The Dandy's Didactic Dictionary
by Ted Hayes, Seth Embry & Probably Tims Gardner
A is for Ascot
B is for Baudelaire
C is for Country-house
D is for Dilettante
E is for Elegance
F is for Fop
G is for Garish
H is for Hetero-flexible
I is for Intellectual
J is for Jobless
K is for King Charles II
L is for Laudanum
M is for Maudlin
N is for Nocturnal
O is for Opium
P is for Polari
Q is for Queer-bait
R is for Rake
S is for Syphilis
T is for Tribadism
U is for Uranian
V is for Verlaine
W is for Wilde, Oscar
X is for Xerxes, literature and paintings thereof.
Y is for Yusupov, Prince Felix Felixovich
Z is for Zenobia, Queen of Syria
To love is to be led away
into a forest where the secret grave
is dug, singing, praising darkness
under the trees.
This stanza is from a poem called "Rescue the Dead" by David Ignatow. I rediscovered it in an old email written to me by someone very special, whom I will never forget.
I am reminded of
a fragrance
still impossible
to hear,
too far away
to see,
too distant now
to fear.
—April 12, 2009
Directly followed "The Skin."
I am pressing down upon a skin.
The skin resists with a supple
firmness; the skin gives but
does not admit to me
the secret in its weight.
The skin is not translucent
but nor is it opaque.
Neither is it luminous—
and yet I sense a faint
or dying glow about its pores.
The skin can breech no
statement to my touch.
It will not communicate;
it will only give
as upon it I slightly press,
pressing on with an eye
to the pale horizon of the flesh.
—April 12, 2009
Directly followed "Sabres Fell."
Sabres fell. Arms
outstretched toward
a fallow wood,
we march forward
to the bright good,
the twilit dell.
Lightly glows the dusk.
A smell of jasmine
floats among moored
lives like still vessels.
The floors are dusty,
boards groaning with
a wisdom and a lore.
—April 12, 2009
Brooklyn. While falling asleep.
Upon a plangent bell arrives a Spring,
a verdant mind yet clouded and unclear,
as veinous shadows overhead recall
the weary convalescence of the year.
The sky a spartan-bare cerulean
may slow dispel the stasis and the fear,
and gloamings hyperboreal defy
the weary convalescence of the year.
A frigid shadow overpasses and
a warmth from dying twilight fast repairs
with all the resignation of the dead:
this weary convalescence of the year.
Upon a chill cadaver Spring presides—
and though the sun draws ever near,
these waning fragments of the dark resist
the weary convalescence of the year.
—April 9, 2009
Union Square, NY