begin end begin he writes come to party in my room ashtray spilled on sheets mirror smeared clothes scattered everywhere i’m reclining on floor pulling on ***** hair writing lonely-hearts poem i don’t care about your photograph i just want to know will you come to party in my room? i have confidences to share secrets to reveal no one to give my body to i need to feel warmth of another there is food if you are hungry i’ll just watch listen to you will come won’t you? please this is no prank are you there? i just wanted to invite you to party you’re my only guest i need you i sound desperate you want to know how long i’ve been this way kind of let myself go grown used to this room that keeps my secret used to sleeping alone in big double bed i think i shall go take hot bath don’t come another night perhaps i can do it quite well myself thank you you probably would have felt out of place anyway - london 1971

nothing wrong with beating off but i prefer female sometimes pretty thing replies Odys you have a way with words actually he prefers woman all times tends to be too impatient rough handling himself needs woman’s gentler slower adoring touch

i wouldn’t mind wife if she is simply **** in residence leaning against doorway posing between me and kitchen he considers let’s get cruel in cruelty one finally realizes one’s own true self-interest who am i? am i cruel enough to be sick-hearted *******? am i capable of oppression torture? do i honestly desire *** slave? do i believe all hope of becoming normal human is gone? he hears her words i have cuffs crop leg spreader flogger hood paddle cane like swelling bruises on my *** never touch my face arms legs i like to be spit on while you pull hair i like servicing man who takes pleasure in giving brutal intense pain *** on my face **** **** on me i'm looking for white muscular egotistic man who is into sadomasochism i enjoy abuse part just as much as *** part is he lightweight no stomach for collared sadism? He mumbles to himself bottom line i respect love women this existence is killing me ignores his thoughts sings aloud we’re used to being rude to each other used to getting crude with each other come on now pretty thing sit next to me

female fantasy number 1 man’s ******* is like handle on slot machine if woman pulls it right way 3 cherries line up in his eyes ***** jingle ring money shoots out ***-hole female fantasy number 2 science invents way in which more money woman spends shopping more weight she can lose

i imagined you were plateful of pancakes you giggled when i poured syrup on your face i smiled pondering how lovely you would taste we sat for a while gazing into each other’s eyes until you got cold rubbery i didn’t want to eat you anymore

maybe he is not so charming anymore maybe Odysseus has become blunt  difficult he tries to be respectful but sometimes he is excessive self-willed time place names have lost any mearing during lively discussion with pretty thing creativity versus craft he confronts original invention requires destruction surely you realize that? pretty thing replies Odys i didn’t realize you were so dominant you seem so playful puppy-like in daytime i never would have guessed you’re such a chauvinistic ******* he questions chauvinistic ******* what’s that suppose to mean? i don’t know what you’re talking about she answers don’t play dumb Odys i know you’re smart at semiotics he asks semiotics what does that mean? I don’t know the word listen you’re right and i’m wrong i apologize i didn’t mean to get so argumentative he reaches for dictionary on floor next to chair pretty thing crosses legs speaks i’m very careful to use simple words everyone can understand but i’m just sign painter isn’t that right Odys? what would i know? he pleads you’re not making any sense we both use brushes paint similar techniques that’s beside the point i apologize she insists you’re way off the subject Odys he begs you’re right i’m wrong whatever i said made you get so upset please forgive me her voice cold terse i need to go home Odys you scare me you’re way too fanatic

thinks to himself promise her anything but give her the finger just when she’s finally starting to fall for whole scam give her the slip 6 to 12 weeks is average life expectancy for modern romance it’s fast world we’re all expendable can’t hear what you’re saying music is too loud rule number 1 no matter how beautiful she is there’s always someone who’s sick of her rule number 2 why would you even be talking with her if she didn’t have *****? rule number 3 they’re all ******* ******! he tries to recall if Bayli ever behaved like ***** he concludes no never did she become one?

