Saturday, November 9, 2013

Uranian Vagabondage


URANIAN VAGABONDAGE 

“His Eminency says that you
may publish these naïve and
almost Dantesque and
sometimes quite Homeresque
fragments” —Frederick William Rolfe
THE WEIRD OF THE WANDERER

I suppose my dears—
There’s nothing quite worse
Than Uranian vagabondage

Being a Born-Again Fag—
The object of gay derision
By the Queenly Pantheon

Feasting with Panthers—
Precociously Pater-esque 
In this Wildean wilderness

Like Baron Corfu’s—
Weirding of the Wanderer
Daring debutante once again

LETTER FROM VENICE

“Let it be known that I
was called in an age yet
to come Nicholas Crabbe
the Impossible”—Frederick 
William Rolfe, THE WEIRD 
OF THE WANDERER

How else to deal—
With the Slings and Arrows
Outrageous Fortune dishes out

Tableau vivants—
Venice delectations
Aschenbach’s laments

Boss Cupid Venice—
Androgynous Theater
Fag Film Noir Flick

Miss Auden says—
“Naughty, naughty
What would Mother say?”

REINCARNATION RAKE

“For I penetrated into 
the occult arcana”
—Frederick William Rolfe
THE WEIRD OF THE WANDERER

Was it Sebastian Melmoth—
Or perhaps Sebastian Nabokov
Who gave me some advice?

The Vassar novelist—
Had read CHICKEN (1979)
Back in graduate school

“The Last Uranian”—
He signed his lovely novel
Now in my tall bookshelves

I do feel rather somewhat—
Ancient being a Uranian again
A Reincarnated Rake

ASCHENBACH-ESQUE

“to commune with
long-dead sages”
—Frederick William Rolfe
THE WEIRD OF THE WANDERER

What’s worse, my dear—
Being a born-again Uranian
Or one for the first time?

Surely DEATH IN VENICE—
Is only one way to go there
Languishing in a beach-chair

Or pretending to be a Borgia—
Or a new Vatican Pope like
Miss Baron Corfu pretended?

I simply can’t really decide—
A closeted Aschenbach, a Borgia
Or perhaps a new Vatican Pope?

QUEER QUAGMIRES

“enduring unmentioned
and unthought-of anguish”
—Frederick William Rolfe
THE WEIRD OF THE WANDERER

Doodles and ditherings—
Fin de siècle fantasies
Tres rococo-esque, my dear

And yet what else—
Can I possibly do now
Daring descent and decline?

Lavish literary genres—
Decaying like human beings
English especially susceptible 

Why just the other day—
Detoured by some dithering delirious 
Diphthongs into a queer quagmire!!!



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