HART CRANE

HART CRANE

—for Marshall McClintock

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Ancient Craft

Sailors & Oysters

Weak Wrists

Guggenheim

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Ancient Craft

“innocence dissolute”

—Hurt Crane, “Modern Craft,”

Complete Poems & Selected Letters

Although I can touch him—His boyish flesh, we sit here Gestureless & mute Watching the parade The diesel dykes and—Ophelia-eyed fags pass by But their pride parade Doesn’t impress me Did I feel left out—Hazarding the crowd Wearing their tacky sequin Drag & tossing pearls? Hardly, my dears—Sank in love, choked By Uranian roses I burn & am not burnt

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Sailors & Oysters

Time can’t be worn—Strapped to a supple waist Like a jeweled belt, no My dear, tho my fingers Can twist the oyster from—Its shell, it takes more To guide any hasty claim To a whole string of pearls Reading the beads—All those meaningless moments That will never return again The ships coming & going Obelisks fall floundering—A concussion of bedsprings Another grandiose chance To know a young Sailor

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Weak Wrists

My weak Wrist—Vast vestibule of time A Keepsake I wear, dear To hold onto something A keepsake, a mirage—A coin heads or tails Something left of me When nothing’s left When desperate propriety—Fails time & time again And a teen Apollo sailor Makes me Spellbound bad

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Guggenheim

I’m a terrible Scholar—Obviously visibly uncouth Yet lavishingly only too Willing to extinguish myself I have nothing left—Other than a book or two To pass the night away I got this Guggenheim—Montezuma demagogues—Make my fingers fidget I have no sense of fraternity With Aztec gods of the past I bite my nails insulting—My benefactors with my lack Of intelligibility, even the Parrots berate me nightly—Evening tangos & guitars—Tangle me up in tequila & Ancient pyramids flow with Sacrificial blood once again I add my own perverted—Twilight twist to Gringo and Gomorrah ceremonies & The Mexicans despise me Enough to make even—The skin of a dermatologist Crawl & shudder with disgust I crave teenage Mexican cock Gagging on my Guggenheim—A waste of time & money but Strangely my poetry improves Shanghaiing my gringo muse