A Collection of Poetry
Jeremy Lespi
Published in Online form by
Dicey Media Publications, 2008
First Edition Chapbook by Dicey Books
Staten Island, New York
THE LAST DAY OF POMPEII
Names, characters, places, and incidents of these poems are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.
Copyright 2003 by Jeremy Lespi
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lespi, Jeremy.
The last day of Pompeii / Jeremy Lespi.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-9723415-5-2
I. Title.
PS3612.E818L37 2003
811'.6--dc21
2003012276
Some of these poems first appeared in Dicey Brown, Product 18, Product 10, Opium, Phantasmagoria, The Tower, and Into the Teeth of the Wind.
CONTENTS
THE LAST DAY OF POMPEII
COMPLEXION
LOVE SONG FOR SIBYL VANE
SESTINA: DESERVING CONSTANCE
A HISTORY OF FORM
THE NEW GALORE
IDEAL
TOY
AERONAUT'S LAST COMMUNIQUE
TO GO WITHOUT
THE LAST DAY OF POMPEII
The tortoise lay sad and listless
on the smooth grass,
filled with mercurial and Greek affection,
charmed life and languid blood.
Inch by inch it traversed the little
orbit of its domain. Months it took
to accomplish the whole gyration.
A restless voyager, that tortoise.
Patiently did it perform its self-
appointed journeys, evincing
no interest in things around it.
Concentrated, grand in selfishness:
a philosopher tortoise. The sun
in which it based, the water she poured
daily over it, were its sole luxuries.
Yet, years had passed since he heard her voic.
The mild change of air affected it not.
It covered itself with its shell-
A saint in his piety. A lover in his hope.
COMPLEXION
Valentine, you're a brunette and a blonde,
a blonde and a brunette.
People think I'm from the moon!
You are one thing and another-
light and dark, brunette and blonde.
My friends say, "If Valentine's
blonde, she cannot be a brunette!"
I am from the moon!
Why do they say, "If your Valentine
is a brunette, she is a brunette
and not a blonde"?
No one knows. My friends say she is inconsistent. Say
She's a languishing brunette or a piquant blonde.
She is a brunette! She is a blonde!
I am the moon! I scoff at everyone!
It's not my fault.
The body has some sunshine in its darkness.
LOVE SONG FOR SIBYL VANE
I've been wasting all my time
self-destructing, Sibyl Vane.
I wish you'd quit the stage. It's twisting
flowers in your hair.
Love is making me.
Love is making me a bad artist.
Never trust the crowd to hold
their hands for wounded things.
I loved you in that scene. Were
you Juliet or Imogene?
Love is making us.
Love is making us bad artists.
Writing letters to the dead.
Teaching myself how to sing
I'm sorry.
I see you behind those curtains
shadowed and graced.
A violin without strings moaning
tragedy.
Love is making us.
Love is making us bad.
SESTINA: DESERVING CONSTANCE
Constance, that toothpaste makes your teeth sparkle
so bright I want to take you off to France.
Why France? Because the tickets are cheaper
this time of year, my quizzing virago.
Don't make me amour's latest refugee.
Please say you'll run away with me Constance!
Don't say no! I'll trail you and shout, "Constance!
Why don't you love me?" My eyes will sparkle
wildly. What? I look like a refugee
in these clothes? But they're all the rage in France
I hear, dear Constance, my cruel virago.
When I said tickets to France are cheaper
I didn't mean to say my love's cheaper
than those other guys. "I love you," Constance,
means "Let's have sex" to them. A virago
like you needs a guy who'll put the sparkle
back in romance, just like they do in France.
I'd rather you call me a refugee
than have one of their girls. And "refugee"
means "Love beside which all else seems cheaper"
in French, I've read. To be a "refugee" in France
is to be "He Who Most Deserves Constance."
There! I think I just saw your eyes sparkle!
Just like your teeth! Your heart, my virago,
has been won. I call you, "My Virago,"
and you protest not. Who's a refugee
now, ma poupe? I make your heart sparkle.
I'm your heart's toothpaste! But I'm much cheaper:
my love is free! The heart of my Constance
shall be plaque-free like all the hearts of France-
for I love like the lovers love in France,
where a shy guy can win his virago,
just like I've won you, my swooning Constance!
I'm no longer love's greatest refugee
now that you love me! Yes, words are cheaper
than deeds, but don't their songlike sounds sparkle?
Let's sing, Constance, till our voices sparkle.
For love! The virago! The refugee!
For cheaper tickets to France! I love you!