in restless sleep he dreams someone tells him Bayli is working at ******* bar he goes to see her Bayli looks young beautiful wearing thong nothing else many men are pursuing her he excitedly approaches but she seems to only vaguely recognize him she questions do i know you? he answers Bayli it’s me Odys! she answers my name is not Bayli Odys who? where do you know me from?” he pleads Bayli, look at me Bayli smiles hesitantly as she looks around for support points finger towards Odysseus 2 bouncers approach shove him against wall force him outside bouncer barks her name is not Bayli now get hell out of here you freaking loser! they go back inside slamming door as he walks away neighborhood kids throw apples at him wakes up confused sad from dream

he vows i don’t need love love is for those too lame to stand alone bear solitude self-avowal love is sign of weakness compliance control love is contract made between two people too spineless to take pleasure in own freedom love is way to take advantage exploit love is convenience pact for mutual security love is cumbersome weight tied around athlete’s neck love is suffering love is a lie illusion cover-up for everyone’s petty lame problems

1984 chicago suffers harsh winter furious winds blow across lakefront Mom and Dad take Odysseus to dinner at posh new restaurant in art galleries district on the way Mom and Dad argue about parking Mom wants to leave car with valet Dad insists they first look for space Mom gets annoyed the wind will ruin my hair drop me and Odys off at door then do what you want Dad says you’re going to miss me when i’m gone Mom snaps we’ll see when are you planning on leaving? Dad wears navy blue blazer white shirt burgundy foulard silk tie he is in good spirits winning personality keeps table lively Mom wears beige cashmere turtleneck darker beige wool skirt brown alligator high heels gold earrings she waves then greets roths weissmans who are led by young hostess they walk past table make brief polite conversation after several rounds of drinks Dad speaks you know, it’s about time Odys are you dating anyone in particular? Odysseus hesitates confesses he has had ****** relations with hundreds of girls his knees begin to shake under table he admits maybe I’m incapable of sustaining intimate relationship with one woman i’m conflicted blocking all these feelings inside never learned how to love can’t hold on to anything all i know how is **** and run Mom interjects don’t use that word! she suggests he travel get some fresh ideas Dad becomes irritated lights cigarette waives to waiter orders another Absolute on the rocks bursts out what the hell do you mean you never learned to love you grew up in a house of love *******! didn’t you learn anything? are you purposely trying to ruin dinner? you watch your step mister or i’ll whack you right here at the table! you make me sick with all your excuses one of these days you’re going to wake up Odys and I hope it’s not too late Mom immediately glances at roth’s weissman’s table then glares sharply at Dad she snaps Max lower your voice! people can hear you we’re in a restaurant can we please change the subject? she instantly regains composure continues i spoke with your sister Penelope today and she let me know she might be landing a new account she’s being wined and dined this evening by c.e.o. of prominent san francisco agency later waiter clears entrees asks if anyone wants after-dinner drink dessert Mom orders coffee apple pie with scoop of vanilla ice cream Dad orders coffee Mom asks what do you wish for in your life Odys? who do you want to be? he exhales long breath answers i used to dream of becoming renown painter but now i’m not sure sad to say don’t know what i want sometimes i think of priesthood but i’ve done too much sinning Dad grows irate who puts these ideas into your head? you ******* ungrateful kid! what the hell is matter with you? Mom interrupts Max don’t lose your temper we’re in a restaurant she glances at roth’s weissman’s table nods with big smile on face Odysseus feels entangled in web of desires deceptions debts he vacillates from one aspiration to next grown comfortable in his failures distrust

