Collected Poems (7 page)

and flow out behind you and be wind be sunrise

the grandmas bagpipe out of their soft wombs like apples

and go up like autumn in long rows like pearls like pearls

goodbye grandmas goodbye again thanks

for my present I swallowed them they’re flapping

around inside me like uncle sol in the last chair

maybe someday they’ll lift me like you

by the top of my guts out of here goodbye

charlie! go to sleep! eat! you’re skin and bones! goodbye! goodbye!

The Matter

there’s no no like money’s

money makes big holes behind its eyes

when it says no and death

is the next teller

counting you money arches

and peeks down at the caseworker in the spirit drawer

money comes takes your picture without cameras

digs inside without shovels

smiles puts its head in the tube

like a robber

like the anchorite in the cave

like ten dollars

inside money is no candy but her

inside money no rate but just him

the prostitute without her vagina the brother

who wants you to money says no

and the last dollar

which is our friend dog

our history like a condom

lion

king

speaker

is dragged under and riveted

to the bone

like old age

Refuge, Serpent-Riders

a man decided once to go steal truth

all day he would tie himself to his bed

and not listen

at night the ropes would come off

he would go out and open his mouth

tasting what leaked through the moon from the next sky

rolling the stars around in his teeth

like little pits

finally darkness got tired of hanging there

it said how much will you give me? give me

something

the man started getting younger when he heard that

soon he was crawling the rocks

cut his knees he was really sorry

everybody else screamed
BEAST FIEND MURDERER
!

they pissed up into his maw

they named their lips death

so when they cried it would break in two pieces

then darkness went back

the stories still hid inside him it was morning

nobody had him

he still knew everything

Flat

the pillows are going insane

they are like shells the skulls have risen out of them like locusts

leaving faces in them but cold vacant immobile

heavy with tears

they are like clouds and are so sick of us

so furious with us they swear next time

when we come back if they can they will spring up and our faces will empty

next time they will soar like clouds and dissolve

and not touch us it is morning

our heads thrown back in agony

the pillows are going insane

from the grief of being laid down

and having to stare unquestioningly like flowers

and be in all places like flowers each man one in his house

one in his barracks in his jail cell

they swear if they weren’t going insane they would call to each other

like flowers and spring up and come closer

but they must stay quietly

they must have faces like men and wait like men

the dead casings the filling and emptying going insane

A Poem for the Governments

this poem is an onion

it’s the same one miguel hernandez’s

wife wrote him about in jail

before he died that there was nothing

else for her and the baby to eat

except onions so he wrote

a lullaby for the child about onions

“I awoke from being a child:

don’t you awake … don’t even know

what happens or what goes on”

this poem is an onion

for you mr old men because

I want tears from you now

and can’t see how else to get them

I want tears for miguel now

for the poor people and their children

and for the kids you hate going

around cunt-frontwards full of carrying on

and bad shit like mercy and despair

I offer this

because everything else with life

and tenderness in it you’ve eaten

everything good in the world eaten

everything in my heart eaten

the poor eaten the babies eaten miguel

eaten

now eat this: this is one onion

your history and legacy

it is all there is in our lives

this and tears: eat this

Another Dollar

I dreamed of an instrument of political torture

so that the person thinks he’s breathing into a great space

that flows like a river beyond men

into infinity the ethical disconnects like a phone

and what he says everything comes back to him
WE ARE NOT DOING THIS

angels skulls prisoners
WE ARE NOT DOING THIS

the children scouring themselves like genitals
NOT DOING THIS

mother am I the enemy or the little brother?

they threw ropes around me I ran I covered myself

but they touched me the invalids licked me the poor kissed me

afterwards there is a bed afterwards a woman is there

her breasts she is a cloud how she envelops you

the coils shimmer nobody talks anymore nobody dreams this

WE ARE NOT DOING THIS

The Beginning of April

I feel terribly strong today

it’s like the time I arm-wrestled a friend

and beat him so badly I sprained his wrist

or when I made a woman who was really beautiful

love me when she didn’t want to

it must be the warm weather

I think

I could smash bricks with my bare hands

or screw

until I was half out of my mind

the only trouble

jesus the only trouble

is I keep thinking about a kid I saw starving on television

last night from biafra he was unbearably fragile

his stomach puffed up arms and legs sticks eyes distorted

what if I touched somebody like that when I was this way?

I can feel him going stiff under my hands

I can feel his belly bulging ready to pop

his pale hair disengaging from its roots like something awful and alive

please

I won’t hurt you I want you in my arms

I want to make something for you to eat like warm soup

look I’ll chew the meat for you first

in case your teeth ache

I’ll keep everybody away if you’re sleeping

and hold you next to me like a little brother when we go out

I’m so cold now

what are we going to do with all this?

