From a text (a note to help the prosaic wonderer):
“No worries part of the buried joke (actually making fun of Joyce ) LOL Here’s the background: 
The prostitute Nora Barnacle masturbated the young 
James Joyce under a bridge, 
she became his muse. 
It was their first date, 
and Nora thought it a way of keeping her ardent admirer at bay. The glove that Nora had removed, Joyce kept by him in bed as a young man. 
But this was more than infatuation. 
That day became the center of Joyce’s imaginative work, the day on which Ulysses was set.  😝 “

All young embryos are female 
James Joyce’s Nora
wouldn’t have known that 
Ungloved hand on his …
Pad kid poured curd pulled cod
 the premier tongue twister 
  and under the bridge 
  The scarlet lion on the bay
   yields a
  Moist white opening 
    cut early
Extraordinary 
  Interest 
they showed 
  in a baby’s frozen corpse
given that smell
    and all the rotting
   the nonlinear teasing insight
   the countdowns
  in their warping speed  …
 the approach 
  Closer and closer 
 never touching it
 death or was it 
     the beginning of
   of life?
 Fragments 
Damp mean jokes
 Just slightly closer
My son
  I am seeing “Me” in his eyes 
  as he covers his head
   runs from the room
  and talks only to the unseen 
voices in his head
 Cry
More real than real
   that hatchet chopping my foot
On a beautiful lake in 1971
My father chasing me around 
  the campground with a switch
“Give us a touch”
   might say the wayward priest to
   Peggy Babcock, Our Molly’s
    twisted tongues, 
   Leopold Bloom’s Penelope 
   Ye Gods (and little fishes)
All females, here
  on this mythic Earth
 those embryonic 7 weeks 
The hint of beauty, 
 then lost forever 
   Black and Blue in convulsions
     Beaten, like a nag
So art is more than just a song 
  when the plague strikes 
    and strikes again
    like a fire of internal death 
 as broad as it is long
Our intention mapped on desires 
Under the bridge 
  Young Ulysses our Joyce
  Nora’s ungloved hand
  rhythmically pumping 
  James’ man udder
 We monkeys with machines
  No history of the edits
 No regrets in reformation 
 No wicked transcendences
when all are 
finally nearly touched by death 
      (or is that rebirth?)
Anymore
  The endless energies 
Gutenberg writhing 
    in the corner 
  Spittle spews
 from the mad preacher’s pulpit 
“Filled with sin, you are
The devil will, 
  of course
  break the hasp 
of your back”
 His young  wallet is 
filled with desire 
 to be emptied on the
Utopian horizon that
   wears the heart of an
   unmoved stone
      that one
   fragment of momentary 
  Insight
Wake no more
   as
the switch still sounding against 
  our flanks
    the horses of desire, that we are
   In our wisest inner voices
 Intoning,   haunted
   this Bad myth
  this fallacious straw grasping
  Send them all to the camps
  Dante’s purgatorial circus 
Where that child’s funeral 
   goes on forever
  in festive relentless marches
towards the cliffs edge
So many deaths 
  for all us mortals, coiled
 In the full fragmenation of time
  More for her
Than me 
Queen Victoria (or is it Elizabeth?)
  one or two in a threeway
Nothing between her
     and Heaven 
but memories 
    All the little parts
     All the Feelies 
    so much better 
  to be 
letting the gas 
Out of the caskets
“It’s a blue gas, they are saying”
She is better where she is
   the Queen 
    the syncopated swan 
   They said
with secret eyes
Crying 
  rubbery nodules jigsawed
 clicking together 
Pumping, ungloved hand
  thousands of gallons 
   of blood and purified white urine
 this heart
this Protean puzzle .. life
That is not a sculpted likeness 
   It’s nothing like me, they thought
  I will be nothing but
Ghost stories 
   from the
Charnel Houses
  oozing as
The dirt must be swirling
  with maggots 
  (or is that spending) 
 All made of glorious pieces
 of unrequited desires
How many have you for 
     tomorrow?
June 17, 1904
  the hand is rhythmically stroking 
Only Man berries
   in this Black open space 
  Yoni  to be met
Life’s unexpected urgencies 
 forgotten in the swirl of memories 
Sirens Cry Crying Criest on that 
  nonexistent isle where
   Jesus Wept
Alone
   at that putrid tomb
and it’s not unmoved stone
  Blue gas, everywhere 
 the double negative of
   enlightenment at death
Transcend into figuration
   You are now a Bronze relief
Melting in the intensity 
  of the blast of Almighty 
  imagination 
into the pool 
   at the foot
of your dreams 
“Loosing her nightly waters
   on the River Jordan”
Running white with sperm
Shooting off in all directions 
Hitting the bridge underneath 
The eyes are blank that 
   wish me well
Nature abhors perfection 
Satisfaction buried in loneliness 
Life’s potential 
Sticky and sweet 
Running down the walls
of Plato’s cave
covered in ghostly shadow 

Scot Gresham-Lancaster
Brunswick Maine
February 6th 2025