All Day

So this is reality too, come in
and now you’re here, all swept
up for you the floor shiny
and our wonderful pal, the
antelope clatters its little hooves
on the floor to eat from your
hand, all the pictures
you love on the walls and
your favorite books read
themselves aloud, and you
can leave if you want to, just
turn the page or have the kids
come over for cake, little Louie
from downstairs, he likes you
so much he brings his friends
too, the twelve year old girl,
She loves it here we give her
shiny hair and crackling
petticoats. It’s always
just after school and
just before supper. The
flower in the flowerpot smiles
all day in the sunshine
and waves its little
leaves when you come home. Such
a bright yellow floor and
such a big cozy bed
It says Hey Get Up or
You’ve got a temperature or
Stay here with me
let’s watch TV all day.
Sometimes there’s a moon
when we’re alone but
like always the grinning
kind that hangs from a
thin wire. Oh yeah, the
stars have five neat points
The coffee pot giggles and
the dishes wash themselves with
their little rubber gloves
squeaking and laughing.
You have that effect on things
and even the bathroom,
so often left out of things,
is happy, when you’re
                                       home.

Oct 25
       1978  RR

Boy Running

Is the boy who runs
Away
Gently begging you
To stay?
Perhaps he genuinely needs
Some rope and knots
To keep him here…If that
Is so…
Go away I don’t want
                             you here that
                                                         way
                  unless you
Bring the rope
                                                      yourself

Rene Ricard
2006

Galas We Missed

Helen + Brice?                      Very nice!
But I am missing
                        a slice
So if you want
                      me there
Invite me
                     Twice

R.R.                                              2006

Vatic Utterance

If I love you
There is no limit
But love is Luxury
                          Housing
The rent must be
                        paid
The lease expires
Evictions are noticed
And a new Tenant
Moves in

2005 Oct 24

The Secret

The Heroin mixed w/ the
Free-Base and apparently I am
Having Blackouts. I say
Apparently since I’ve no
Recollection of — Sacking my
Already “who did it and ran”
Apartment.                 The neighbors
Complaining about the loud fights
In my place. I was alone!
I’d surely like to remember if
Someone were there w/ me — Even
A fight to quench this Sahara of
Loneliness I’ve placed myself
Within.
                  Do I have a secret
Life where I am even engaging in
Domestic quarrels? Wouldn’t that
Be civilized! From me though it
Is probably one of a multitude of personalities
Showing off for the others.

R Ricard ‘06

       And,
                  If I could see to
The end…would it be you
There – waiting for me?
                                         No.  The
Waiting days belong to another
Not to me.                    Vanity –
No.   Beauty – but who
Knew?                       Well, Bye,
To all that!   Now, to
Let it go with dignity.
Ha! Ha! Dignity! Fuck
That. A nasty old man,  Me.

Rene Ricard
June 20, 2005

Have a Good Day
                                      Lola S.

Have a good day
But not just today:
All the days that
Come around today—
Like yesterday
                  and tomorrow
Yesterday, today and  tomorrow
Love them all
                             nice days

The Perception of Time Under Stress

Bernini has poor Daphne
                                    in a whirl
Surging upwards, she’s torqued
                                       for escape
In the Borghese Collection
A ‘this isn’t happening to me’
                                        horror
To the ends of her finely drilled
                                                 hair
That repeats in miniature the
                                        Solomonic
Spiral in St. Peter’s baldochino

In all this she more than
                                    resembles
Her sister statue, resembles Persephone, who
                                    Archemedeanically
Demonstrates her version of the twist.
She doesn’t stand a chance:

Skin is to marble what a
Screw’s elevation is to its
                                                      plan:
In elevation it moves—in plan
                                                      it don’t

They share a room, however in
                                     this civilized gallery
“Look, his fingers dig into her
Skin. That’ll leave a bruise”
                                    —English tourist
                                        circa 1908

Now, Daphne’s farther along
Cardinal-proof with bark
She’s already half a tree of
                                                      bays
And Apollo, auditioning for
                                    King of France
So it appears,
Is too late.
But our Edwardian
                                    knows
It wouldn’t be like this
She would walk slowly
                                    out
Off the veranda and
                                    onto the lawn;
The gentleman of the piece
Has even gone back for
                                    lemonade.
It’s taking so long.

So, who left who?
Since I still love him
He can have this round
au revoir
But the boy
I love was never the boy
who stood before me
I love an abstraction 
The pillage he conferred
I never unspooled
upon his silent face
So...who left?

