Selected Poems
Page 9
once who said he’d poison
birds but he didn’t want me
to write about it. I have not
until now, and now starts up
that black genius, the crow,
who is answered by the blue
bully, the ubiquitous, the utterly
American, jay.
The Republic of Anesthesia
I don’t feel anything today, my country-
men and -women, I’m numbed by 21 liters
of Novocain, I feel nothing
from my cowlick to the final ridge of my big toe’s nail; my tear
ducts dry-walled, not a sob
or the sigh of an ant left in me this autumn,
another autumn
in which the world hates itself so much.
Man ties severed head of another man
to the tail of a dog.
One frog eats a smaller frog.
Wisdom teeth, instead of being yanked,
evolve to wisdom fangs.
All day: arid hairsplitting, cheese-paring.
One bank buys another bank
and the little rubber thimble
on the teller’s thumb – that stays the same.
Certainly my god
can rip the heart from your god’s chest
and will, god willing, with my help.
A trillion-milligram hammer,
the arc of its swing
wide as a ring
of Saturn, hits us first
on the right temple,
then on the left. Good night, good night,
lights out! bark the stars.
Man Pedaling Next to His Bicycle
(for Laure-Anne Bosselaar)
Look at him go
nowhere, his feet whirring, furious. He bends forward to cut
drag, the flair
of his hat shooting the air
over it and down its back slope
for propulsion. Up hills
he’s on his toes,
stands and pushes – it’s slower
than usual going nowhere next to his sleek, ultralight,
green racer, which is upright,
kickstand unemployed; unridden.
Ring-ring, goes my bell, he says.
Fly in the wind, handlebars’ white streamers, he says.
Flapflapflapflapflap goes the ace
of spades in the spokes.
When the road turns downhill he pedals ahead
of his bicycle until it catches him,
but never passes him, at the bottom
which opens to the salt flats, the listless,
grayish-white rest of the ride,
the long, level, parching road.
He pedals
beside his bicycle, pedals
and pedals,
wondering where the mountains went,
the pastures, swing sets, the humans tending
to human things. Where did they
go – that which, those whom, he was meant to glide past,
or love, on his journey?
Her Hat, That Party on Her Head
I saw first, and only, her hat. I saw neither face nor shoulder.
No lawn or garden nearby.
No white tablecloths, champagne flutes,
or trays of treats pierced by toothpicks
that fit
with her hat
at this place: a side street in a village in a country
across a border. Looking, with bad directions,
for a bus, brought me here.
Behind a rectory, a priest, in his robe, read
a newspaper, leaning back in a chair
with his bare
feet on a table. I’ve never seen
such white feet!
I saw also: dust, stained laundry on lines, two roosters.
Some sagging wires hung above.
Then, on the other side of a fence, her hat rising
and dropping with each step.
She walked the fence’s length and disappeared.
She returned and walked the fence again.
She was walking a circuit, pain’s little looping course.
She walked slowly
and too often her head tipped forward: her eyes turned down
beneath the garden, the birthday party,
on her head. Who is gone so long from her?
Beneath the bougainvillea and lily,
beneath fuchsia’s little lamps,
beneath the yellows and greens and blues,
whose absence
made her wear this hat
to help, but fail, to let this absence go?
God Particles
God explodes, supernovas, and down upon the whole planet
a tender rain of Him falls
on every cow, ladle, leaf, human, ax handle, swing set.
We rush from our houses,
farmers standing, saved, in the rain after years of drouth.
Like snowflakes, each God particle is different,
though unlike snowflakes,
are warm and do not melt
but are absorbed by the skin.
Every human, every creature, rock, tomato on earth
is absorbing God!
Who just asked: Why did God explode?
And why ask this far into the story?
I believe He did it to Himself: nobody
walks into God’s house, His real house, on a hill
in Beulah Land, nobody
walks into His house wearing a suicide belt.
No plane flies high enough to drop a bomb on His house.
No one will trespass
to plant an IED in His driveway.
Why did God do it?
Guilt because He sent His son
to do a job He should have done Himself?
I don’t think so. God knows,
there’s no reason for God to feel guilt.
I think He was downhearted, weary, too weary
to be angry anymore, or vengeful,
or even forgiving, and He wanted each of us,
and all the things we touch
and are touched by,
to have a tiny piece of Him,
though we are unqualified
for even the crumb of a crumb.
