The Ode on a Grecian Urn

Is worth any number of old ladies.

A grandmother hung from a cliff

like a tense moment in an action

movie and the Ode, speaking itself

with its hand on one heart, steadfastly

refused to save her, in fact it did that thing

where it ground each finger out with

a motorcycle boot and then ate

its cigarette for emphasis, whooping;

some old-ass bitch was in pussy church

when the Öde, now spelling itself

with an umlaut, swung its urn

at the back of her head, really clocking her;

till the violets in her church hat grew

from the floor and won a third-place

prize for consciousness;

the Ode is pushing nanas off bridges,

detonating them with dynamite,

tying them to railroad tracks with

squeaky young rope, pouring big glugs

into them out of the skull-and-crossbones

bottle, the Ode is checking

its pocketwatch, which points always

to death-to-old-ladies o’clock,

it is shrieking ugh you’re like one

hundred and your breath smells

exactly like horse medicine

ho, the Ode is blasting holes in them,

is laying them out in the potpourri

aisle, is stabbing them with those icicles

they always said were dangerous,

the Ode means ill to all

of them, the Ode is worth any number    ...    

and the worst is I believe it. The worst is I will

become one, without having written anything like

the Ode on a Grecian Urn, and sit in long rows

along with my kind, till there the Ode comes striding

toward me, my necessary death at the ready,

my pulse like black grapes at its fingertips,

saying, “Fear not, it will be fast, the forgetting

of great poems will fly through you in bullets”;

beauty is truth, and truth    ...    

but already I am losing it,

all I know is that the world is falling away,

and you won’t believe what it is wearing,

the ridiculous pantsuit of me, a old lady,

crumpled hopelessly at the crotch,

a flower valiant in its little butthole

— all the vital syllables are being erased — 

its space-age fabric now seen for what it is:

an embarrassment, my name is turning

into Edna, Myrtle, Dorcas, my descendants

find my peppermints disgusting,

the urn is approaching to scatter me

over a landscape that is heaven on earth,

and in the feet of the poem I am running

— in mad pursuit, and struggle to escape — 

chased as if I am worth one million,

Pearl, Opal, Ruby, Coral,

until I am caught by the feeble arm,

and because it is true I am telling

the Ode: you stood in me like a spine,

put poppies behind my eyes,

just the fact of you, that he took

one raw spring to set you down

instead of going out to tip heifers,

tweak noses, or sexually harass

huge curvy vases, you were for me

too, though they would trade me

in all my Beulahs, have lined me up

to enter that land in my turn, you let me

memorize your most satiny parts

and repeat them in hospital waiting rooms,

first to myself, and then almost out loud,

mine, mine, the world’s, all mine,

something to say in the face of tall sickness

as I quietly try to unwrap hard candies,

as I tug down tissues from my sleeve,

because it is true I am telling you, Ode,

that I had a throat and you boiled in it,

and the Ode is murmuring almost gently,

“But do you like my ending?

Some people don’t like my ending,”

I don’t, I never did, I thought it was

so overwrought,

though now that I’m here myself why not

if it has to be this way

then better

put a bright red cough on all that white