1. Form Endless Gift
By Charles D. Presberg
Form—defining gift with limning edge,
Refusing, wonderfully-made, to melt,
Except within a self-forged headpiece
Of armor plates and muck-caked, yet …
Crackable for love-being drives
That seed and swell and spring and sprout
The bulbs of giddy life within,
A blood parade of truthful shapes,
A host in playful leap-song flowing,
The knowing prop to prayer unknowing,
Unique abounding binding One.
Except, stop; except, strike; except, stab
In the test in the trial of technique.
Naked nature on our rack-wheel,
Writhing in our rip-lust, wailing,
Manacled figure-out minds, faking
Difference, mangle lustral bleeders
Drawn to white for wasteland yield, my-
Will-be-done oblations float or
Coil-scream sticky till they dry, till
Flushed away, till scraped aside, till
Carcass-cloned in head-made heaven’s
Pit.
Pilgrims of the happy fault, with
Mournful hope push militant, in
Hybrid, monster, wound, in burnt edge,
Bite with beauty time-bound losses,
Worldly ends turned artful victories,
Formal endings, love from beingworld
Back to loveworld, bearing every
Truth of all-world mirror, echo
Foretaste after always-now as
Form to join to form in endless…
Gift.
2. Whatever
By Charles D. Presberg
What they say is false but nice.
It lets you dub all virtue vice
Yet think vice-versa, if you please,
In glibbest Humpty-Dumptyese.
Old-fart Hegemonics fold.
Theocentrics yield to bold,
Newly coolest metrics, what
They want for you and me. To cut
The cord of mama culture, Lord
papa Sky-king, so that, bored,
You may rubber-rut. Yokeless, they
Join smug to smart and smokeless. They
Tell you nice; they mealy-thump:
Could you Humpty-Dumpty jump?
Smoochie Goochie Sweety Pie,
Newlove means, when unwanted, die.
__________________
Charles D. Presberg is author of Adventures in Paradox: “Don Quixote” and the Western Tradition (Penn State UP, 2001). He teaches Spanish Renaissance literature at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Email: presbergc@missouri.edu
