The Fountain

Venus is one of the way-stations, and she must get her due ... But we pay her back best in the true coin of Aphrodite. To pay her in the guise of soul-indulgences cheats her the real cost. It is more comforting to visit her house in the name of anima-development than it is to suffer the venereal evils, entanglements, perversions, revenges, furies, and soporofic pleasures for her sake alone.

-- James Hillman, Anima

A few things for themselves,
Convolvulus and coral,
Buzzards and live-moss,
Tiestas from the keys,
A few things for themselves,
Florida, venereal soil,
Disclose to the lover.

-- Wallace Stevens, from
“O Florida, Venereal Soil”

***

How easy for the narrative
to say that the fountain of
Venus which rises from the
hips of her dead lover
receded from view, as
one island in the stream
fades before all the rest.
Rash and dangerous, too.
She’s on every island
stepping to shore, leading
my by my immortal
glands into the next,
scented, night-blossoming
wood. Queen, wife,
imperious mother all
make me a flitting
son with a pert
and fickle pickle
hot for plunging
into every dapple
which sigh and slides,
like panties, into
sudden sweet view.
Were it not for
her tidal goad
heaving and urging
like turbines in
my balls, I doubt
I’d daily dive down
here to ring these
bells of welcome
and receipt. A poem
is just my next
jissom of praise
across and down
white pages which
belie, like bloomers,
a blue quintessence
beneath and
between her spread
thighs, thighs for
which no other
psalm or soak
will do. So though
I’m just the first
guy up in a small
town, writing in
a white chair two
hours before first
light, I’m ever
with my face down
there trying to read
and please her
nethering lips with
the longest and
wettest kiss that
she in my mind
has ever dreamed.
how many years
now since I’ve
bobbed for those
apple islands between
real thighs? Yet have
I ever stopped
peering and purring
into the blue, fine-
tuning with every
next verse assay
her forever departing
assy-nova sashay?
Son and sire I am
of that tenthousandfolding
tide of curvaceously
crashing waves, each
a moistmost marvel
of ululalous tang
ever to twist and tug
my root from twitchy
toes to clabbering tongue.
God, that any man
survives the teeming
ocean of his bliss,
or fully mans that craft
which ferries such
desire to every island
in the glittering main.
She is always just beyond
that ordinary wood,
waiting for her lover
and his liver-rending
never-ending wound,
not to heal or console
him but to greedily
haul those waters high
into the cathedral
arches of her womb,
and swell her breasts
like bright blue bells
to clamor heaven
from the milk of hell.
She offers and
demands more thrills
than I can ever swill,
and the view of her
is most dangerous
from behind. Down here
toward the bottom
of the poem is where
she’s known to
lurk, a whisper high
and strange amid
the soothing lyres
of lysis and those
blue-finned bassoons
I try to button down --
a voice like yours
beyond the final line
which pleads in
silted salty pleats
of doom -- "one more
time oh lover,
before it's too light
to darkly know,
before t’s time to go ...."