When florid May has slipped into torrid June
When exotic guano has been spread
Or the dung collected from steers
Or most shameful the fragrant swine manure
Breaking down into phosphorus and nitrogen
In the steamy currents wafting from the south
When baseball season chugs past Memorial Day
And robins persist in their brainless caroling
And cardinals their variations on a theme
And mockingbirds their manic vocal collages
And daffodils have long since passed away
To make room for daisies zinnias and impatiens
And folks have harnessed the erectile virtue
Of Jupiter Pluvius
That’s when I want to escape
The fresh air the sunshine and the humid breezes
Draw the curtains boot my ancient desktop
The size of a microwave oven
And compose commentary on the subject
Of flowers’ growing out of shit

Is the sickly confessional mode
More poetic than other more manly manners
As more sincerely expressing
The degenerative malady of the soul
And has not that sickness grown
Flower-like
Along with the population
And hence the opportunities for ennui and alienation
And ever more efficient wickedness
Perhaps there obtains a historical oscillation
Of freshness and decay
When the dirge of plague gives way to showers sweet
Ah but Aries’ engendering rain for so it continues
Cannot forestall the Gemini’s heat
That accelerates decomposition
Perhaps a straight shot to decadence
Since Bion lamented Adonis
And Moschus lamented Bion
And Roman preached the piety of the apiary
And Parisian plucked flowers grown in evil
And pornography in 31 democratic flavors
And massacre in story song and everyday life
And art that luxuriates in formal formlessness
A disciplined chaos
Driven by an energy unseen
A freshness sub rosa
Ditch flowers where once thrived rows of tulips

The traumas have not proven fatal yet
Not yet fatal for me
But settled into festering malaise
And cloud themselves in layers of putridity
Sweet and iridescent as rotting meat
The light latent in phosphorus
The exaltation in giddy oxide of nitrogen
Charism of cloud charism of fragrance
Wormwood and poppy and estival song
Too impatient to wait for equinox
Bursting like battlefield corpses warmed in the sun
Erupting like corals when the moon
Calls forth their nebulous gametes
And all corruption blossoms
Iambickish pentametroid and effrent
Luz se luzes inay tirniyebris
A swirly medley of carol cadence and collage
The cut worm still grateful serves
As fertilizer
If I pity myself I pity all
Who join the big decay that all might live