by Charles Henri Ford
for Marcel Duchamp
Over the towers of autoerotic honey
Over the dungeons of homicidal drives
Over the pleasures of invading sleep
Over the sorrows of invading a woman
Over the voix celeste
Over vomito negro
Over the unendurable sensation of madness
Over the insatiable sense of sin
Over the spirit of uprisings
Over the bodies of tragediennes
Over tarantism. ‘ melancholy stupor and an
uncontrollable desire to dance”
Over all
Over ambivalent virginity
Over unfathomable succubi
Over the tormentors of Negresses
Over openhearted sans-culottes
Over a stactometer0 for the tears of France
Over unmanageable hermaphrodites
Over the rattlesnake sexlessness of art lovers
Over the shithouse enigmas of art haters
Over the sun’s lascivious serum
Over the sewage of the moon
Over the saints of debauchery
Over criminals made of gold
Over the princes of delirium
Over the paupers of peace
Over signs foretelling the end of the world
Over signs foretelling the beginning of a world
Like one of those tender strips of flesh
On either side of the vertebral column
Marcel, wave!
1944
Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), French painter and theorist, an avant-garde icon who moved to New York in 1915 and became the center of a group of Dada artists. Note in the poem the element of collage, the use of phrases that are almost the equivalent of found objects, and the unstable dichotomies in the couplets.
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