Suicidal for Yeats
︎︎︎ Shakes
︎ Aug 18, 2025
Contemplating perfect grace,
Perfect arches, perfect bone.
But merely mirror-painted, those
The language goes, the loathing gaze
The anxious make, and mangled pose
And anguish aching temple pains,
The self-convinced the self a face,
The saints and better artists know.
Beautiful lust he,
The wanting faithful.
Every moving sacred,
Every fating wayward.
Elegance was worship as if
Pleasure was distasteful.
Toll collecting.
Pay it.
Wasting nothing.
Wasted.
Luxury by starving
Hasting none
The meditations.
Never shrunk.
Graceful.
God-possessed.
Fatal.
If only he saw
How to flaw, and all.
Perfect arches, perfect bone.
But merely mirror-painted, those
The language goes, the loathing gaze
The anxious make, and mangled pose
And anguish aching temple pains,
The self-convinced the self a face,
The saints and better artists know.
Beautiful lust he,
The wanting faithful.
Every moving sacred,
Every fating wayward.
Elegance was worship as if
Pleasure was distasteful.
Toll collecting.
Pay it.
Wasting nothing.
Wasted.
Luxury by starving
Hasting none
The meditations.
Never shrunk.
Graceful.
God-possessed.
Fatal.
If only he saw
How to flaw, and all.
Jason, who is not the author of this poem, is an economist, musician, and poet living in Austin, Texas. Jason, who has been to the Arctic Circle, is a good friend of the author Shakes, an inveterate gooner and an avid connoisseur of slop. His ambition is to surpass Aristotle.