I promise I won’t feel myself like this ever again

it’s just the spring it doesn’t mean anything please

This Is a Sin

right off we started inflicting history

on each other day after day first thing this

is historical and we gave dollars for it

and this and we gave movies and sad poems

and obviously newspapers and a little less

valentines and sometimes it got right

up against us and into us we would squeeze

it out like a worm it would come back

by itself through the pancreas through

the eye or womb and with great tenderness

on the faces of wives and babies we

would reinflict it until there was

such beauty it was unbearable because

it was too much history too much suffering

and also birds suffering their leaps

from branches dogs

lifting their dark mouths the paths

of mantises cows plopping were we afraid

of what would be left of us? sometimes

a person was erased entirely

and children dead of shame stuck

upright in the snow like pipes the wind

screaming over them or I would forget

you darling your breasts the wind

over them our lips

moving darling the child the wind breasts

our lips over them

The Undead

the only way it makes sense

is that we have terrible wounds inside us like mouths hard

metallic made in america

they swing fatly open like wallets and gorge

in strict vaginal contractions what touches us

what comes to us living wants us

how many times the one we kiss with affirms
LIFE
!
LIFE
!

but the other when the saints said

they heard thunder it was just it closing and

this time when it opens corpses soar in it officers

at attention shells

this time not enough pain in all asia for it

I want you not comforting me

the soles of our feet beaten until worms of flesh erupt from them

our genitals dialed like wrong numbers don’t

put your tongue in me don’t give me anything heart

soul laughter anything children turning the light on and off

on and off
MA
! don’t feed me! don’t feed me!

Then the Brother of the Wind

there’s no such thing as death everybody

knows that also

nothing in the world that can batter you

and hang you on a fencepost like a towel

and no such thing as love that stays inside

getting thicker and heavier falling

into the middle one seed

that weighs more than the universe

and no angels either

and even if there were even if we hadn’t laughed

the second heart out and made the second brain

have whole wars happening inside it like bacteria

and if they were made out of tin cans like shacks

in rio and rubber tires like crete sandals

and were all the same place rags in ratholes

in harlem rags sticking to burned faces in bengal

we’d still break like motors

and slip out of them anyway like penises

onto the damp thigh

and have to begin over

The Next to the Last Poem about God

when jessie’s fever went up god got farther away so he could see better

he wanted to know everything that happened

when I hit tex my brother in the face with a cap gun

when I ran away from my mother and had a bad fight

with my sister lynn about being different

when I dreamed of being a fighter pilot and shooting my father down

god was there in my dream too think how big he had to be

to get in where I was sailing around in my flying tiger

and the deaf kid he was in his ears somebody told me so it was all right

and jimmy moss when he died it was autumn there were leaves

outside the window just hardening I thought

he must be in the leaves too how big he is how far away

he must be to cover everything like a blanket

you crawl in with a fever and hide and wake up

during the night all better and crawl out again

but maybe when he has to get that far he thins out a little

you know? like rubber? maybe sometimes people punch

their fingers through him by accident or maybe on purpose

the bad people because they wanted to see everything too

because seeing everything would be like owning everything

so they go through and there they were bouncing around

saying everything’s good everything figures it all works

you could see them walking across the sky

at night rippling the cover making the stars bend

they said come up here look you can see
EVERYTHING
!
EVERYTHING
!

tex I’m sorry I hit you in the face

mom I didn’t mean to grow up you should have told me lynn

dad forgive me for getting stronger

sally you for so much and jessie

when you were playing on the bed last night

letting yourself fall backwards onto me with such happy trust

thinking “stand up” meant “let yourself fall any way you want to

I’ll catch you” jessie you were almost well your fever

was almost gone and I thought there must be something important

for you like that I still can’t think of it but god must know it

because god doesn’t forget anything ever

and someday I’ll get that far too and find out

and drop messages about what it was and it’ll be all right

god told me he said tell jessie I said it’ll be all right

Acids

for Jeff Marks

something to dip myself into

like sheep when they’re driven through

and the ticks and fleas float off in the trough

the animals struggling to keep their heads out of it

the men dunking them for their own good they get fatter the wool thicker

I would come up

crying

but pure again fingerprints kissmarks the places

I crossed my arms and dug into my back invisible

scales imperceptible bony emotional excrescences

gone a caul

gleaming flushing the surfaces innocence

I would make rivers of it

that would flood at their mouths

and the swimmers

would be done too

and in the city in the tap water

enough scum left to get into us all

we would fall into great laughing heaps of ourselves

can you imagine laughter

shining

and the sounds of lovemaking

etched like printing plates

so you would pull pictures of being young and knowing

what you know now

the first sky the first clouds

like young angels

bumping each other seeing your mother coming shrieking

joyfully so she’ll hear you

and come running arms open face open baby!

baby!

and you

flowing being flowed through