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Agamemnon Has Aids
I met a man who wore
The death mask of Agamemnon
And he told me "That death
Like every other moment of your life
Is something that happens to you
I came in contact with the body fluids
Of Iphigenia without surgical mask
Or gloves and I had unprotected sex
With Achilles and made love to
Clytemnestra without a condom"
And all of Mycenae whispers
Every woman's husband
And every man's wife In irony fitting
Greek drama
The hero home from Ilium
To bedsores lesions and conspicuous
Consumption ravaged now and stricken
With the strictly modern malady
That has turned him suddenly old
Like King Priam and just as sad
Ode To Feet
I have seen poetic feet so perfect,
The very smallest units
Of patterned stress,
Soft idioms of Iambic
And drum beats of Anapestic,
That march across the carpet
In measured meter toward full-length mirrors.
I am the bard of bare soles
And naked ankles,
Of fallen arches and
Swollen heels,
Of toenails
Pedicured and painted,
That catch the light
Like so many cut sapphires,
All arranged
In descending order of size.
I have crafted couplets in Trochaic,
And started the heartbeat of lines in Spondaic,
For I am the poet of feet,
Perfect and imperfect,
Poetic
And otherwise,
Of bunions, bumps and bent toes,
Carried within or laid upon
A pump, mule, sandal or thong.
The Physics of Tea
Sitting in the living room
Drinking tea with her and
Talking about special relativity
And the fact that the most distant
Galaxies are racing away from us
At 80 percent of the speed of light and
As she considers this
Pulling a wayward strand of hair
From her face, she begins to twirl it,
Worrying it between her fingers, and
I am touched by the girlishness
Of this gesture, as she says very seriously:
"Gravity is a fear of being alone"
I laugh
Setting my tea down on the table
Hearing the percussion click
Of a china cup meeting the saucer and
As she smiles the freckles on her cheeks
Gravitate together in Newtonian fashion
And I know now that
What holds everything together
Is simply deep attraction.
Schrodinger's Cat
Like Schrodinger's cat
I find myself in two different states at once.
You see,
It's all rather confused
And uncertain,
At the same moment
I love her,
And yet
I do not.
In the hard determinism
Of Saturday morning breakfast,
She sips her tea,
And I spread my jam slowly
Across a slice of toast,
Pondering
My choices
And reforming my past.
In the solipsism
Of my most solitary and selfish thoughts,
At the point
Where all possible histories
And futures meet,
There is another woman
With a different smile
Asking me to pass the cream.
Doug Tanoury was born and raised in Detroit and attended Wayne State University.
His work has been published widely both in print and in electronic form. A number of his poetry collections
are available in ebook form at: The Poetry of Doug Tanoury and The Poetry of Doug Tanoury. Doug's poetry has been
the subject of features in the New York Times Online and The Detroit News. One of his poems also
won Honorable Mention in the Detroit Metro Times "Get Lit" special issue of 2006.
Much of Doug's online work can be read by typing his last name into any Internet search engine.
Email: Doug Tanoury
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