Thomas Disch's LJ (RSS Feed)
02-16-2008, 05:19 PM
This was the instruction I scrawled
in my notepad when I woke from a dream
that had been rife with flowers. Meaning:
this would be a way to write about a dorm
of college kids in that they resemble flowers
in the urgency of their sexual display.
My dream-flowers had been long-stemmed irises
drooping from the weight of their blossoms,
delphiniums climbing their self-engendered poles,
and other showy blooms not occuring
in nature but popular in English gardens.
Just before bed I'd been reading
Portrait of a Lady with special reference
to Pansy, James's nightmare of a rich, dumb
American girl. Flowers are about sex, about how
to get bees to rub up against your anthers.
Teenage girls are much the same.
The rich ones are sent to London, like Pansy,
to hunt for husbands. Those of lesser means
register in summer schools and learn to write
memoirs of the lives they've yet to live,
how the bees will be drawn to their sexual organs
by the fragrance of their perfumes, Opium
or Magma, and crawl about the narrow tunnels,
the atria and ventricles, becoming gummy
with pollen, then on to the next blossom
until unbeknownst to the bee
the right connection is made and the Bingo! begins
that will yield in due course new tracts
of housing, new community colleges, etc.
Flowers explain everything: write about flowers.
(Original Post) (http://tomsdisch.livejournal.com/175846.html)
in my notepad when I woke from a dream
that had been rife with flowers. Meaning:
this would be a way to write about a dorm
of college kids in that they resemble flowers
in the urgency of their sexual display.
My dream-flowers had been long-stemmed irises
drooping from the weight of their blossoms,
delphiniums climbing their self-engendered poles,
and other showy blooms not occuring
in nature but popular in English gardens.
Just before bed I'd been reading
Portrait of a Lady with special reference
to Pansy, James's nightmare of a rich, dumb
American girl. Flowers are about sex, about how
to get bees to rub up against your anthers.
Teenage girls are much the same.
The rich ones are sent to London, like Pansy,
to hunt for husbands. Those of lesser means
register in summer schools and learn to write
memoirs of the lives they've yet to live,
how the bees will be drawn to their sexual organs
by the fragrance of their perfumes, Opium
or Magma, and crawl about the narrow tunnels,
the atria and ventricles, becoming gummy
with pollen, then on to the next blossom
until unbeknownst to the bee
the right connection is made and the Bingo! begins
that will yield in due course new tracts
of housing, new community colleges, etc.
Flowers explain everything: write about flowers.
(Original Post) (http://tomsdisch.livejournal.com/175846.html)