I just wanted to look at him
He was 19   He's older now
and wants to
Regale me w/ hints about
His wide-mowed swath
For my edification
I'd rather walk away.
So, my love
What's the point in cheating
Once I've stopped keeping score?
Take the trophy
This victory, hollow, is yours.

If in hell
the flowers
have no scent
and the food
no taste
why should
the flames
have any heat

                                                           Sleeping Beauty Rents
                                                    Snow White’s Crystal Bier:
                                                                                     awaiting kiss

“This could be an eternity,”
                                       thinks Sleeping beauty, making the rounds
of clubs and bars
“This round of clubs and bars
Will endure an eternity.”
                                                    Sleeping Beauty sighs deeply
Into a cell phone, entering a taxi.
                                                                 With the amount of Beauty’s drinking
(The rounds of drinks that go
w/ the rounds of bars)   Then there are the Beauty Drugs.
Keeping a large male Beauty asleep these days
                                                                                                         is not the easily pricked
Finger on a spindle, “Poison apple, Dearie,” trick that once
Could enthrall a Beauty to sleep. Now, a mass of costly
And possibly illegal analgesics, designer and other pharmaceuticals
Prime the Beauteous Sleeper into:
                                                                 The Mystical Moment of Surrender:
The Life not Life – the waking that is Sleeping – Beauty is asleep,
i.e. a life asleep is capable of Beauty. A Beautiful life cannot be
A Waking life.   Sleep, my Love, The Beauty Sleep of your life.
Why waken–sordid, soiled,
Catastrophic, in a Life that is
                                                                                                        “Empty,” you said?
Empty of What:
The Kiss is the final Drug; let us call it
                                                                 “DETOX” – As seen on T.V.!!!
It wakes you, no?
                                    So, this Fairy Tale is good for a spin.
If we write out the Prince, and living happily ever after
In Snow White’s rented Glass Sepulchre.

Rene Ricard April 26, 2005

                    To an Ironing Board
                    Nailed to a Bedroom Door

There are welts across the arses
Of the British upper classes
Then in France it launched a craze
Benamed “La Maladie Anglaise.”

All may crave this painful bliss; though
It helps to be Aristo:
“Oh please, Sir, Dukie, Duke, please,
Smack me just like the Marquise!”

Back and forth across the Channel
Pong and Ping the darling paddle
Raised her red retorts of pleasure
Forth and back in equal measure.

The wealthy Duke of Lauderdale
Does enjoy an unforced wail
From aproned maids, with wet red eyes
Who are ladies in disguise.

Our Sublime poet of rack and wheel
Was clapt into the dread Bastille
Deprived of Light and Day
By a Lettre de Cachet

So, well-born and standing tall
Leaves a greater way to fall.
Duke and Marquesses fall down on
Knights, Viscounts, and Baron.

This little doggerel of decay Brings us to the present Day
In this world of Bush the younger……….hunger

                                                                        RR 2005

In Daddy’s Hand
                                               For Rita Barros

In Daddy’s Hand
the swing connects
the leather to
             your underpants

that separate your
             father’s hand
from your pink
                            skin

and though the
              cotton’s clean
                           and white

It’s also very thin
and the pain
              gets in
              gets in
                    gets in

They say you don’t
Remember pain but
             that’s not true

Just propaganda
    from a Sadist
    to his kid

Because hurt it did

             Have I
             forgotten it?

Like hell I did
       it hurts
             again
                    and
                          again

It’s hurting still

There are molestations
that hurt more
             than the sexual:

The fear to
             enter rooms
         he may be in

a coffee mug
without warning
              or reason

Flying straight
              at you
You’re only six
and don’t know
why it’s happening

But then he’ll
               tell you why

Why?
             “Because you
             looked scared”

Now here’s a reason
these strikes and
             spares do
not occur sporadically

They’re constant
              and the

neighbors, your cousins
can’t believe
               you’re growing
                             up

Since he killed
His first wife:

             “Sugar”

and he’ll kill at
least one other
man
     that I know of

Why I’m alive is
more that just a mystery!

“Chance Survival”
             is the term
                 in 
Archeology

             The context vanishes
But there’s some little thing
Not enough to
             form a theory

like, say,
             the signature
                            on a plinth

But not the
             piece
                    itself

June 19, 2010
Rene Ricard
Bridgehampton

Confusion

To do good
can be evil
give a beggar $
that’s good.
She buys drugs
That kill her.

Good intentions
paved a road
to hell.
Deliberately to confuse
(the suppression of clarity)
is EVOL

Rene Ricard March 22, 1999

When I Died

a glorious light
      beckoned me
I could go or stay

     I chose the
                  light

It was the Devil

Rene Ricard