Poemunity — your poem community

Tell the truth I told me                                When I couldn’t speak. Sorrow’s a barbaric art, crude as a Viking ship                Or a child Who rode a spotted pony to the lake away from summer In the 1930s                                       Toward the iron lung of polio. According to the census I am unmarried                And unchurched. The woman in the field dressed only in the sun. Too far gone to halt the Arctic Cap’s catastrophe, big beautiful Blubbery white bears each clinging to his one last hunk of  ice. I am obliged, now, to refrain from dying, for as long as it is possible. For whom left am I first? We have come to terms with our Self Like a marmoset getting out of  her Great Ape suit.

Listen, you who transformed your anguish into healthy awareness, put your voice where your memory is. You who swallowed the afternoon dust, defend everything you understand with words. You, if no one else, will condemn with your tongue the erosion each disappointment brings. You, who saw the images of disgust growing, will understand how time devours the destitute; you, who gave yourself your own commandments, know better than anyone why you turned your back on your town's toughest limits. Don't hush, don't throw away the most persistent truth, as our hard-headed brethren sometimes do. Remember well what your life was like: cloudiness, and slick mud after a drizzle; flimsy windows the wind kept rattling in winter, and that unheated slab dwelling where coldness crawled up in your clothes. Tell how you were able to come to this point, to unbar History's doors to see your early years, your people, the others. Name the way rebellion's calm spirit has served you, and how you came to unlearn the lessons of that teacher, your land's omnipotent defiler.

Orange gleams athwart a crimson soul Lambent flames; purple passion lurks In your dusk eyes. Red mouth; flower soft, Your soul leaps up—and flashes Star-like, white, flame-hot. Curving arms, encircling a world of love, You! Stirring the depths of passionate desire!

Sulky what-ifs. Sulky what-ifs. They bumblefuck the metastuff. Diffidence their stock in trade. Cozy hell — cozy, hell. They make a mockery of irony. They hold Special Olympics in wit. What was Shakespeare’s blood pressure? Vertical river, cloister of thunder, Bleeds the ship’s fell sail. God comes in for a landing. He lowers God’s landing gear. He raises holy spoilers, lowers the sacred ailerons. He imagines Reality. Tried everything in life? Sulky what-ifs are dumbstruck. Drumsticks. Their spiritual actuality is empirical. What if uppity angels? What if there really were rules? What if those angels melted in the rain? If reality is an illusion, wouldn’t it stand to reason That illusions are real? A lot of dumb questions. Impingement of external objects or conditions upon the body Palpitate apostasy. The oppressed must free the oppressors to free themselves, see? The soul is euphemism for the body. What does willing mean? Do you sense my sense? Am I fashionable? Objective as an angel in the rain? Screaming from a safe place? Nine smocked doctors, three unmasked. One has left his face sewn to the pillow. One holds a lace fan like a hand of cards she studies, Considering the risks. She is the loveliest doctor. Her doctor-father scolds her right there in front of all the other doctors. They are aghast. They kneel and don carnival hats with feathers. I don’t think they are really doctors. The trees are real. They are green kachinas. Dark rooms of wind are installed in the house of barbarism. The norm is always incorrect. If what?

You know where you did despise (Tother day) my little Eyes, Little Legs, and little Thighs, And some things, of little Size, You know where. You, tis true, have fine black eyes, Taper legs, and tempting Thighs, Yet what more than all we prize Is a Thing of little Size, You know where.

for Eleanor Roosevelt Who showed the world the world itself Was awkward, shy and plain. A high-born leader in a long, Low decade full of pain. Poor farmers, blacks, homeless, the least Advantaged hoped to see, Magnificently unarrayed, Pure human dignity. A lady first, the great first lady Looked fear in the face, And said,There is no room for fear When courage take its place.

You left me – Sire – two Legacies – A Legacy of Love A Heavenly Father would suffice Had He the offer of – You left me Boundaries of Pain – Capacious as the Sea – Between Eternity and Time – Your Consciousness – and me –

Dirt on my chin and I wonder: am I already in the ground? Like a toy turned real, I cannot shed the sense that I have died. The German word for Heaven’s the same as the German word for sky. On hearing a cruel prince was in danger, I prayed for him to thrive, not for his own sake, but for the concubines, sure to end up buried along. To my real face, a man once crowed i ruined you , and though he did, the joke’s on him: he ruined me only for this world, and this world is not long for itself. The Earth, that ever-loving but distrustful kin, keeps leaving us just a little pocket money when it dies, never the land —

You love a woman and you wonder where she goes all night in some tricked- out taxicab, with her high heels and her corset and her big, fat mouth. You love how she only wears her glasses with you, how thick and cow-eyed she swears it’s only ever you she wants to see. You love her, you want her very ugly. If she is lovely big, you want her scrawny. If she is perfect lithe, you want her ballooned, a cosmonaut. How not to love her, her bouillabaisse, her orangina. When you took her to the doctor the doctor said, “Wow, look at that!” and you were proud, you asshole, you love and that’s how you are in love. Any expert, observing human bodies, can see how she’s exceptional, how she ruins us all. But you really love this woman, how come no one can see this? Everyone must become suddenly very clumsy at recognizing beauty if you are to keep her. You don’t want to lose anything, at all, ever. You want her sex depilated, you want everyone else not blind, but perhaps paralyzed, from the eyes down. You wonder where she goes all night. If she leaves you, you will know everything about love. If she’s leaving you now, you already know it.

Three years, Huang Gongwang worked on his famous handscroll, Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains.