Poemunity — your poem community

As a child I put my finger in the fire to become a saint. As a teenager every day I would knock my head against the wall. As a young girl I went out through a window of a garret to the roof in order to jump. As a woman I had lice all over my body. They cracked when I was ironing my sweater. I waited sixty minutes to be executed. I was hungry for six years. Then I bore a child, they were carving me without putting me to sleep. Then a thunderbolt killed me three times and I had to rise from the dead three times without anyone’s help. Now I am resting after three resurrections.

As I sd to my friend, because I am always talking,—John, I sd, which was not his name, the darkness sur- rounds us, what can we do against it, or else, shall we & why not, buy a goddamn big car, drive, he sd, for christ’s sake, look out where yr going.

The northern lights.         I wouldn’t have noticed them if the deer hadn’t told me a doe         her coat of pearls         her glowing hoofs proud and inquisitive eager for my appraisal and I went out into the night with electrical steps but with my head held also proud to share the animal’s fear and see what I had seen before a sky flaring and spectral greenish waves and ribbons and the snow         under strange light         tossing in the pasture like a storming ocean caught by a flaring beacon. The deer stands away from me         not far there among bare black apple trees a presence I no longer see. We are proud to be afraid proud to share the silent magnetic storm that destroys the stars and flickers around our heads like the saints’ cold spiritual agonies of old. I remember         but without the sense         other light-storms cold memories discursive and philosophical in my mind’s burden and the deer remembers nothing. We move our feet         crunching bitter snow         while the storm crashes like god-wars down the east we shake the sparks from our eyes we quiver inside our shocked fur we search for each other in the apple thicket— a glimpse, an acknowledgment it is enough and never enough— we toss our heads         and say good night moving away on bitter bitter snow.

I know that all beneath the moon decays, And what by mortals in this world is brought, In Time’s great periods shall return to nought; That fairest states have fatal nights and days; I know how all the Muse’s heavenly lays, With toil of spright which are so dearly bought, As idle sounds of few or none are sought, And that nought lighter is than airy praise. I know frail beauty like the purple flower, To which one morn oft birth and death affords; That love a jarring is of minds’ accords, Where sense and will invassal reason’s power: Know what I list, this all can not me move, But that, O me! I both must write and love.

I know that He exists. Somewhere – in silence – He has hid his rare life From our gross eyes. ’Tis an instant’s play – ’Tis a fond Ambush – Just to make Bliss Earn her own surprise! But – should the play Prove piercing earnest – Should the glee – glaze – In Death’s – stiff – stare – Would not the fun Look too expensive! Would not the jest – Have crawled too far!

I leave her weeping in her barred little bed, her warm hand clutching at my hand, but she doesn’t want a kiss, or to hug the dog goodnight— she keeps crying mommy, uhhh, mommy, with her lovely crumpled face like a golden piece of paper I am throwing away. We have been playing for hours, and now we need to stop, and she does not want to. She is counting on me to lower the boom that is her heavy body, and settle her down. I rub her ribcage, I arrange the blankets around her hips. Downstairs are lethal phonecalls I have to answer. Friends dying, I need to call. My daughter may be weeping all my tears, I only know that even this young and lying on her side, her head uplifted like a cupped tulip, sometimes she needs to cry.

I left my head somewhere today. Put it down for just a minute. Under the table? On a chair? Wish I were able to say where. Everything I need is in it!

When they were together she thought it God’s punishment. When he left she thought it God’s punishment. When vermin overrun the city’s boardinghouses and highrises it’s God sticking a hose into the Devil’s hole to flood him out. And when the floodwaters rose, where was everyone? When fog risen from the lake assimilates varietals of exhaust, evolves through the financial district, renders toxic the neighbourhoods, swells over suburbs, the Devil has forsaken another project, saying sometimes I can’t fucking concentrate on anything. He says he does what he does sometimes because the Devil gets in like water through his weak places. When it rains like now the Devil yells at God I’ve told you not to call me that. When it rains like now. And every time God laughs at this roofs lift off along the Eastern Seaboard. The Eastern Seaboard will never understand. When we are broken, to whom are we opened? God’s taken all the fish home to live with him, honey. And when the earth shakes that’s God rearranging furniture not a bomb in the subway like we thought. If you feel the Devil with you, he is there. If you think God has abandoned you, you are abandoned, his attention on the World Series, more important than any one man, smiting the hell out of the Rangers’ big bats as the Giants lift fingers to the sky in praise and the ordnance deployed in his name, in making straight the way, would fill the oceans. And each foreclosure is a failure of belief, each immortal jellyfish a failure of belief. When those who will ruin us are elected, where is everyone? And when I return from the desert it’s with the Devil cast out. With God cast out. Because it wasn’t really me who did those things before, that wasn’t me.

I Joe You lie About pineapples There are none under anywhere I look I see I find only dirty tulips Or orchid ribbons Orange With big black words A royal sky: It lets one see And what a good thing a white shirt is! Nice Nice to see red by night to know pink well to understand yellow birds to realize black and white Terribly nice Mirrors are Nice (Terribly) To see by To see by me You I love I love Indians pen points Hungarian plaster sweetmeats five A nice number to love by If feather pillows didn't leak Out onto green floors Where normal shoes belong With blue socks With white stripes And Boston newspapers All about news And things I like I like fried chicken smashed 'taters thickin' gravy not biscuits an' chawklit pie wif mushmeller toppin' And I simply love horoscope! (Crunch) The sky is aflame! Red (A jet of anti-matter gas is exploding harmfully against the upper atmosphere) But tomorrow is Tuesday And I shall see the four seasons on one branch of pink trees displaying Ivory lilies insisting Upon white privacy (Or they threaten not to root at all) I, personally, vote for blue And to hell with Easter I prefer red and green mother Christmas black birds of passion sunsets that consume pink nuns and salty peanuts and Renoir who bores me But most of all I like shoe polish And the big sun rises over Delhi. . . .

I like to see it lap the Miles - And lick the Valleys up - And stop to feed itself at Tanks - And then - prodigious step Around a Pile of Mountains - And supercilious peer In Shanties - by the sides of Roads - And then a Quarry pare To fit its sides And crawl between Complaining all the while In horrid - hooting stanza - Then chase itself down Hill - And neigh like Boanerges - Then - prompter than a Star Stop - docile and omnipotent At it's own stable door -