Bathtub Panopticon

I had a little desert, I kept it in the study,

it was a few inches across, like a hand mirror,

it moved a few inches at a time, like an ice age,

I listened to 'Cortez', the atonal opera mecanique,

you could spend a siecle waiting for it to begin,

cancel every date, another siecle before the fin,

who isn't happy to be a killing machine?,

for 6 years I didn't cut myself shaving, Charlotte,

my razor spoke in the voice of the world-historical,

my desert bloomed with thumb-sized palms,

had a little Revolution, had a little mirage,

brained me with a calendar, I loved the 2nd act,

"Fear, comma, The Great", the white voice of it,

the score wheeling around like a spinning-jenny,

the littlebook smashed like a spinning-jenny,

I leaned the bathwater back into your cotton bodice,

oh I knew I was supposed to locate it in the body,

this modest end-of-things, you need the body

to have the phrase "to go to bed," Charlotte,

you need the body to have a place to hang your head,

you send the desert to the Foreign Legion: like the razor says,

"you need the Mountain to have Cortez,"

the razor says "the avant-garde is ideologically unsound,

Charlotte, you need the razor to have Marat"

Copyright World Poetry, Incorporated Jul/Aug 1996
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved