<tate's "apology for eating geoffrey movius's hyacinth"> 2006-08-16.2:34 p.m. Apology for Eating Geoffrey Movius's Hyacinth James Tate It has come to this, a life of uncalculated passion for the barely wriggling throb of the invisible tube of force that manufactures a laugh for smothering pentagons, fructifying useless poems, and salvaging broken-hearted penguins. Holy Kansas City, I hold onto your earlobes and blaze a trail through Boston's murky yawn. Happy to be grown-up at last, I bathe my feet in rum, I take off my shirt and find serial numbers chewing jagged holes in my breasts. As a result, I consider blowing my nose in my mouth. Another Palm Sunday has come and gone. It's always a letdown. Life's like that: one day you're Saint James, the next you're just the girl across the street trying to think up a name for a new cereal, weird little nightmares of death-colored snowflakes. I arrived on your doorstep, a never-ending passion... it has to be like this Spent spend it all, quickly the currency is always changing + SHELTER + embarrassed to not be a child ----EATING EVERYTHING because it moves because it does not move fast enough because you ARE it and you love yourself for being IT You dance you make love to the red dog of sunlight You speak of darkness the absence of light the abscess of light I speak of the absence of absence --do not go away any of you I WILL marry you, the whole lot... Tomorrow, I trust this is true I invite my old age to testify, proving my plans were the worst I failed everyone because my "courage" was instant sorrow Such a word "courage" a shudder runs through an empty house a puff of smoke shoots from each fingertip Lordy, what changes is the desire for grace I forget each dawn my raison d'etre Surely the man who started this poem is dead His fingertips ate at my throat But wait! we boogie-woogie through a reunion of terrors, a decade slashes its wrist. A toast! "If we were not genuinely interested in orderly, effective, quick destruction..." Throw me a rope, free at last! I am beginning to grow again, I see eye to eye with a snail. I am running toward you. We are jumping out of windows, expecting to make friends with the people whose windows we pass. I am a drugstore cowboy, interested in mysticism, violins and cannibalism. For offering me a chair in which to catch my breath, to recollect my suicide in tranquility, I praise your wife, her cooking, intelligence and beauty, your son and daughter, the impeccable decor of your terrific house, your dog's gleaming coat and fine breath, the glass from which I drink, your eternally warm and sympathetic hand on my shoulder, I praise the mysterious ways of the universe Which have allowed us to share these truly memorable moments in this starlit spectacle of holocaust and slumber. I am sorry I ate your hyacinth, but it was so cold and lonely. back /& forth /& frosting names are often sad