Birth poem for Solomon Grundy
*
I remember him taking Latin in year 1 of University, but for the life of me
I don’t remember tying my shoes. Did that happen? In year one?
*
He sits on the bench and she opens up her notebook/heart to him
She says let me show you my diamonds
They are like travel slides from a long and difficult journey
Pink and brown
Red and even more red
She says they represent the land
Little pieces of me
Here is my engagement
In the middle she puts the clocktower, with its tall, perfect spires
*
Now, here is the real church
A birthstone
This is not a place you can get to before me
She says think of it as a leaf
Think of it as pristine
We must extoll its blessings
It is like a relationship
The way things partly worked out
The way there is a lack of devastation, over here
The way there are rules, there are rules, there are rules
*
It is sinister though
The look in the bagman’s eye
Tom Selleck or Thomas Magnum
Sent to collect from her
Hairy chest and mustache
His warm tropical shirt contrasting
With her cold gray one
Does she have money
What will he do with her
Will she fit in the back of the car
He’s contemplating the book cover of the book she’s reading
Dostoevsky’s The Idiot
Probably not a book he’s read before
Probably not
She asks, have you read this page
Have you read this page
He doesn’t think so
They go on and on
And meanwhile the jewels shake in her hand
And she’s not even sure if she can remember him
She says
Come back in a week
I’ll have it then
*
This punishment though
This stone
If she acknowledges it she is done for
If she ignores it she is a fake
There is the moon
It is her headrest
It is the hardest one
It feels like a fist
This bright calamity
That is what she would call it if she had a name for this thing
It is bloody, bloodred, blood blood blood
Blood blood-moon
*
What if
He’s thinking of her?
Your shirt made me gravely ill
Green brown mausoleum
The way I feel certain about things
The way for example
6 men can gather around a coffin
And do it no good
The way for example
The word “Trowbridge”
Sounds like the word “drawbridge” and it sounds like the word “troll-bridge”
But it is not either one of them but just a street I used to live near
And where I once bought a pint of whiskey for a party
This was next door to the drycleaners where I picked up my suit
My grandfather was dying
Where was my damn suit
Where were my golden cufflinks
We got in the car
We went to the Plaza and rode to the 73rd Floor
The room was spinning
I wanted to fly far, far away from that and find myself on a different planet
Anthropomorphic Relapse
This way for Petunia
I feel certain to go
To go back
Back into the little restaurant and the little fire
I think I might have forgot you
I got undressed for that night and then I forgot the feeling
I forgot what it was like to be human
All that hating and biting
All that wanting of this thing or that thing
Wanting as food
I wanted food
I wanted to eat the meat raw and the vegetables cold
I wanted to dip the mushrooms in sauce
Today, when I got your note I thought it said
you should eat me with your fingers
I wanted to eat you
I wanted to dust your legs in cornmeal
I wanted to fry you in oil
From the archive: Billboard
(Desiderata)
from Missouri some rather hard stuff
hard / desperate / hard
grainy photos and stills
(like I want, like I want to see that)
street signs with Missouri’s fat ass
outlined in a broad stripe, hanging out there
or in a coed’s room
on a T-shirt
(and why, of all Midwestern girls, did you have to love her
best)
a letter from Private Trent Funk, Ft. Leonard Wood
I went driving through Missouri and I didn’t see him
Black Black Black Black Black. Confidential. Big Muddy. When
men and women come under the oxygen
tent, but that’s like it happens
here, also. Except that would be in Missouri.
Missouri is like Georgia’s twin sister. They have the same ass.
Blue red white. Platform. Mark Twain. A speech.
A spaghetti? noodle. I ate a bowl
once, in St. Louis.
But that was a long time ago.
Did you look down from the Arch?
It’s difficult.
No purple mountains, no extras.
Budweiser’s Clydesdales.
Clomp Clomp Clomp
Clomp. Skirts on
the girls from SWMSU
oh - me.
A Stillness and a Stillness
| Well first of all there is the Atman, which is
there—a sort of divine/semi-divine thing, incorruptible; the corruptible down-river there/not there where Ulysses hides. Ulysses, counterpart to the real. He stands at the river and prepares to swim. And the river, it is prepared to become steam. Because, all around (them) the crowd is yelling, Fusion. And they are saying, Play here. Or they are saying, Leave us. But the Atman, he isn’t decided by what they say. He is decided by what he thinks. He is, right now, thinking of someone he is willing to die for. And he isn’t that person. He is thinking that you probably aren’t either. And neither is Ulysses, that scoundrel. |
But now it is your turn. Standing tiny, with
your remote control extended, wax-on wax- off, if you can break X number of boards with your bare hands or open a beer-bottle with your teeth, you win a car. Now the interview can begin. The interview steers clear of your qualifications—what your vitae taught you, or how you learned to be a good, productive person. Instead, they will want to know only when did you swallow the nicotine? Or how old was the girl? And what did you say that you did with her? All these things were never so hot to you. Because this is everything that you went for. This is what you must lie down with, you must be absolutely sure. And absolutely quiet. |
When I first started working at the Poetry Office I was 17
Boy they say that Exephrastes is a fast runner
He is, he is, but right now it’s
Mongolia, ahead
Mongolia, he speaks about 50 million languages
He speaks them, but he doesn’t understand them
He doesn’t know anything about human nature
This is simple
I want you to make me some demon toast
I want you fine
I feel you thirsty
I lick your neck
I lick you, from just under your chin to right over your voicebox
That’s your throat
That’s your esophagus
That’s air
That’s
You give me a pulmonary embolism
I don’t think i mind it either
