“He swallowed himself up, and that was the end.”
— Charles Bukowski, On Dylan Thomas

Some jackass with a lance is buying rounds,
the helmet on his head, the whole damn show—
Dulcinea on his lap, her quid pro quo
already settled, judging by the sounds.
I’ve seen this horse before. It comes around
like clockwork, every age, the vertigo
of men who need a windmill for their woe,
a noble cause to drown in. Noble clowns.
The bar is full of Don Quixotes, George,
they’ll tear the goddmaned palace down,
all fourteen hands, like Shiva on his comeback tour
while you and Einstein contemplate the war,
so far from pantaloons and tinfoil crowns.
While I—I lean like Vishnu, dreaming with a flower.

“I’ve had eighteen straight whiskies. I think that’s the record.”
— Dylan Thomas (White Horse Tavern, Greenwich Village, 1953)

I will not sip the dark. I drink it neat—
Four Roses, please, poured quick—no word to waste.
Your bar keeps tilting, free of gravity
or is it me, untethered to this time and space?
The mind draws tight, a star to single grain,
then breaks—rose-bright, galactic, drunk with sound;
Not truth, but song flung hard against the pain
of knowing breath must spend itself, unbound.
I will not sip the dark. I drink it down.
The night still answers when I strike the bar.
My breath comes bright; my blood refuses crown
or calm—this pulse outlasts the dying star.
What’s that—my breath is neither galaxy nor rose?
A pox on both—pour on. I’ll drink until you close.

“Teenage boys, goaded by their surging hormones,
run in packs like the primal horde.”
— Camille Paglia (Caribbean coast of Mexico)

The mermaids swing their bodies beach
to beach—like skipping stones that never sink;
they don’t suspect how far the rip tides reach
or how the sea is seething as they drink.
The Marquis purrs when hipbones slap the waves—
a gasp, a jolt, a laugh that could seduce;
Camus would note a stranger learns to crave
the shine of sweat that justifies abuse.
The boys—like oiled gods in mirrored shades—
strike statues in the surf, each sweaty boast:
a promise made of flesh the sun remakes;
Dionysus leaps and hammers down the post.
Those hips, that heat, that final feral act:
a scholar licks the salt off every fact.

“Civilization is an artificial order imposed on nature.”
—Camille Paglia (Camino Real, Cancún)

Rain salts the glass, the channels hiss and bloom—
a game show mouth, a prophet selling knives.
I watch the gods dissolve in polyester gloom,
each myth reduced to fire sales and lives
half-lived on points. The minibar blinks red.
A dolphin keychain grins from plastic racks;
sunset postcards, laminated for the dead,
repeat the same three clouds in tidy stacks.
I circle by the indoor pool—no Polycletian
torsos, no pure arithmetic of thigh—
but soda-bellied boys in chlorine skin,
their mothers drifting past with vacant eyes.
A towel snaps shut the pagan in my blood.
They rinse my bronze delirium to mud.

“Hemingway is the example of the man who has no imagination.”
— Wallace Stevens (Casa Marina, 1935)

Oh! Blessed rage for order—pale Ramón!
Papa is a friend of Dionysus,
as are we—let us tip our hats to him,
as well our cups: to the Bull of Minos
on this isle of bones, who sloshes about
its shallow reefs! I give this humble toast
to dull his roar beyond our pink redoubt
which mists the trawlers idling on the coast
and drapes their empty decks with silver foam.
Let us conspire to lure him with a string
of hyacinths beside his water hole,
that stretch from our veranda to the sea.
I’ll don my mask, you tune your pithy lyre:
the Maenads fan their cocktails by the fire.

“By God, I wish I had that Hemingway here right now!
I’d knock him out with a single punch!”
— Wallace Stevens (Key West, 1935)

Rain all evening—satin rain upon the shore,
rain on lantern-glass, the loosened tie:
the palms keep time. Your sister loosed my
boastful words to you, which opened like a door
to crosswinds, shaking now the sycamore,
hat brims folding, spectacles awry—
a seaman’s moon brimming in your salted eye,
and every puddle widened to a floor
of shining risk. We closed—not quite embrace,
not yet refusal—angling into mud
that took the crease from linen, name from face,
and made one sentence of our breath and blood.
You laughed, then hauled me up. Rain stitched the rove
of night back whole. I drank—and learned to love.

or Pre-Profundis

“Those whom the gods love grow young.”
— Oscar Wilde (Cadogan Hotel, April 5, 1895)

How I hate that unfathomable boy,
who pretended to love me in the guise
of a man! He has robbed me of all joy,
my good name, and my fortune with his lies.
And yet, he was a celestial body
devouring light, bending me to his will:
I was wittingly drawn to the dark rings
of that moon, the circumference of my hell.
Now gilded snakes pervade my dreams; they slip
with cool abandon down my bed to sleep
and brush the trembling reaches of my lips.
Nysaeans—why have you forsaken me?
For Apollo kissed that indolent youth,
then flayed my skin for blowing on a flute.

or Post-Profundis

“You made me waste the flower of my life.”
— Oscar Wilde, (Reading Gaol, 1897)

It rains—my birthday, too—and what is love
but weather with a pedigree for coughs?
The panes run down; the gutters learn to move
like gossip shaken from the laurel boughs.
You had a shifting genius for the soul—
that polished sigh, the entrance, and a certain
penchant for the wounded wing. I was foul
enough to call it depth. Now hear the rain:
it needles through the yard; the chapel height
goes vague as doctrine. I shan’t tear
my name to spare your legend—all the weight
fell here; I learned, at least, how best to bear.
Still, if you write, write plainly. I won’t read
the madrigals of scoundrels in their hour of need.

“I wept for him as for a wife.”
—Gilgamesh (Shiduri’s By the Sea, Shin-eq-unninni)

The sloe sits warm—a brackish purple bruise
that will not heal. I taste the cedar still,
sap-sweet and bitter; how we split its boughs
and made a doorway in the mountain’s will.
Enkidu laughed, the wind inside his hair
was wild as goats along the shale-scarred seam;
we wrestled dusk to ground. I felt him there,
hard flank to flank—more oath than any dream.
We felled Humbaba, yes, his resin breath
rose like altar-smoke smoke about our thighs;
the axes rang—twin pulses out of death,
two shadows locked beneath the gutted skies.
Shiduri pours. I drink what cannot stay.
His name returns, as salt on lips of clay.

“Beside the sea she lives, the woman of the vine, the maker of wine.”
— Shin-eqi-unninni (the Waters of Death, beyond the Mashu region)

My tavern is exclusive and discreet,
the customers irregular at times;
some drink from flasks of lapis lazuli
while others tip bejeweled carafes of wine.
Above the bar I dedicate a frame
to every famous patron I have served—
that’s Ea on the left, a tortured mage,
who drowned his sorrows when he drowned the Earth.
The Stone Men used to come on Saturday
to numb their week of service on the ship—
they were a stoic lot, but always paid
until one client smashed them all to bits.
He said his name was Gilgamesh, I think—
he crushed the pink umbrella in his drink.