Friday poem, "i am or some say as much" (1995)

Last night's show was spectacular and tacky and deliciously overdetermined in every possible way. I want to post all about it at some point, including how extreme and downright palpable this woman's power to command attention is, how wild and graceful her narcissism (or more specifically, her performance of her narcissism) is, and how great it was to hang out with a longtime girlfriend I never see anymore.

This is a poem I wrote about ten years ago. In writing it I was fiddling around with chiasmus and some of Lacan's ideas. For whatever reason, I still think about this poem. Certain lines of it knock around in my head.

Today it is for Madonna (of stage and song), for the Madonna (that's right, of the Catholic faith), for my mother, for my sister, for my girlfriends, for women.

i am or some say as much

i laugh less, i me
ratio of she and other
name me, subject me, my subject, man
name the moon and leave demand unnamed
need redeems no one desire.

my desire is anger i hide
beyond demand, dynamic meditation
of that subject, impossible me,
me subsumed, immortal mirror
deemed of late (too late) your muse.

so maniacal master, sister man, call me
call me not a fall but a lack
fond lack, a missed song, sinful metaphor
tripped switch of your gaze.

satisfy café notions of truth
sit with veritas, satire anticipated
depict, entice, incite not
a handmaid in a spyglass
alley cats spitting diamonds.

in the name of the sister
hide desire in me, i
impossible subject
laughless ratio of she and other.