In drunken dream my Elsa’s tongue like lemonade is with her long valise;

Long with thoughts she says I am a lime and lime and lemons and all this time

To arrive without her feet in a coat of fur, a crinoline trunk and remarkable knees

With a knock, knock, knock, and a knock once more,

As I lift my weary head of shoveled hair to ask, ‘Who is it?’

Elsa says to wait and hands me her orange suitcase; an ana of antipodes:

And bread and butter and the oil of olives still an oily inclement of odium breaths

Spread turned sentimental even a seashell; the esophagus of a nymph meretriciously selling loafs

Of silver wine bread crumbs and feathers which she licks calls a plume puissant she says

Turns my white shoes into fur and leather convivial tendons chew and tense

Beneath the weight of ermine pets placed atop fecund pages fecundly multiplying into eggs

Anon for the short dress of your tongue dainty and demure you’re a boat a sail a lovely fine weather chemise Crapulous crapulous plead matutinal Easter thighs for Christ has risen she says she said

Posy pose for me your equine face of vases red flowers

The zeal of your nose for my nose would only be clever to nose one another’s noses together

In absence of an antipodean sunset nose for nose

And a knock, knock, knock, and a knock once more sings the sonorous door;

Elsa says its fine and to go and see who is it and not to have a worry as she has plans to stay awhile.

*              *              *

My Margit is absurd and has asked to be raped

Atop a yellow bed in a drunken hotel room grown drunk with age.

I say, ‘Not today, no not tonight,’ and I wonder of her mother’s thighs.

In the backseat of a car I fell from my mother’s womb

Into carpenter hands and sawdust sweat

Of a man unsure of what it was for a man to be a father.

And I try to comfort her with kisses and the taste of wine but she becomes upset

As a knock atop the door quiets her she says that I should answer,

To extend the offer in a liquor polonaise, to ask,

‘Really was it nothing, was it not a thing at all?’

But the mouth between Margit’s thighs curses naked her harridan mother

Searching for prandial pricks to please.

And I with mice and warm drinks to have lost my wrist watch and socks

And all my sensible faculties in the song of a drunken hotel grown drunk with age;

‘My prepuce is jejune having refused to take its coat and heavy shoes,

For in the summer weather how many lovely Heathers will tickle a man dressed for cold weather?’

Yet under warm weather are thoughts were fair and warm,

But even warmth cannot soften the coarseness of the indecisive question;

‘Elsa really was it nothing, was it not a thing at all?

In a tub of water rested furled between my thighs

I had a verdigris child named Vachel and as his little utter uttered bubbles

He drowned in shallow water while the diaphone sounded from the bay.

But upon my arrival the ship had already left the harbor,

And never was I ever a sailor and if ever I was, never would I ever have sailed.

In the hotel room I brood over Elsa with paper cups and cream,

Under a chatoyant light I wet my gullet dancing under sallow sheets

Of wonder and whys and well why nots and if Elsa’s song will hold me in sway

Within the walls and wine in the jowl of this foul hotel which I can no longer see but smell,

And in a musty prattle I see that Elsa has a heart, has her long valise long with thoughts,

And deserves more than the moiety man I moistly am unburdened of her soundless song,

Of mortar dust woman muttering the same soliloquy;

‘Really was it nothing, was it not a thing at all?’

And a knock, knock, knock, and a knock once more,

Of an obelisk girl edified quite nicely who I have met once before.

She asks for a drink, asks, but really she does not ask at all,

And I pour my lips atop her and slowly eat her breasts,

‘Do not come in me, do not please come not yet,’

But treading in her mire I grew to be pragmatic

As I rolled into a furl Elsa knocked atop my door,

With a knock, knock, knock, and a knock once more.

It is Margit absurd found not one prandial prick please,

And begs to be raped atop a yellow bed in a drunken hotel grown drunk with age.

I say ‘Not today, no not tonight, but come, let me hold you my Margit,

In the thick of this dreary night.’


- Garrett Michael Ball