Il grottesco non meno anche
vale
quando in far una cosa un'altra
prende.
Quindi i concetti so si oscuri e
chiari
ch'usciti paion fuor dal gran
caosse.
-from G.P. Lomazzo's "Rime ad imitazione
de grotteschi" [Milan, 1587]
and to the sad icastic music
of nods and tongueless motions
those men in the Roman sewers sang
as they dragged the stone head of Constantine
like a mop
through the labyrinth of wastes
and to the sad music
I have sang
after weaving a shit-christ
whose dreaming brain
and eyes
of artificial maggots
were tiny machines
which might gather into
a copulating tentacle
like the rays of
the image itself
like Davinci's Scaramuccia
looking tenderly
upon Quarles' Phaneronomikon
at 5:54 pm, 1-16-06
and the moon
is still the severed head
of King Solipsis
where oceans
of Senatorial brain sperm
join in the congress
of the chaotic umwelt
of the obliterated boundary
of natura/cultura
and make a cultus of nature
a clockwork orange
which defies banality
judgement
taste
or is this simply
the presentation
of an obscure
invisible knot
a fabric of adorable improbabilities
deformis formositas ac formosa deformitas
I declare a New Middle Ages, one which
is pierced by a New Renaissance
as in Tebaldi's
The Blinding of Polyphemus
O take up your monstrous Pan-pipes, blind
Polyphemus,
and blow, you are healed!
