Classic Poem

1

You not only look like my mother, which
is spooky enough,
but you seem to mean precisely what she did,
coming on either beauty or bitch,
now as a mixture of mordant and morbid,
the very stuff
of nightmare and delight,
so I reckon you're right.

2

One crack of your whip, ma'am,
and the world crawls
back into its sweaty hole I'm glad to say.
Your words are like balm,
like ice on a tin tray,
like a shrivelling of the balls.

3

O swift Camilla scouring the plain,
you know about pain,
you understand the terrors of the male,
his tender projects, his Apollonian
clouds and mounts, the reptilian scale
of his eye, his mind like an onion,
his crystal palaces, the golden means
of his chromosomes and genes.

4

When it comes to gender games,
you can stand Wilde on his head,
send Chaucer down in flames,
lure Spenser into your bed.

As for me, lady, my nerves are standing on end —
I've passed the Housman test,
I cleave to your armoured breast,
your lover, your slave and friend.

5

Accept this homage, as Aphrodite might
accept the apple of Paris, poor sap,
indubitably right
and fit for the trap.

Accept this gizzard, these guts
of fire, the mad eyes
of your poet whose wild surmise
is yours, no quibbles, no buts...

6

When we are reduced to a bottle of seed
The world will be sad indeed.

We shall not be rising like the Phoenix
Once we are eunuchs.

None who drown in the Styx
recall love's darts and pricks.

O Goddess forgive
and let your slave live.