Once I looked to the Bard for words profound;
ageless, his wisdom ran unabated.
Yet Hamlet is now ideologically unsound,
“the slings and arrows” historically Iocated.
I wept for the creature of Frankenstein,
spurned by his master, forced to roam the Earth.
But I’d been subjectively positioned in a paradigm
by Mary’s anxiety about childbirth.
I read Balzac, Hardy and Henry James
describing “worlds” which seemed quite sensible.
Now Eagleton’s exposed their bourgeois games
I find them morally reprehensible.
I dreamt of being Robinson Crusoe
or proud, fierce Hawkeye in his buckskins dressed,
but Fenimore and Defoe have to go,
they’re culturally encoded and empirically obsessed.
Inspired by Guinness, did James Joyce sit down
to see what magic flowed when he was ******?
The stream of Ulysses floats Bloom-about-town
dreamthinkingnever : “I’mamodernist”.

I’d gladly give Woolf a Room of Her Own
and be one of the boys with Hemingway,
but sensitive guys leave their bulls alone
say de Beauvoir and Luce Irigaray.
No more fun with Wordsworth being daffodilly,
no simple pleasure reading Mickey Mouse;
Steamboat Willie can’t help but look silly
dissected by Foucault and Levi-Strauss.
The Bible shows intertextuality
says the two Jacques, Lacan and Derrida.
Judas, a construct of bisexuality?
The **** fixations of Herod are?

It’s got so bad I deconstruct a holiday brochure.
I can’t even **** without Roland Barthes and Ferdinand de Saussure.

Rolling green hills
Embrace me in a
Verdant and serene sigh,
With high notes
And low notes
Against the divine
Refrain of an
Unclouded sky,
And for a moment
I belong to somewhere
Far beyond,
Farther from where
Most would go...

And there,
So many of them--
All the pretty horses
Dance across the horizon.
Silhouettes running free,
Strong and intensified,
Limbs glossy and supple,
Tails ghosting through
The fields of
Untouched promise.

All the pretty horses
Remind me of a
Simple time,
Remind me of a
Beloved lullaby,
A sweet and melodic air
That wafts by slowly of
Blacks and bays,
Dapples and grays,
Chestnuts and sorrels,
Buckskins and duns,
All beautiful
Balanced,
And bodied,
A symphony of
painted colors
Dotting the expanse
A Hush-a-bye
Echo of their passage.

You can't tame
All the pretty horses.
Never, never.
Their spirit forever
Roams the prairie heart
Of wild places.
I sit back and reflect
As I watch them
Wander off
Into the distance as
Fading shadows
Of romance, nature,
And spirituality.

I watch and I pray
For some solace,
For some comfort.
With a delicious
Frisson of pleasure,
Tingling chills,
Electrically charged,
Flying and seeing
Hidden hues,
I am one with
All the pretty horses,
My kindred love,
Basking in the dusty
Wake of their glory.