for me it's still the memory
of travelling on the no. 86 bus
to school, really
loving robert plant's song
darkness, darkness
and morning dew reading
voltaire - both songs from the
album dreamland -
a compensation for the last album
by led zeppelin having exhausted
their togetherness of stating something,
i don't know why i sided with
collecting the oeuvre of led zeppelin
and not black sabbath -
but still that bus journey that took
about an hour and two buses -
across cold crisp green belt, just sitting
there listening to music and reading
a book, while the same of rosa parks'
effort sat in the back (as usual) jabbering
like parrots and not stoic enough
to place all our supposed origins -
rosa parks, your effort became futile -
your kindred still preferred the back
of the bus, where they could get rowdy
with girls who'd not **** me, thanks,
i can't be bothered to live a white girl,
i'll stick to the art,
now i couldn't walk down a high street
eyeing shops' content holding her hand
without being too irritated and wishing
to run into a forest
and swim in fallen autumnal leaves
smelling the sweetness of death
where death sweet, the only sweetness
of death is among autumnal leaves fallen,
this strange Aphrodite, this
strange autumnal Aphrodite sea, this sea
of leaves, and i have, fallen into it
and swam in it in the brisk cool of night
when this sea is most porous to
secrete the perfume a dead body of a man
or fox could never do;
O the sweet scented dead sea of the
autumnal Aphrodite balding and shedding leaves,
to litter the forest floor, and me
slain in it nonetheless still living -
parisian perfumeries can hide and squalor in shame
compared to the odour of the autumnal Aphrodite sea
of dead leaves beneath the craniums of alveoli
sketches of the naked trees.