Greenwich Time

Posted on 16 February 2010

Go back to the Sphinx, please,
or to Babylon where it was
sorted out quite plainly
with the perfect
of the mummy, wrapped
museum linen still,

still preserved on
Eighty-Fifth and Fifth,

a glorious Rembrandt still,
still life still gleaming,
beautiful in leathery limbs
of Midas gold and granite pure
redeeming us from

all this horror.

Give me, please, the perfect
of the eye lid just before decay sets in,
or dazzling Keats with his perfect urn
of lovers frozen, ultimate in truth is beauty foreplay.
for I will not go down, sir,

not into this horror.

Make us all immortal. Make
us worth a dollar or a million
dollars. Or a billion. Not this

heartbeat rotting ticking
of my dying dancing
look out at these reeling fingers weeping
gleeful dumb and instant dreams
so fluttering leaf down,
ruining the endless molecules
of spilling unthought
breathing us the nothing that’s
accomplished here but animal,
no!
I will not disappear

into this awful hurricane

so make me TV here forever
and for cinema purists caught
in magazines deep stored
in backlit wily files.

I will not just leave
this perfect place
without a mark.

I will not
start to leave.

You cannot make me do this,
no you can’t! You will not,
cannot, will not, cannot,
ever! No!