David Dick

my heart is hard & furry yellow
after Frater after Ginsberg after Khlebnikov

They claimed my heart was agile like a cantaloupe cantering downhill towards Catalan,
that it couldn’t consider the ramifications of its crusades,
that it cruelly crashed past the concrete you construct.
They claimed it cooked crustaceans crusted with custard,
that its collisions killed kids whose only crime was craving cucumber nectar,
that its content was callously inconspicuous.
They claimed creative control.

My cantaloupe, though, cultivates the clarity of its own communications.

My cantaloupe is the crucial chambers of Copernicus who creates the Earth’s crust,
who can cover it with excrement,
whose canyon is cavernous, conclave and struck by cleft thoughts of contrasting conviction
               that cascades down the cliff.
My cantaloupe is ecstatically consumed in the cosmic catastrophe.
My cantaloupe is consciousness contained within a Chevrolet’s chassis
crying of the convolutions crystal clear in the sky like calligraphy marking the streaks of our
               continuing affection,
which characterizes the cherished decoration:
the concupiscent cockroach.

My cantaloupe champions customary locales where we cohabit,
champions Chinese currency, Hong Kong, Coober Pedy, and Camberwell,
champions the chronicle of other cantaloupes whose cataclysmic changing is their
               inescapable consequence,
champions those cantaloupes whose compassion collapses in a wreck,
champions my courageous completion, calling me Kafka, Carlos and Koch.

My cantaloupe is the citation at the conclusion of your book,
               the complement,
                              the corpulent coward,
                                             the crack in which you recline,
                                                            the Catamaran captain’s cocaine cooling on a crooked
                                                            canteen’s counter.

My cantaloupe is a command that cannot be comprehended,
is careering towards coming together,
is Creation’s hooker calling out its constellations:
it is a crimson pump laid out in a coronary vacuum which can.

My cantaloupe is KahChing KahChing!



David Dick is a Melbourne poet who spends most his time bewildered by John Ashbery.
 
 
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