The Art of No

When first she fell entranced at the National Conference on Dismissal
she asked her celestial homunculus how to free herself from desire.
Dim the lights, his best response. There followed years of tooth upon bruise
upon tooth, a beach of broken bones. She thought it best to avoid belief entirely.
The Real? 
You're soaking in it.

When next she fell, disabused at the ball, a fund-raiser
for the American Contrition Association,
she asked her terran femininculus, Might a waning ardor rest?
When million-pistoned mitochondria fire their alien engines
the beast in us rises and takes the air. Thinking becomes you.
It's your best feature. Child, you are a machine. Desire is a category mistake. 
The body is not the program.

The body is the problem, a machine more complex than its elemental servants
with the good fortune to be made of a very lively material, still, cogs and screws for all of that.
Simpler machines, ionic networks bound by their busy satellites,
mere electricity in tenuous equilibrium, are limited by their lack of nuance,
ponderous iron in oxidation, slow thinkers;
add a mole of chrome and joules of inspiration glisten.
A toaster pops, the hammer strikes. Still, no Aristotle.
There is no threshold of vitality as elements assemble,
just a painstaking aggregation of sensations and responses as the body quickens.

The last time she fell her headstrong inclination to see things otherwise
compelled prudent sequestration in The Home of the Harmed.
Concerning her residency therein she has a complaint:
Skills sharpened here are not understood as art:
the blankets dethreaded with painstaking precision,
the juice boxes crushed and stacked, toppled cornflake palaces,
none of these will win The Turner.

True. Residents often practice desperately, inexpertly.
But with diligence and patience one gains proficiency.
The private arts of longing become the body’s virtues.
She asked her chthonic ouroboros,  Is there a cure for all this? 

No, but with time a finer affliction.

Utopian Turtletop

She rocks the hat

     she could have grabbed

     off Marianne Moore,

     flustering West Portal Peet’s

     one eye blind behind

     the bent tin dimestore brooch

     that secures her pinned-up brim.

A silverish pendant evokes

     the golden age of art nouveau.

     Neo-bohemian,

     it bangs against her chest,

     a fluted weight

     suspended by the sort of cord

     save-the-Tibetans pray by.

She leans on an acrylic cane

     wrapped in bows of duct tape

     and artful lace mylar,

     twisted round a draping

     chain of six-pack collars.

     She unsnaps the rubber band

     that binds a cough drop tin,

once painted yellow. Nickels,

     dimes, a quarter here and there,

     she pinches out a stack

     of coins along the counter,

     payment for her non-fat

     double shot, no-foam.