the greater technique in writing poetry,
is not really associated with the
scholastic, well at least not with poets-in-residence
at university institution, esp. with the current
curb on free experience of expression
having to walk a ballerina sort of walk on
tip toe, even though a ballerina walk on
hard surfaces is an elephants stomp (swan lake?
the drumming of the ballerinas deafens the
music, what a crude sadistic art-form),
and should ballerinas practice the art-form on
cushions they couldn't do their tip-toe...
a ballerina sort of walk to not cause usurping
apathy by the bullish heart is a paradox...
because hard topics with a ballerina tread will
still become a piano hitting the ground...
and soft topics with a ballerina tread will
only become the agonising loss of firm footing,
and a torture of the trivial having to be danced
upon with such seriousness as the samba would
otherwise allow... the tip-toe having not firm
rooting... if that makes a sensual impression on you,
so be it, it's hardly senseless to write such words,
since you see the symbolic encoding with you words,
so unless these arrangements don't make you blind,
i'm assuming you will not allow anti-geometrics of
certain painters... and instead you're embracing
satisfaction with squares and triangles...
a rigid narrative of pre-planning an expedition to
Antarctica asking for the right provisions of fur,
tents and water and food... it's not up to me to play with
these words for interpretation, i've made the interpretation
a freedom only you can behold, i can't always be found
willing to interpret the arrangement for you,
i'm not into thought ******* and shackling,
and if you're into that... then you're just plain ******* lazy;
i mean, if i was a poet-in-residence at a university
and told to mind recognisable poetic technique
in the range of onomatopoeia and metaphor
and not accept a higher technique, the digression
via the kaleidoscope, the many diversion,
changed subject matters... i'd bore myself to death...
of course there's the rambling technique of
a poetic narrative, a sudden caffeine injection of
the elevated moment, but that technique calls for
a single subject matter - i'm talking explosions...
a return to ballerinas, if poets mind hard subjects,
heavy subjects, and they want to treat on them
gracefully like ballerinas in agony
they will have to embrace the fact that such
"grace" is actually an elephants stomp...
it's no good asking ballerinas to practice their
art by dancing on cushions... the two graces -
one of dance and the other of grace will never allow
you to walk around on tip-tope...
oh come on, interpret it with images of some sort
of comparison, like a ballerina on a tightrope...
i'm not going to be spoon-feeding you
anywhere from the page.

