Alan Britt

Reading Baudelaire on Sunday

When Baudelaire began a poem,

you didn’t know where,

he didn’t know where

it would end.

Sifting his way through human frailty,

paying close attention to things lesser poets buried

beneath the borrowed sentiments of their age,

Baudelaire possessed infatuation

for language and misery.

And he wasn’t one to avoid confrontation,

as his enduring popularity among

the intellectual effete testifies.

How serendipitous he vagabonds

my dusty bookshelf this very afternoon,

in his white satin coffin, sipping absinthe,

prepared to spring upright,

indignant at the first sign of praise

for his paranoid genius.

Alan Britt © 2009

Tango Dancers

Revolutionary

by nature.

Tarantula waists.

Exquisitely in love

with death.

Today's Recipe

(For Larry Ziman)

When you start with a pinch

of melancholy

then sprinkle in some green soy protein

mixed with organic carrots and California black

  kale,

well, surely, you understand the implications?

The result is the resurrection

of a splinter faith from the Cartesian well

of absolute truth,

that’s a given.

But a small price to pay

I say

for your shadow draped across a black walnut

  bar

smoking organic cigarettes

and ordering drinks

called “The Tyger,”

“the thorns of life,”

or “Blood Wedding.”

Alan Britt © 2009