Creating Instant Muses for Modern Times

 

For any Stacy

 

 

Don’t talk, don’t touch,

don’t wonder why,

set no date,

don’t ask for names,

don’t say goodbye.

Modern Times in here

are thus defined

by its negations;

are past in between

one second and the next

blink of an eye.

 

 

See but do not Stay II

For Stacy

 

 

My visual memory loses shapes all too easily.

Being, as we seem to be, but our memories,

I declare myself to be a blur.

 

I had a camera with me, I had a camera with me.

The moment was more enthralling than the act

of reaching in my rucksack

for moments of posterity.

I declare Movement as inferior to Moment.

And Moment as inferior to Movement.

That will be known as a complex of inferiority.

 

No matter.

I’m still in doubt if she was floating in her dress,

if her dress was floating off of her.

 

 

 

See but do not Stay

For Stacy

 

 

No, one will not look good in grey;

her simple dress would make another

vanish in a crowd of two.

 

Needless to mention those red shoes.

— Hey, The Police! Bowie, hey! —

 

No, one could dye one’s hair black,

put on the whole range of lipstick

coloured red, contact lenses

of such a blue and fail

to appear like she did,

even if she didn’t ever want to.

  

She made plain the most charm

a come-closer finger can attain,

defying us for matraquilhos,

a game one may look up

and find no translation for—

It suits me fine, impossibility.

 

No, one could try to smile

carelessly, practicing harder

day by day and never achieve

her delicacy of blossoming

whilst being, simply. 

 

 

Hail, July!

Hail, July!

I’m so sorry that I will not be able to sing you tonight the song you deserve. My senses dulled by beer are Junish or Augustish instead. But I tell you, July, that we met Stacy, a beautiful Californian girl with that disgusting accent called American. And we will never lay eyes on that black hair and blue eyes again, July, for no contacts were exchanged. Yet, dear month, yet… it couldn’t have been more perfect, the encounter. I will use her as a Muse. Do you mind, July? It was you who introduced her to me, wasn’t it? Doll faced, doll shaped, doll dressed Stacy on her doll’s make-up will be more in the written form than she will ever actually be! (No, no, July! Misunderstand me not! I wish her a better future than all my capacity of writing it down... or do I?). Yes, Humberto, thank you too for the lovely night out after work. Ah, that disgusting accent! Muses should not talk; just look you in your eyes!

Hail, July! You’re the seventh month, but you know you really are primus inter pares!