spring clean, the boiler-man came for an annual
check-up, i was working and kept my room
a bit un-kept...
cleaned the windows, hoovered the floor,
steamed it, cleaned the bookshelves from dust,
it smelt like a mint-conditioning comic after,
changed the bedsheets,
took all the empty cups from the shelves,
spotless clean...
but i'm telling you, if i get to see 2015's
best film *inside out by pixar i'd give you
a clear analysis on the specific points,
at the moment i have this **** of thinking
about how the optics of man
only start engaging in memory after 4 years
upon birth...
spending nine months in the waters of the womb
(imagine coal miners trapped in
perpetual coal-mine for nine months,
they'd re-enter the light of day like moles,
having to wear sunglasses for the same number
of months before the eyes adjusted) -
it's no wonder that the parts of the body
passing fluids (well, **** in the form of
diarrhoea is pigeon ****) are weak...
why the ***** i'm saying...
why the mushy pulp of the apple purée
because the oesophagus is weak too and needs
to develop like bones, become hardened,
indeed these soft tissues need to become firm
paralleled with bones, baby bones are undeveloped
in terms of how we can't walk at the beginning
but crawl... forget the drawings of darwinism
of shortened historical explanation...
our's isn't with tail and hunched spine...
we're crawling...
but the pixar film inside out i will write a detailed
analysis when i see it again...
at first i can only relate one fascination...
the way we only become to actually consciously
see aged ~4... prior to that we have no
optical impression of the world with memory...
memory and seeing only enjoin
aged ~4... prior to that all the senses are based
in the unconscious, once the senses emerge from
the unconscious, actual faculties develop,
sight develops with memory...
i could say that speech develops with sounds...
but ba ba goo goo ma ma da da is actual
gibberish to consider since we become so eloquent
after, aided by the fact that we capture sounds
with phonetic optics of letters...
i'll stick my ground,
the first symbiosis is that of sight and memory,
which also becomes a symbiosis of
sight and memorising-imagination, or memory-in-itself...
and the clash of these two symbioses
creates a paradox of what actually happened
and what happened upon re-imagining...
like i said, i could expand on the theories within
inside out, with my re-evaluation as alt. outside in,
and i can say about a 1000 child psychologists could
be spawned from this single film...
but you never know, i might even theorise further
tonight once i drink enough and get a toilet break;
and bear in mind i'm about to cross the threshold
of being awake for 24 hours, after i miscalculated
my doctor's appointment for an amitriptyline (25mg)
prescription; the depth of the film is immense,
but i think it's harsh for so many psychological
undertones to be shown t children,
i think that it's a film for adults, even though
it's rated U... and indeed, more like a U-turn in
terms of thinking about life than suitable for
the under-aged,
at first you get the early stages of child development,
by the end of the film of hopefully seeing adolescent
development, but that's cut short when
puberty obstructs sensitive sensible matters that
lead into sadomasochism in certain cases,
and in others into ****** carelessness as documented
by grooming examples in societies, like the ones
in england... or two girls today in mini-skirts with
the still cold spring nights, one ******* crouched
in an alley, the other trying to ease her on
while i walk past to finish it quickly...
i could, really could bombast you with my little
theory tool-kit... when joy becomes jealous of
sadness and wants to rob sadness of a prime memory...
the simple cutting of the umbilical chord of
being born in one place, but moving to another...
the sheer thoughtless release of tears in a classroom...
then the imaginary friend encounter...
never take short-cuts with that third cat,
third elephant, third dolphin character leading
you into the world of imagination,
the imaginary friend is actually a placebo figure in
this realm, he can't have imagined it all,
we couldn't have been the first prize pundit in it all...
he's the thief of ownership...
and then dragged into the cyst pit of those
characters real in life, celebrating your third birthday,
still blind to the world... the rainbows of life
and the darkness of the foetal mine...
the clown who's less horror but more a 5 year
student of acting reduced to cheap party tricks...
distorted not in life, but in your dreams,
as proof that you really didn't see the world
so early... you couldn't have, because if you had,
the dream world would not distort so profoundly...
and upon re-entry into the foetal position of sleep
your first 3 years are reflected in sleep...
such that when joy and sadness walked into
the realm of the imagination i thought they'd wake
the girl up by going to the cinema to watch a horror movie
like the one joy tried to block when the family
first moved to san francisco...
oh indeed the over-layering of the five crude expressions
of thought, memory and imagination...
i wonder why these chose those five...
and there was no hope among them - and hope's
triplet shapes of hope itself, love, and fear...
and when suddenly the imaginary friend dragged
the poor girl into the abyss of forgettable memories,
it dawned on me how the girl sat there holding
memories she wished to remember, a motherly
narcissism as to say: my own child...
but it felt so strange to imagine this child
holding onto memories like that, when in reality
without the five crude impressions of feelings
she would be unable to do so... this melancholic
reflection of joy suddenly dawned upon her
that the real sadness was the it too was sadness,
for if natural selection exists... so too much
cognitive selection, however dear some things are
to us... some of us have to remember
being able to give surgery, learn to drive buses,
teach mathematics... to be truly enjoined with humanity,
and not simple childish solipsists;
even as such... write poetry and weep.

As I plunge the blade towards her heart
She wraps her arms around me
I wrestle her off to plunge again
she clings on tight, fights on in vain
We feint and parry though she stands in one spot
For she is a rose rambler and pruning my lot