Their Feet Shall Slide in Due Time
Hard, balanced in their stance, the truth setting the eye
to the rifle scope’s crosshairs, where X,
where all evil, lies.
Steady the hand,
pull back the pointing finger (squeeeeze,
don’t jerk, the trigger, each century’s
manual says). A man’s a problem? Kill
the man. Problem’s gone. Stalin said something like that,
or was it Gandhi? Deuteronomy
says, in a book of metaphors, sooner
or later the wicked, the venal,
shall face a steep, greasy hill whose fortress
they cannot take. Their feet shall slide
sooner or later: the fall, the reward, uh-huh, the fiery lake,
or the happy place.
Invective
Boils, pocks, and blood blisters, I pray you suffer them,
your goat grow fevered
and leak the yellow milk, I pray moles claw holes
in your head, stones be always in your shoe, fire
in your neck, slop in your cooking pot.
I pray there be rubber bullets in your gun,
I pray your daughter marry for love,
I pray your son wish to be a poet.
I pray your mother take a young lover in front of your father,
I pray it be revealed you keep your toothpicks in your beard,
I pray you be turned down
if you register to vote, I pray your wife fucks you
in the ass, I pray all your lug-nut-dumb offscourings
disdain you, I pray your next breath,
and each one thereafter, fills your
lungs
with the stink of your corpse.
Jesus’ Baby Teeth
for sale: left front canine (C), two upper
right molars (I, J), and his two front teeth (E, F),
which were all he wanted
for Christmas. Stains,
wear patterns on molars indicate a diet
of fish, coarse bread, and watery wine.
Also for sale: the right forefinger
of Saint Thomas, the one that plugged the hole
in Jesus’ side, which action was wasted because
he didn’t die (or, he did die
but then arose,
which is enough like not dying
to be not dying!) anyway. Also
a swatch of blue from the sleeve
of Mary’s robe where you-know-who
laid his downy head. We’re also offering
a piece (6” x 8”) of the True Cross, which is signed
by the other Mary,
the one we love less
for her heart of gold.
Click on thumbnails for pictures of Jesus’ left thumbnail, lost in an accident
by hammer, on the job.
Its bright moon is half risen above the horizon
but not one star
in its cracked, blackened sky.
How Difficult
for the quadriplegics to watch
the paraplegics play.
How difficult the day
the ventilator of one lung
shut down, the heart’s monitor saying
ta-thump, ta-thump, ta-thump
and the screen showing aaaaaaaaaaaa,
and the lady down the hall
howling: My legs are on fire! My legs are on fire!
How difficult the icy abstract of the wintry mind.
How difficult the cracking of houses at their ruin.
How difficult to mow an empty grave’s grass.
How difficult to ride
the landslide’s lip descendingly, to endure
the day’s chop-logical drip-feed of lies,
how difficult hearing
God’s last scratchy – what did He say? – radio broadcast.
What did He say
about no more verbs
in the future tense?
Apology to My Neighbors for
Beheading Their Duck
First, it was an accident: I did not mean
to sever his head. A book, or a being superior
or Superior, did not command it thus.
He’d gotten into the little yard we share.
He stood as still as if he were made of cement,
which, in fact, he was. Nevertheless, he was not meant
to lose his head. So that I could lop it off,
a text was not interpreted, though he was
a heterodox duck – he wore a little blue hat.
This color is proscribed for a duck’s hat.
Otherwise: white duck, orange feet and beak.
A decent duck, a cause-no-trouble duck.
He weighed a hundred pounds, weighted down
your car to get him here to his new home.
Without his head, he weighs five pounds less.
Without his head, broken at the neck,
he’s a less impressive duck,
but still I had no right to take it.
It belonged to him,
and he needed it, his head,
as we, as all creatures, do,
despite the swamp, the sump, thriving inside it.
He did not belong to me,
nor was he of my family.
When I dropped a bag (rather than carry it
down to the barrels beside the duck) of trash
from my fourth-floor back porch,
that’s what did it, clipped it clean off,
for which I offer apologies and cash,
but I must reiterate: a book
did not tell me I had the right to do so,
nor did I hear a voice,
a promise, from a pearly place.
I did it dumb and owe you fifty bucks!
The Joy-Bringer
breaks the light through the oak leaves at dawn.
