Harry Crosby Queen Poems
- 1. Invocation To The Mad Queen
I would you were the hollow ship
fashioned to bear the cargo of my love
the unrelenting glove
hurled in defiance at our blackest world
... - 2. Telephone Directory
Mad Queen Aeronautical Corporation Cyclone 3030 Mad Queen Chemical Corporation Gunpowder 3328 Mad Queen Company for the Manufacture of Hand Grenades Gunpowder 8878 Mad Queen Drug Store of Tonics and Stimulants Detonator 8808 Mad Queen Dynamiting and Blasting Company Rackarock 4196 Mad Queen Express Elevators Speedway 7898 Mad Queen Fireworks Corporation Hurricane 1144 Mad Queen Garage for Vandals of the Road Speedway 3984 Mad Queen Hospital for Electrifying the Heart Cyclone 5679 Mad Queen Jazz Band Detonator 8814 Mad Queen Laboratory for the Manufacture of Aphrodisiacs Gunpowder 0090 Mad Queen Lighting and Fuel Corporation Gunpowder 4301 Mad Queen Manufacturers of High Explosives Thunderbolt 4414 Mad Queen Racing Automobiles Speedway 6655 Mad Queen Rum Distillery Explosion 1152 Mad Queen Skyscrapers Hurricane 7444 Mad Queen Society for the Vivisection of the Philistines Thunderbolt 8778 Mad Queen Society of Incendiaries Rackarock 2254 Mad Queen Steam Locomotive Company Speedway 1010 Mad Queen Steam Roller Manufacturers Detonator 1234 Mad Queen Windmills and Weathervanes Hurricane 0164
... - 3. Sun-rhapsody
The Sun! the Sun!
a fish in the aquarium of sky
or golden net to snare the butterfly
of soul
... - 4. Assassin
I exchange eyes with the Mad Queen.
The mirror crashes against my face and bursts into a thousand suns. all over the city flags cracle and bang. Fog horns scream in the harbor. The wind hurricanes through the window. Tornadoes are unmuzzled as I begin to dance the dance of the Kurd Shepherds.
I stamp upon the floor. I whirl like dervishes. Colors revolve dressing and undressing. I lash them with fury stark white with iron black harsh red with blue marble green with bright orange and only gold remains naked. I roar with joy.
Black-footed ferrets disappear into holes.
... - 5. Tattoo
I am the criminal whose chest is tattooed with a poinard above which are graven the words 'mort aux bourgeois'. Let us each tattoo this on our hearts.
I am the soldier with a red mark on my nakedness-when in a frenzy of love the mark expands to spell Mad Queen. Let us each tattoo our Mad Queen on our heart.
I am the prophet from the land of the Sun whose back is tattooed in the design of a rising sun. Let us each tattoo a rising sun on our heart.
... - 6. Firebrand
What is your feeling about the revolutionary spirit ofyour age, as expressed, for instance, in such movements as communism, surrealism, anarchism?
The revolutionary spirit of our age (as expressed by communism, surrealism, anarchism, madness) is a hot firebrand thrust into the dark lantern of the world.
In Nine Decades
a Mad Queen shall be born.
... - 7. Heliograph
(Self-Portrait) Omens and Astrology. A desert flat and undisturbed, stupid and forlorn. Sunless. a caravan of failures. Pons Asinorum and the Feast of the Ass and revolt against standardized American childhood.
War and Violence.
Catapults and Torches and the first stray thrusts of Sun into the Soul. Bombardments and Bordels. Heraldry and High Walls. Too rigid to crumble but not too strong to fracture.
... - 8. Vision
I exchange eyes with the Mad Queen
the mirror crashes against my face
and bursts into a thousand suns
...