having applied myself to two languages with different parameters of execution: writing in primarily in English, reading fiction and poetry primarily in English enabled me to gain strength in reading philosophy and conjuring up white-rabbits from a top-hat in Polnisch - i can't read philosophy in English - which explains why few interests in philosophy exist - the English have undermined the worth of philosophy, oh sure, David Hume is the rave in Scotland, because he's Scottish - but the English took to solely understanding the world via Darwinism - image deciphering accounts of how the natural order of things is attached to inanimate materials propelled by falling apples - the continental procedure is less concerning Darwinism and more akin to a mental fashion statement, as in: what's vogue these days? what's the cognitive vogue? the English "philosophers" with their rigid Darwinism are like priests - which is why they attracted biblical literal interpretation - the creationists - there's no other explanation why the creationists emerged - it was because of militant atheism, atheism without individual originality - invoked by a sense of herding the sheep to the grazing hills of nihilism - the pillar that became the crutch - of course i admire and know it's true - no Genesis story that's merely a p.s. in history is ever going to undermine the naturalist's fascination with the world in every minute detail - i'm not against that... but at this moment i was thinking of a cult idea for a naturalist - take a pornographic movie, and give it to a naturalist to assess - after all... we're just mammals - i think this could turn out to be a real daytrip for a naturalist - oh sure, it must be ease with organism that apparently do not derive any pleasure from procreation... give two beings that apparently do derive pleasure from procreation... to later debase it with the malignant forces at work in the Encyclopedia that's 120 days of *****... the naturalist narrating a pornographic scene would be bewildered as to why these highly evolved creatures are exponentially higher-up the tiers of evolution, needing so many complex adaptive techniques - boredom for one, people have created more distractions than they have created tools of necessity - but perhaps they're equal - our evolutionary drive? the thing that makes us tick is not necessarily physical discomfort - we exercise for the pleasure of physical discomfort - the drive is boredom, the fear of it drives us mad with constant ingenuity taking form - like a ballerina in a salsa bar... sadism in the aura of hot-sweat-and-coconut-***-shaking as if playing dice in Las Vegas... Don Quixote (the ballet on three days away)... we're done with the empirical satisfaction of Darwinism, we know it, we need a humanistic approach to it, something that goes against the English priesthood - Darwinism will never be vogue in continent Europe, continent Europeans just say: Egyptology is as far back as is necessary to go... our lives are more important and more complex than those of primates... our lives are more important and more complex than those of primates... we want to write history, not look at history as a burden and therefore try to erase it, placing ourselves in a garden of awe and glass; honestly? Darwinism is a bit like creationism - it all starts with a garden, awe, and the grand spectacle - only the other includes a need to procrastinate by doing some ritualistic mumble and Hosanna Hallelujah in the highest - and the other tries not to yawn.

