Ray Succre

Cerise and Blanc

Red sauce, white sauce,
commixture,
Italy in gustation
is akin to holing up the streams
of vim life; was it above when
that spittle crossed the sky
from a chariot and
some moderns of the era
wrote the verses out,
admixture?

Red life, white life,
sauces and the body leaving
only in the twilight,
an emissary of breath
to show material nothing
that animate living is never
without the rhinestone polish
of juices, intermixture,
just purling through
the hearts of cometic dazes.


© 2009 Ray Succre

The Reaction of Her Motherhood

The reaction of her
                     Catholicism
     Thinness           +            Anger
                      Strictness
was key in punishing stray boys,
cats, and even weeds, in the yard.

"No!" she shouted, so simply,
at a dog with muddy paws, or
"Bad!" like hysterical striking,
"No!"

At three, I was a great behaver
but was easily riled and only
partially serious part of the time.
I used the word 'damn' once,
and she barked into my ear,
so I then used the word 'bitch'.

Her jaw when this was uttered
became as if levered,
swung down,
linked to the raising backhand.
It was one from the waist,
a long arc of punishment.

The slap stung for hours,
a reaction of her
                     Upbringing
     Anger               +            Instinct
                       Examples
running off into the hills
with her young.


© 2009 Ray Succre

The Incredible Truth About Most

Their shiny effort is that they will
husband and wife,
father and mother their young,
bend and change their significance
by deed, and truly last,
lesser still if not that they can feel,
note and live in something magnificent.

These are the absolutions
they make weave across their known span.

Past them, they have only gathered
spontaneity.


© 2009 Ray Succre

Fine Editions

Prosper in arts is knife, is olives,
and is the biting crux that constricts its own crumbs.
To be exciting, seems, one must be failed,
and to be exceptional, extinguished,
a dead man’s ghost on the dustcover.

The money became an owner of galleries,
and the money became writer,
and the money became filmmaker, funder, actor,
            prosper in arts.
Though a debt is surely owed—
would one prefer letting works straight to the mass
when some of those works were to get clear of it?


© 2009 Ray Succre