Aberration

To the girl: To the blonde:

To the throat of the captive: If you make

One more noise . . .

           —Were the bathroom any more like a dense Japanese forest,

           The girl, all grown up, might approach him in shawl and mask,

And ask of him, softly: Watashi Kirei? (Am I beautiful?)—

The girl, submerged in the bath, to the man (whispered): Officer,

                                                                                           I’m on

                                                                                           The first

                                                                                           Step

              —And the man, all grown up too, might respond Hai,

And clamp down her wrists, and tear off the mask—

Quiet in the bath, the dimple in her neck

Absorbing all his touches, the wire going deep,

That the neck might have its say,

(A bit louder now, as if just nearby): Officer,

                                                          I’m on

                                                          The third

                                                          Step

                                                                 And he

To the girl, cooling in the bath: Get up

Wake up (This time near tears,

Massaging the blotch that spreads here as ink,

To restore, with life, stillness

Of the fixed lovely form),

          —Might beneath the mask hide the slit-mouthed woman, were

          This bathtub any more like a mouth full of ink might the woman

          Draw from beneath the shawl silvery shears to hitch cold fingers

To his jowls, and only then, would she, to him: Kore Demo? (And now?)—

Ever on, the form doing all she can

To decompose.

Each bogey’s deformities being arbitrary,

Making arbitrariness their single form in all its vagary:

          There was a man who lived in Somewhere

          He set his garden full of ______

But in the midst of beauty’s stark aberration

All else is deformed, is ever revising.

(Sown in bathwater, Alice where are you going?

                                 Upstairs to / my dirty den

That unborn beauty

In all its violence bears down the white sheet,

Bears the pall down upon you through the hands

Of your parents who cannot take the loss,

Who decide no more children would be best).

                                                       (You must sing this as a round. When you see a

                                                       ______, everybody CRY OUT, and skip the

next singer.)