Letters to Charlotte on Passions
1.
For every choice
there is an opportunity cost.
Something gained, something lost.
Where does the value lie?
In what is gained? Or what was lost?
2.Pardon me while I decide
which obscenity to use.
3.Long resigned sigh to ease the way . . .
4.The flush of skin, the anxiety
of waiting, wondering, hoping . . .
5.Better to have held the firefly
in your palm then let it go
than to have watched it slowly die
in a jar you placed on the mantle.
6.Be glad you have known that passion.
7.Be your own firefly awhile.
Letters to Marged on Many Themes
Do artists go mad? Or, does madness
create the artist through obsessions?
What is it that bothers you?
Have you lived a poet's life?
Or a poem's?
What do you wonder, &
where does the night take you?
This dull night.
You're so much algae
in shallows of a stream.
I'm a butterfly in a book.
* * *
I've been writing a lot
contrasting safety & passion.
To explain why
Neruda's sonnets are brilliant!
He wrote about love
he didn't need to win,
embraced the asylum there.
Fear is your Matilde.
* * *
My most inspired time:
a band performs.
Confusion around me.
Chaos. Women dress to reveal.
To look, I steal little bits
of their . . . Ah . . .
See the straight line of seriousness
tattooed on my face? --in purple no less,
like a clown's corpse.
* * *
I'm running short on history today:
yours, the world's, a tree frog's,
or whatever.
Give me a romp
through some twisted
subterranean culture.
I'd woo you for your tangents.
* * *
Before, you mentioned orange slices.
I marinate with Zesty Italian, garlic,
soy. Tasting the flesh is an old hobby.
* * *
What a perfect way to express a terrible thing.
People move, get jobs, families, kill themselves
with rusty sardine-can lids, & what
you feel is an absence, phantom limb.
I'll play around with the search
awhile longer. As will you, I'm sure.
Yours, darkly.
Dreams not dreads.
As ever.
--Ace Boggess