XI: Matelot sans Portfolio.

World-sleepiness creates bad bed fellows. 29.
Indolence, old knotty albatross! You weigh
In at half my bulk and all my energy.
Here in ripest days, too rotten to be firm,
Mistake not urine for blood. When pissing and sleeping are the only
Ribbons binding day & dark,
Dry & dank, duty & dying,
Ampersand & ampersand,
A tremolo of biting, champing victors,
Bookish edens limed with quick salt. Winners of cotillions,
Regattæ, balsmasqué, the sinners,
The piners, Arthur Wing Pinero,
The Hero stamping, temperament a
Zero, Zorro, Volpone, Polenta, Gepetto,
All meat, all vice, all bootless Neroes
How the ancients would balk at it all. Smoke without the jewels,
Invoking lèse majesté
The only rules of gammon.
Unknot the lymphnodes, unleash
The wags, the toadies, the brown-noisettes,
Loose them, tin-shod, clanging botillions.
Ah, the genus homo directus. Unbadgèd lips, unsealed and male-proportioned
Engorged with nothing, bloodless, stirred ashes,
Stained with the scentless taint of oil.
He is here with the goods! So easily they spoil.
To Baal. I offer garbage days to garbage gods,
Hoping in their appeasement, they will
Allow, in a roundabout fashion, Me
To organize what shreds of proper
Sweet Pipes. Peelings or pips which incense
Their gourmand spirit, that I may
Slice, parboil, and serve well chilled.
Pray! Milkless dun-whet sons of mammon,
Fatuous, cold, snotty brutish lion!
Acoustic, wooden. (I take the leap and widen both my eyes):
A brat, an unbeat brat who walks and dogs
& Haunts and brags and barks.
Hear the Bawd Lair: A pianola? Swell with proud suet, monster!
Crepusculator! Defenestrator! Minister! Administrator! Admonisher! Inscribulator!
Tumesculat! Imperiatrix Orchidæ! Perpetuator! Affiliator! Dæmolisher!