur.
Confessionalism is the condign currency.
The Sphinx plays Chinese Whispers with Tiresias
eye-deep in the Tunnel of Net Gains.
Before you have time to climb
this rusting tree of your theogony,
Surveillance, juridical flamingo
of the state, issues your subpoena
not a micro-managed second too late.
Sectioned
Inside White Mariah: sirenshrouded, her inmate
mot-swinging at windfarms in gloria excelsis,
tempest-tost your mind out-Houdinis its internal
triple-locked schoreograph, claims only an End-
gamer’s phanic-zone in paradise of slycensed fools
& zanier mountebanks. Inside the Cream Mariah’s
futerus are padded walls which aerily enwomb
your antic-dispositioned scop, whose only hope
for taolvation’s to be twice-born in the nicodemus
of time, to samsara thru the swarm-maternal cavern
& re-hibernate through wintry-jiscontent season;
hopefully emerge a sans-formed monad: Lazarus-
seawildered, staggering out of antiseptic kinema-doors
conscious only of a fulti-framed sweetholymarie
vision, absolutely lantern-elided & unleathered; who,
in the oapposite mirror, is that alien shaven-headed?
Mark Wilson has previously published four poetry collections: 'Quartet For the End of Time' (Editions du Zaporogue, 2011), 'Passio' (Editions du Zaporogue, 2013), 'The Angel of History' (Leaky Boot Press, 2013) and 'Illuminations' (Leaky Boot Press, 2016). He is also the author of a verse-drama, 'One Eucalyptus Seed', about the arrest and incarceration of Ezra Pound after World War Two. His poems and articles have appeared in: The Black Herald, The Shop, 3:AM Magazine, International Times, The Fiend, Epignosis Quarterly, Dodging the Rain, The Ekphrastic Review and Le Zaporogue.
