Mark Lamoureux (Astoria, New York, USA): Two Poems

THE MADEIRA DRINKERS

Will get to
it quit asking &
shake the box
until glass swan
breaks jaws unhinged
like an orchid
resplendent in shirt
jacket tie hat
face pants Stinking
Benjamin no Ben
rocking the pocket
square where good
old fashioned red
nepotism below deck
under water un-
understood taller
blasted Bridge Mix
chess timer heart
in tall glass
overtime adagio
closed mouth
open face Monte
Christo in over
affect nape
of onion salt
sock garter Gyro
Plate has some
fucking hair on
its vestigial gills
or tar liquorice
record sleeve smell
& film just
like a real
girl’s tears on
a hot plate cassette
deck disaster
like a real French
King like in
a movie with
real milk real
flowers fake
moustache lost in
the pirate cove
the model lighthouse
on the little Lake
Geneva green racing
striped like
mini golf balls

SCRIMSHAW TANGO

A porcelain cleft roves
Over gravel, the blasted

Tower injects the void
With names—ask me

To author you: said narrative
Resolution a bait &

Switch letterpressing—although
Irreversible, I forgot

What I was doing, untied
& gagged—the annihilator

Shoots a full stop upon
The pretty strophe

Languid, from paper
Bloom to paper bloom—

Better still a nameless text
With no ankles suspended

O’er an openmouthed receiver
For the wet apparitions

I make a seeded form
I make a pneumatic mausoleum—

Was all skin &
Phonemes, all skin &

Tight like a pineapple
Rolled over dimples

O Man Ray who paints f-
Holes, lens tucked

Into a rift & burst like
Wedding-glass—give over

The many subject positions
Subject to gravity as

A still & hairless face is
Parsing code

From a nameless flame.


© Mark Lamoureux 2008