so onto my favourite topic... rich boy's slang -
do you really think a *prince of Egypt would speak
slave tongue Hebraic?
do you think **** & 'arry could speak Bulgarian
or Romanian? let me think... no.
they might speak French... maybe German...
but certainly not the eastern tongues -
now, whoever wrote that book wrote it in ancient
Egyptian, the chronologically speaking
yes, female genital mutilation was practised first
in Africa, notably Egypt, prior to male genital
mutilation being instigated by frustrated Abraham -
the collision was bound to happen -
see how pretty prince slang looks?
it's poetic - the rich boys call it poetry, the poor
boys call slang - which is why poor boy raps
and over uses rhyme - or perhaps rhyme is easier
to remember than free verse poetry -
rich boy brings a page on stage and recites because
he's too lazy or not bothered to memorise,
poor boy says yeah a lot in between his lyrics
without a page so he can the the bowling aisle
movement as if he's rolling in a convertible Cadillac -
sing ***! yo! ***! yo! so the chronology matches,
Eve first, Adam second - but not as in: they did it first -
later down the line they cut off the precious skin
and hence felt naked, they fell, they revised was not
to be revised - sure, the man got the favour right -
he was the winner - but at the same time, the loser -
hence the good & evil bit - we don't really know -
is it really necessary to have good *** to later have
a fickle partner and laws being in her favour via what's
called the missed prenup thought? to me it's just a literal
reading of the text - looking for laurel leaves to cover
the revision of the genitalia - not the actual genitalia per se,
just the revised versions - so if the female variation is
whatever it is - less pleasure from *** and what not,
for man that also means counting the stars and weeks
and having no pleasure from ******* when her period
arrives and you have to try a diet of **** or something -
well of course it's slightly uncomfortable with it -
but at the same time you increase your endurance with it -
a slight sadomasochism, no whips no ******* women,
no leather, no adventure, just raw meat and raw meat -
no fantasy no role play - just a little bit of skin making all
the difference - can you imagine Marquis de Sade writing
as frankly as this? well... every time i revise my thought
on the book of genesis, i obviously become a covert literal
reader of it, deciphering the eloquent slang of a prince of
Egypt would use on such "delicate" matters -
but with that being said: it becomes all the less fascinating
a myth-making engine, and given he was forced out of
his comfort zone (and i mean a comfort zone) he would
cite God as the word (reason), but by word alone and
the word only - the reasoning behind what entered the land
of Egypt as being the same as what entered the Garden
of Eden... and tempted... the temptation came with the pyramids -
oddly enough only the Eiffel Tower was higher than
the pyramids - look at the time it took man to become so bold again!
look at it! massive - and in some weird quantum physics
interpretation of the mythological past becoming the actual
future - the tower of Babel... and... yep, you guessed it:
the Burj Khalifa (or the Khalifa Tower) is its equivalent;
but ****, only the Eiffel Tower overshadowed the pyramids -
something must have happened back then then,
if man was so shy in rising his structures too far up into
the sky - but i guess the Enlightenment spurred him on...
later to crash back down with the atom phobia of the second
part of the 20th century, which in the 21st century morphed into:
well, how will wars be profitable if we drop a nuke?
e'oh! no, sorry, one nuke will make us bankrupt -
we need tanks, guns, bullets... huge bulks of them!
stockpiling nukes ended up a bit like stockpiling too much...
ah crap... don't have a good analogy - just started thinking
of a desert of sugar - sugar dunes... imagining a desert
like that... well, partially true - with the Arabs not drinking
alcohol and eating too many sweets, diabetic amputees throughout
the desert land.

Another definition of sadomasochism is golf.

Renee Vivien Translations


Song
by Renée Vivien
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

When the moon weeps,
illuminating flowers on the graves of the faithful,
my memories creep
back to you, wrapped in flightless wings.

It's getting late; soon we will sleep
(your eyes already half closed)
steeped
in the shimmering air.

O, the agony of burning roses:
your forehead discloses
a heavy despondency,
though your hair floats lightly ...

In the night sky the stars burn whitely
as the Goddess nightly
resurrects flowers that fear the sun
and die before dawn ...



Undine
by Renée Vivien
loose translation/interpretation by Kim Cherub (an alias of Michael R. Burch)

Your laughter startles, your caresses rake.
Your cold kisses love the evil they do.
Your eyes―blue lotuses drifting on a lake.

Lilies are less pallid than your face.

You move like water parting.
Your hair falls in rootlike tangles.
Your words like treacherous rapids rise.
Your arms, flexible as reeds, strangle,

Choking me like tubular river reeds.
I shiver in their enlacing embrace.
Drowning without an illuminating moon,
I vanish without a trace,

lost in a nightly swoon.



Amazone
by Renée Vivien
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

the Amazon smiles above the ruins
while the sun, wearied by its struggles, droops to sleep.
******’s aroma swells Her nostrils;
She exults in blood, death’s inscrutable lover.

She loves lovers who intoxicate Her
with their wild agonies and proud demises.
She despises the cloying honey of feminine caresses;
cups empty of horror fail to satisfy Her.

Her desire, falling cruelly on some wan mouth
from which she rips out the unrequited kiss,
awaits ardently lust’s supreme spasm,
more beautiful and more terrible than the spasm of love.

NOTE: The French poem has “coups” and I considered various words – “cuts,” “coups,” “coups counted,” etc. – but I thought because of “intoxicate” and “honey” that “cups” worked best in English.



“Nous nous sommes assises” (“We Sat Down”)
by Renée Vivien
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Darling, we were like two exiles
bearing our desolate souls within us.

