Foucault

On Surviving, in March, a Lecture on Foucault

I bet the
kind-of-attractive, slender, bald guy in the slides
had something else in mind.

I bet he
would tell you there comes a time
to set the dissertation aside, to realize
the French are always, to some degree, putting you on.

In the dark room
your upraised, inadvertent jazz-hands catch the light
of the lectern lamp.
You have said "relativize" eleven times.

While you go on
about the mirrors reflecting mirrors,
the sacred truth of the cotton-candy life,
the hard earth gives up hellebore; the stone,
the red camellia by the library wall, shedding scarlet
and taking scarlet on, like a girl dancing in red
on the first day anybody can wear red.

That certain lines of speculation are for
cowards only cannot be refuted.

Foucault and I would stab you where you stand.

Except that would
wake him, the boy with the turf of brown hair in the second row,
silver drool upon his cheek,
asleep as the gods are when philosophers hold the floor,
asleep as the gods till they are waked with dancing.

Keep looking the wrong way. At the mirror where the red dress passed.

Michel and I put on our dancing shoes.
I have asked for this dance; he said yes.
One of us is trying not to talk so much.