Hear then my prayers and suffer me to wed the greater with the lesser verse; grant me, proud Tragedy, a little respite. Thy service needeth years, thy rival’s, merely hours.
Book III, Elegy 1: Elegy versus Tragedy
Ovid
Being dark and comely, She comes only in the black of night so that She might do so unseen. Her husky whisper betokens smoke and whiskey, Her laugh a haught wheeze speaking of lost lines that would complete the joke if only the listener were in on it. Her coyness unassailable, one laughs along, later tries to copy down some sense of the jibe but does so only vaguely. She is a siren of sarcasm, but her barbs do not tear (at) the flesh, rather flesh (out) the tears.
She lays all out on her irony board and smooths the wrinkled brow, pensed in cares about which she has no inkling. Her raven hair falls across her face making it seem as if she only looks sidelong at her prey. Just as well; to look straight into her eyes one could die laughing. Her diaphanous gown in blue humour drapes about her, exposing more than that nude maja, the almost revealing more than any pornography. A glimpse of her stocking might be shocking —if she wore such, for beneath her louche gown she lounges stark raving naked. Shameless, in absolute abjectivity her body lies, subject to no rule, decorum, taste, or care for anything other than a good punch line.
She scoffs at those witless wags who would deem themselves philosophers, who presume to probe her depths; their shrinkling thrustings leave her anything but wet. She seeks lovers who are fools for a hot n funny honey pot, could not care less if the joke is got or not. She cares not a whit for any smart-assed wit but will graciously put up with them as long as there is some appropriate fall. For the banana is her favorite fruit — not for its sensuality; it only tempts with its skiddish peel.
Whoops! Felled again. So laid out, looking up at the twinkling stars beneath her skirt. “Like what you see?” Dumbfounded, the sap can only chortle, “Oh, yes, yes. I see the fallen fool who is, after all, only me.” “Lie still then, ass. Desire thou the spurt that will explain all the hurt? I really need to pee.” [Here the dictation gets garbled: “Something, something. . . warbled?, gargled?”] The anointing is but an attenuated laugh (there are others awaiting her pericardial bath). Yet the daub dribbled on the dome appoints the chosen to go home, alone, where he may try for his bad puns to atone.
Eve was rather dull. Certainly dim. Lillith would never have fallen for such corny lines. Likely would have been out on the town with her friend, the wise Muse. At the bar, every eye turned upon them, they would dance together, lap the floor, enjoining their hapless schemes, every drunkard’s dream. After they have their little fun, tossing their careless tresses, mindless after their twisted dresses, arm in arm they depart, insouciant messes. Only they can share the joke and so would stop beneath the street light at the corner to share a smoke. The deathly wisp curls about them, an aura of forgetfulness portending, “Forget about ‘em.” They kiss again, chastely now, and go their separate ways.
So the Muse, like Lillith too, goes off to seek some other innocent who though yet unknowing has the scent of a taste untasted, a streak of some thing to be basted. For there are jokes and there are jokes, laughs and laughs, which greater gods would ne’er allow to pass. Yet, they will be told, or no. So the set-up begins again; that rock of ages, all the paltry sin’s wages, to be rolled (like the besotted cocktail crowd) not down the aisle but up Old Fool’s hill where there not quite at the top, taking the briefest veronic swipe, the whole damned thing slips free again and tumbles back down the steep scree to an uncomprehending fen. “Dammit all to. . .” (cursed without compunction nor for that matter, conviction).
Nothing to do but back-track down from these forlorn heights to wherever the funny stone has lodged. Great is the temptation to leave it for good and go on over the hill. Ah, but down there, down there, in sheer, mysterious loveliness,
Thalia awaits.
poetastrophy 