The Egoist
Popped from the womb, he began gathering property
extorted from his wet nurses by threatening
to turn blue in the face and die. Everyone gave in.
His mother dressed him in guava-colored lace crinolines
his father obligingly retired to the Côte d’Azur
siblings were disposed of by the Beast of the Bassinet.
Coextensive with the world, his hands become The Hands,
his mouth The Mouth, his dingus The Dingus.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely said Lord Acton.
Absolute corruption set in: a foot revolted
and proclaimed democracy and universal male suffrage
the hairs of his armpit began drinking heavily
and all over his body an asexual budding
produced nodes of himself, his genetic encumberment
replicated and replicated, an oblique hysteria.
The absolute corruption of self is community.
The absolute corruption of the mouth
is to taste its tongue over and over, to be continually filled.
Copyright Credit: William Dickey, “The Egoist” from The Education of Desire. Copyright © 1996 by the Estate of William Dickey. Used by permission of Wesleyan University Press, >www.wesleyan.edu/wespress.
Source: The Education of Desire (Wesleyan University Press, 1996)