First Words

102406


There are words of such
nascent thrilling power
that I still giggle when
I say ‘em: penis,
vagina. Nipple, butthole.
Words which pair
the beginning’s
ends: Piss and shit,
cunt and fuck. Each still
startles my tongue like a
crashing comber of
pure blue
Primavera, fresh
and wildly naked up
from the sea in the
maddened puberty
of first light. I’ve
learned to be mindful
in saying them: I
button up my lips
when I’m around
mother & teacher &
employer & wife:
My rhetoric is learned,
restrained, persuasively
chaste: But a poem
is license to open
that locker which
hides the cupdion
beneath the city
& lets him out
with a puerile shout,
his little pecker
swinging exuberant
as he runs toward
the waves of
loosened exaltation,
freed to exult
in verbal excitation.
Lets go behind the
trees, that daunting
boy sings, lets see
what you’ve
got and I’ll show
you mine:
degrees -- naughty
knickers pulled
south of the knees,
dresses held high
showing all of it
if you please!
Only by now
it’s not Cupid but
Priapus who
strides my pen,
lewd gardener
in the virginal grove,
my mind likke
a phallus erect
to my nose,
red rude and veiny,
extending all
the way from
pussy to heiny,
exhilarate
length of a song.
And my what
balls swell with
this ink, heavy
bells so hairy &
blue they
clang at my feet,
jostling and jangling,
bursting to crow
every name in the
book. Oh bawdy
confrere! Oh pale
derriere like a moon
under sea breaking
out for the first time
for all the world
to see! Dare I say it?
Ass me, shout
my name vaginally,
unshore my shorts,
show me the valley
of swoon with
a heaping helping
of poon in a
riptide too raw
to repeat anywhere
else, straight
from the schoolyard
where the words
passed through
ear to that
naughtybox
in which I
stored them &
hid it beneath
the bed in my
head. That box
is where every
badness is
treasured and
worshipped with
a bedlamite’s zeal,
praising what
is said only at night
beneath the
covers, whispered
into the sea’s
soon-to-birth
source: Bra strap
and panty, cunt
hair and clitty,
Venus astoudning
the world with
fresh sounds
if only in the saying,
as if words were
enough of pure origin
in the melt of the sea,
asscheeks like pages
spread wide for
the reading
salt sphincters
in blue sphinxery.