Sic Semper Poesis

Geof Huth, "Transit of Penis" (5 June 2012)

Today, for the last time in my life and probably for the last time, Venus came between the Earth and the sun, and if I had looked up at the sky at the right time and there had been no clouds, I could have seen that planet pass across the face of the sun. Instead, whenever I looked up, I saw clouds dramatically backlit by a sun I could not see. I took two poor photographs of what I saw, each with a flagpole from the Governor's mansion taking a place of prominence, and I called these photographs of the transit of penis, something else I did not really see today.

For most of the night, I carried the idea within me that I would write a poem with the same title as the name I'd given those photographs, a title I created as I drove back to Albany from Pearl River, New York, this afternoon. The poem begins quite chaotically. It doesn't finish a syntactic thought for many lines, but it eventually creates and maintains a voice, though one that breaks, one that is twisted almost as much as the extended conceit that takes over the poem, the conceit that the title tells you is coming.

Happy reading. This may be the last chance you have to read this poem in your lifetime.



Transit of Penis
—written on the last day the transit of Venus would be visible in my lifetime

Last time in thefor the last time in what came or whatin what you would seethe space of that thing coming acrossin the space of realizationa revelation ofthat seeing madeupon the event of reasonfor the last timein the life you lead or throughthe beneficence of properwhat took or what brokeand cloudymarbled by lightthe razor of rays or the handwhat couldn’t work tomake it bein place at the time of seeingat the time of space and in restiveit was the last time for youand what seeing made wasput it away she saidor motion as eyes wouldfrom the frown ofand missing what and whatin the last whiskey to open this final chance irrevocableand unredeemedso claimed and thus so lostthe sweep of a finger as if to suggesteye slipped into placenot a hair of outguardless or regardedunseen unventured unlovedthe velvet of how an eye might feel ittremblingbut it was not to bethough it was in actuality wasit travels in traveling and travelled my sweet and bitter travailsand I cannot because youwith fortune but not I cannot because withdespite tendency and desirewith virulence in substancethe timing of eyes the placingthe finding of pieces the losingevery mereology of venus is a part of the sunand the most essential part becauseit is what you cannot seefertile delta the floodthe turbines of natural mudcoagulation of bloodmy penis is a part of your bodyheld in precarious placethe composition of your facewhat you harbored just in caselost in Amerigo Vespuccia thought as vagrant as Galileoand yet it movesKeppler for the reasons last statedNewton for his adam’s applethat the bobbing of it taught usI am not who I had intended to beso it is that you cannot see methis body in transitanother world awaitingthe clouds in marbled gloryendpapers of the skymarbled fore-edgepainted in a style rococo but psittacistic lovely in that it provided a barrierwe who sleep untended by sightwe unenabled ofintransigent reality and my only remainingwhatever approached under velveteen cover ofwhatever achedin the body in the gloaming in the mirkning thoughttemblor yet motionlesswhat transits across that facein the case of beautiful lighttaken to be the warmth of life and abundanta world now green and growing in a greylife is drivel and rainingconstant pausings and noa round small body crossing a round large bodythe depth of color lost to the field of samemy eye not working through the layerswhich eye could so work which eye of mineor virtue as ifand takenthe subtlety that blindness brings to vision discrimination of shapes and everything distinguishedfrom the time of your birth untilthat time you will die and still withoutthere is not seeing it notit arcs acrossmoves in an arc a circle an ellipse a straight line tothe assistance from formthe freeing of the frayinga thread of a thought stretchingbetween two pieces that pass each a part of each other apartfrom this time forward and nothingwe do not regret what we do not knowbecauseyou see it in my eyeseven if closed against a bright sun’s lightthe slight scent of coconut like lightflagrant desire against determined desuetude my little loveless loveagainstand pushed it passesyou who says in voce sotto sic transit penisfor there is no glory in not seeingin the twistedness back into of not beingback into this nessthis pure ness of not beingof nothing that you did not seebecause not there it wasn’t not not seen butit passed not nightly but dailyyet is persisted meaningsnocturnal crepuscular diurnalyour moods in favored place across the intentionof who I am or more properlynocturnal matinal diurnal vespertine so it goesfrom death to life to life supportthis vest is so heavy with water or bloodthat small planet she moves so bloody acrossand it is for this reason that we give the sunand it is for this reason that you give meattentionknees lockedbody in swaybody in falling motion downnot a slump but as timberthe cry and voices of birds rising out of the fallthough summer upon us and waitingto see in transit the shapesone so small he cannot obscure herone so large she is visible even if hiddenfrom that solitary thought trapped in a chipmunkand recirculated as if movingspiegel sounds like a birdand I can’t see it for seeing myself in transit [sic]disciplined in the manner of clockmakersthe great horologists who sawin the hands of their timepieces the piecesin pairsfalling and rising and crossing the faceof a sun in infinite circlingwe are taken into the bodies of others to be made wholefor no human is oneI am what is counted upon you to make this realitya day in which Venusso shy and so curtainedmy hungers curtailed and what it was that was noto and what it wasthat thing not lost because not hada single experience solitarily ungotten andwe lose most what we had most in wanting pure experience of a last opportunitywhat lasts is what’s leftwhat’s left is what’s lostit is soin speaking of such things they would sayas I passvaporous vaporetto crossing the watery skyof your body you do not see of mein inches of your sightsecure in the purity for what it was that could be so purethat to be invisiblethe pure unknownor to better be notso in being not then being so purely somethingthrough the ineluctable process of nothingingday nothinging out after the attempt at a seeingI am the being at a windowthe window-being imaginedthe window being open to let in the lightand there is light but no transitin the place of two things there is one thing imaginedand one thing perceived by the aura it sends throughthose marbled cloudsand I am a marbling across your bodythis river of pearlsin arc and movementthe small reach of the penisacross the face of your sunfor the last time in a lifetime
ecr. l'inf.