A HISTORY OF FORM
It's sung into by the clink
of the teacup as it happens
to the saucer, the swish
of a shade drawn
to reveal a woman parting
her dusk-marred hair,
the jigsaw that splits one
day from the others.
Sounds are how I
find you. How I hang
in your absence. New
Keys will shortly unchurch
their mercy. This defrocking
is how we cast myth: Diana
bathing or Daphne ripening
into a tree. How we alter.
How you renew into that stranger.
Reading a book, her face pleads,
Go home. This is expensive
boredom. Why we scribble
in the margins.
THE NEW GALORE
At the window that lies-
the child waits for a mother.
Draws paper flowers
disguised as futility.
Fears-sleeps inside
a breath's indifference.
Washes hands to fold
clothes for tomorrow.
In a car, listening for
a quiet roar-the new galore.
Enchanted by the moon
on broken glass-unattached.
Impatient as a
clock. A thought.
Twists flowers in
a sister's hair.
Ragged and laughing-
nervous denouement.
Absent. At the circus
seen in fits.
Full of ghosts not
adding up.
Whose eyes make
a veronica of your spirit.
IDEAL
My ideal is not: my angel,
to whom I say, "Please eat, my angel.
Won't you drink, my angel?"
Poor angel, you have no wings.
Like me, you're spoiled silly
by idle refrains.
You're poor
and speak of love only
to the angel you clench
behind your teeth.
My ideal is not: my good girl.
She's not one of whom
strangers say, "So good. So sweet."
The angel she bites back
will spurn you even
as she consents.
My ideal is not: a chair.
She's a woman, with a skirt.
A woman from the tips
of her fingers to the fringe
of her skirt. After this:
nothing.
She does not open
her door.
"I'll run away," I say. "I'll join the war!"
And as a prince, angry at the crowd,
departs his castle, I grab
my lance and plumes, scream:
The weather is fine angel!
The earth is round!
I laugh at everyone's nose!
I throw down the gauntlet.
My best horse is ready.
TOY
At my 12th birthday party
my mother gave me a cake
with trick candles. I'd blow
them out, they'd light again.
When you walk away
you leave a smaller version
of yourself. Smaller each time,
like lifting Matryoshka dolls
at my Nanny's house.
The surprise each time
at the final nothing.
What I mean is
I have something to tell you.
Once a street-man
challenged me to a game
of three card monte.
I lost every time,
even though the card
I wanted had
an edge
slightly bent.
My sister and I
had a favorite game.
We'd hide in the basement
make-believing,
waiting out
a tornado.
For weeks at a time.
One day
you'll walk away
and I'll be surprised.
AERONAUT'S LAST COMMUNIQUE
I was not a pilot in World War I
though you may dream of me that way,
sliding across the dark sky, scented with the sorrows
of so many young Sonyas, or Lauras, or
any names for faces I've never seen.
I've never bivouacked under wet almond branches;
Nor have I counted German stars, awaiting rescue
to farmhouses where Frauen sing children content,
gazing into the laughing night.
All Viennas, my silly dreams.
Though maybe I have fallen from the sky,
shot down in pieces, my flight scarf slipping between
the lines of your market town and a nearby enemy village.
Soon the authorities will post notices
listing my missing qualms.
I'm asking you to stagger, Sonya, along the streets,
dramatically. Cover your face with your weeping hair.
No need for embarrassment: you're not really weeping.
Act as if you're reading of me, to comfort
boys who will some day fly.
No betrayals.
Send a postcard to my mother.
TO GO WITHOUT
Farewell to the grackles waiting in muumuus
in front of the library.
Nobody knows what books they have borrowed, if they are readable.
Farewell to their throats and their clemencies,
the lecturing troupe,
farewell
to private hunger.
The headless bust of beauty has found its head;
let's put it back on. In the end
you might say it is the way the heart
is an inmate of the body compared
to what surrounds it.
The librarians who gather in the playground
without jump-ropes
start to swing and skip in perfect time despite the fact that
everything gets away.
Jeremy Lespi attended the University of Montevallo where he received his Master's Degree. He received his Doctoral Degree from the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, in Creative Writing. Jeremy traveled extensively in Europe, and taught at La'Abbey in Pontlevoy, France near Paris for several semesters. He taught at Gulf Coast Community College in Mississippi, directed the Writing Center at USM, and was teaching graduate courses at The University of Alabama upon his death. He was one of the editors of the Black Warrior Review Literary Magazine and had numerous pieces of poetry published in various literary journals. His joy in life were his books, his writing, the Arts, his family and his friends from around the world. Jeremy will forever be missed by anyone who knew him and shared in his joy of friendship and family. |