The joy-bringer injects the red bird’s red.
The joy-bringer brings the green, lets the cup runneth over
into a saucer, from which you can sip.
Gives fish the river, the river the fish.
If by two inches you avoid a piano
falling on your head
and later at the hospital fall in love with the doctor
who removes a few splinters
of ivory and black piano lacquer
from your left calf: the joy-bringer
arranged that. Also the chilled artesian water
spilling from a pipe only two inches above the ground,
from which you drank on your hands and knees,
on a few boards or branches, you bowed in the muck and drank
that sweet cold reaching-up,
you drank among the skunk cabbage, ferns, a small brook
at your back: again, guess what,
the joy-bringer! In fact, let us praise
the joy-bringer for these seven
things: 1) right lung, 2) left lung, 3) heart, 4) left brain,
5) right brain, 6) tongue, 7) the body to put them in.
Thank you, joy-bringer!
And thanky, thanky too for just-mown hay
cut an inch from its roots
to bleed its perfume into the air!
The Happy Majority
…before I join the great and, I believe, the happy majority.
P.T. BARNUM
Before I join the happy majority (though I doubt one member happy
or unhappy) I have some plans: to discover several new species
of beetle; to jump from a 100-foot platform
into a pile – big enough
to break my fall – of multicolored lingerie;
to build a little heater
(oh not to join the happy ones
until some tasks are done)
beside each tulip bulb to speed its bloom;
to read 42,007 books (list available
on request); to learn to read and/or write
Chinese, CAT scans, Sanskrit, petroglyphs,
and English; to catch a bigot
(oh not to join the happy ones
until some tasks are done)
by the toe; to kiss
the clavicle of (name available
on request); to pay my respects, again,
at the grave of John Keats; to abrogate
my position in God’s nihilistic
(oh not to join the happy ones
until some tasks are done)
dream; to hold my mother’s hand as she leaves this world;
to lay my hand upon my father’s heart as he does likewise;
and for my daughter to be glad I was her father as I exit, also
(in a hundred years or so), from the conscious to the un-.
Cliffs Shining with Rain
’Tis double death to drown in ken of shore.
W.S.
Why, in a sea storm, though near shore, on a ship shipping water,
the mast cracked, why don’t
sailors happily wreck
on the beach, or even
upon the rocks,
and then swim – or wade – the few yards to shore,
where one cannot drown?
They want to sail home, certainly, not lose their cargo, sail home,
not be marooned.
No shore but their own will do.
So all night they bail by bucket
and pump, all hands, all night,
because they know what I never
will, I who can fear
though not imagine
drowning, I with no cargo
to lose, and who’s never sailed under wind
from a wharf where my m
other
or wife or child stood. They know, the sailors know,
in a mast-snapping storm, no matter how close to shore, they know
that the waves and splintered timber, thrown
against rocks, or reef, or even beach, drawn back and dashed again,
are a bigger risk
than bailing, bailing, throwing goats, anvils, horses overboard, in order to
stand offshore, a mile or two, safe,
in deep water until,
at dawn, the wind swallows itself
and there they are, the broken cliffs,
shining with rain.
The Shooting Zoo
The giraffe can’t stand up anymore: he’s still tall
but not tall enough. The silverback is bald,
the zebra’s black stripes gray. There’s a virus at the zoo: the spring-
bok can’t prong,
the alligators wracked by cataracts,
the last lion meowls like an auntie’s cat.
The penguins walk as if they have a load in their pants!
The vultures are eating sandwiches and plants!
Something’s wrong with all the animals: the pandas obstreperous,
the iguanas demand bananas, the loons
are out of tune.
What to do, what to do? Soon,
whatever it is that’s deranging them
will pass through their bars,
across their moats,
and then: our dogs and gold-
fish, the little parakeet
who pecks our lips
so we may say it kisses us, soon
they’ll start dropping too.
Next: our children? grandma?
The zookeepers don’t know what to do, so
print some permits permitting men
to bring their guns to the shooting zoo.
Mole Emerging from Trench Wall,
Verdun, 1916
Doing his job, the mole, disturbed no doubt by the shaking
and noisy dirt, but still digging blind,
goes on with the only life he knows.
He’s down there why? Eating worms? Roots?
Having his mole-being, his mole-ness?
So, doing his job, he digs, and emerges,