Human Voices

Tie me to a masthead
Beat a pair of strokes from oars in ships 
Your waxen dripping earlobes 
Blindfolded to Ithaca—
Please do not forget to sing. 

In a similar demise this Dedalus 
Will sing in Germanized Italic English;
Writing letters to his Martha, 
Leopold resists temptations:
Little Gerty, crippled mermaids, and the seashore. 

Enlightenment was captured as a dialectic,
Moving pictures juxtaposed with jazz;
Music drained in milk and liquor
Drinking moon-compounded stardust:
Thus we built society. 

Pinstripe ovaries and monthly cycle pills 
Inundated New York streets 
Jetstream and an overcompensated Thursday 
Oblivion on Friday never breathe tomorrow 
Toxic and repeat. 

Scream a thousand female sorrows
Drown a résumé in metered verse   
Tie me down to Nietzsche’s great Apollo  
Where the lyre’s always playing 
Weeping for they never knew 

How to arrest a modicum of passion 
Trapped inside a scented candle 
Melting softly, hardening to your caress 
To live like alabaster freedom 
Straining eardrums just to linger  

Motionless a voice is singing. 
Faraway the underwater muffled choices 
White noise infiltrating 
Fantasy like shards of honey 
Bleeding you were cut by an illusion.