Dawn broke more revolting than any illness...

Neither of us knew the native language
As we wandered the streets like strangers.
The morning’s stench, so oppressive!

Yet you shone like the sunrise of hope...

                     *

As night fell, we sat down,
Your drab dress grey as any evening,
To feel the friendly freshness of kisses.

No longer alone in the universe,
We exchanged lovely verses with languor.

Darling, we dallied, without quite daring to believe,
And I told you: “The evening is far more beautiful than the dawn.”

You nudged me with your forehead, then gave me your hands,
And I no longer feared uncertain tomorrows.

The sunset sashayed off with its splendid insolence,
But no voice dared disturb our silence...

I forgot the houses and their inhospitality...

The sunset dyed my mourning attire purple.

Then I told you, kissing your half-closed eyelids:
“Violets are more beautiful than roses.”

Darkness overwhelmed the horizon...

Harmonious sobs surrounded us...

A strange languor subdued the strident city.

Thus we savored the enigmatic hour.

Slowly death erased all light and noise,
Then I knew the august face of the night.

You let the last veils slip to your naked feet...
Then your body appeared even nobler to me, dimly lit by the stars.

Finally came the appeasement of rest, of returning to ourselves...
And I told you: “Here is the height of love…”

We who had come carrying our desolate souls within us,
like two exiles, like complete strangers.



Renée Vivien (1877-1909) was a British poet who wrote primarily in French. She was one of the last major poets of Symbolism. Her work included sonnets, hendecasyllabic verse and prose poetry. Born Pauline Mary Tarn in London to a British father and American mother, she grew up in Paris and London. Upon inheriting her father's fortune at age 21, she emigrated permanently to France. In Paris, her dress and lifestyle were as notorious as her verse. She lived lavishly as an open lesbian, sometimes dressing in men's clothes, while harboring a lifelong obsession for her closest childhood friend, Violet Shillito (a relationship that apparently remained unconsummated). Her obsession with violets led to Vivien being called the "Muse of the Violets." But in 1900 Vivien abandoned this chaste love to engage in a public affair with the American writer and heiress Natalie Clifford Barney. The following year Shillito died of typhoid fever, a tragedy from which Vivien never fully recovered. Vivien later had a relationship with a baroness to whom she considered herself to be married, even though the baroness had a husband and children. During her adventurous life, Vivien indulged in alcohol, drugs, fetishes and sadomasochism. But she grew increasingly frail and by the time of her death she weighed only 70 pounds, quite possibly dying from the cumulative effects of anorexia, alcoholism and drug abuse.

Keywords/Tags: Renee Vivien, lesbian, gay, LBGT, love, love and art, French, translation, translations, France, cross-dresser, symbolic, symbolist, symbolism, image, images, imagery, metaphor, metamorphose, metaphysical

When Van Gogh cut off his ear
It was for reassurance that the rest of him could disappear

That illusion of ownership that nerves create
Should have faded with each baby tooth I lost
It didn't though, contrariwise I worried I would extend
Into roads or trees and then feel the tire's friction or the elm's blight

Empathy is a ***** of its own
I pray I never wake up with a Siamese twin
I'd have to care, lest we lapse into mutual sadomasochism
That hilarious territory of bored lovers

The Thalidomide kids might get a kick
out of feeling new arms attached to other people
but that's the exception that proves the rule

After the Vietnam war, some men believed Agent Orange
Had followed them home, alive in newly discovered nerves
Now what odd god must be behind that ****!

Mengele often awoke from dreams sweating and sure
That his patients would learn a trick to generate biological anesthetics
He needed the feedback of sound to really understand the human body
“Prayer or pleading” he used to say with a wink to his bartender after work

Sometimes I worry that my nervous system
Might have a Mengelian agenda of its own

That I am woven into a potential torture chamber seems clear
but then I remember that I can always pull the tooth or cut off the ear