Post-Architectural by William Doreski
The light’s so heavy it puddles
in the streets, crude as lava.
Traffic wrestles forward, fuming.
I hope that when the rain arrives
it reminds you that certain crimes
weren’t worth it, that growing old
on a folding cot with a view
of the library has deranged
the intellect you abandoned when
it fruited against your will.
You never sat in the courtyard
with Coleridge, Hegel, and Camus.
You didn’t attend the lectures
on Kant’s idealism and Turner’s
explosive aesthetic approach.
Instead you conjured a lover
from the remains of Mary Shelley’s
vision of mastery and human
degradation. You were the last
Romantic only as a slur.
Pouting at your window, you refuse
to wave as I look up in passing.
If I rang your doorbell you’d sneer
like a steam engine. The dust
on the urban trees depresses you.
The chipped gargoyles lurking
on the bluff steeple opposite
express the inexpressible just
to defy you. Remember how
your lover snarled as a taxi
took him to McLean’s? Lurching back,
you collapse on your sagging cot.
How can I convince you the hills
ten miles outside of the city
have reshaped themselves in memory
of the body you once enjoyed
in the mirror? I trudge along
toward downtown, leaving you trapped
in post-architectural splendor,
proud to have stifled your mind.
________________________
William Doreski has appeared in various e and print journals and in
several collections, most recently Waiting for the Angel (Pygmy Forest
Press, 2009).
in the streets, crude as lava.
Traffic wrestles forward, fuming.
I hope that when the rain arrives
it reminds you that certain crimes
weren’t worth it, that growing old
on a folding cot with a view
of the library has deranged
the intellect you abandoned when
it fruited against your will.
You never sat in the courtyard
with Coleridge, Hegel, and Camus.
You didn’t attend the lectures
on Kant’s idealism and Turner’s
explosive aesthetic approach.
Instead you conjured a lover
from the remains of Mary Shelley’s
vision of mastery and human
degradation. You were the last
Romantic only as a slur.
Pouting at your window, you refuse
to wave as I look up in passing.
If I rang your doorbell you’d sneer
like a steam engine. The dust
on the urban trees depresses you.
The chipped gargoyles lurking
on the bluff steeple opposite
express the inexpressible just
to defy you. Remember how
your lover snarled as a taxi
took him to McLean’s? Lurching back,
you collapse on your sagging cot.
How can I convince you the hills
ten miles outside of the city
have reshaped themselves in memory
of the body you once enjoyed
in the mirror? I trudge along
toward downtown, leaving you trapped
in post-architectural splendor,
proud to have stifled your mind.
________________________
William Doreski has appeared in various e and print journals and in
several collections, most recently Waiting for the Angel (Pygmy Forest
Press, 2009).
