Poemunity — your poem community

I The teacher said inner truth and the chalk said like a fresco inside the earth that no one has ever seen and one day decides to be discovered and begins to breathe— do you know what that means? II The child broke the chalk. The mother said be strong. The child said when I die I want to be a dwarf. III A detective has just drawn a circle with a piece of chalk, a private circle from which the victim will eventually look up, not at random, not at will, but when it calls to her, the chalk, the crushed bones of sea creatures who ringed the earth when it was under water. IV A man sits in the bath house in a deep tub of fizzling yellow water that surrounds every hair on his body and makes it stand upright. When the attendant comes, she will clean the tub by moving her hand slowly around the ring, like a snail. V An atoll is a ring of coral protecting a tureen of plankton. It is easy and Japanese to be sad knowing something is going to pass. He put the ring on her chalky finger. VI Long after chalk had passed out of use, carpenters still felt for it in their pockets and looked aimlessly at the sky. VII The cathedral was roofless. It began to snow inside. A half broken pillar in the nave grew taller.

In the stillest hour of the night, as I lay half asleep, my seven selves sat together and thus conversed in whisper: First Self:  Here, in this madman, I have dwelt all these years, with naught to do but renew his pain by day and recreate his sorrow by night.  I can bear my fate no longer, and now I rebel. Second Self:  Yours is a better lot than mine, brother, for it is given to me to be this madman’s joyous self.  I laugh his laughter and sing his happy hours, and with thrice winged feet I dance his brighter thoughts.  It is I that would rebel against my weary existence. Third Self:  And what of me, the love-ridden self, the flaming brand of wild passion and fantastic desires?  It is I the love-sick self who would rebel against this madman. Fourth Self:  I, amongst you all, am the most miserable, for naught was given me but odious hatred and destructive loathing.  It is I, the tempest-like self, the one born in the black caves of Hell, who would protest against serving this madman. Fifth Self:  Nay, it is I, the thinking self, the fanciful self, the self of hunger and thirst, the one doomed to wander without rest in search of unknown things and things not yet created; it is I, not you, who would rebel. Sixth Self:  And I, the working self, the pitiful labourer, who, with patient hands, and longing eyes, fashion the days into images and give the formless elements new and eternal forms—it is I, the solitary one, who would rebel against this restless madman. Seventh Self:  How strange that you all would rebel against this man, because each and every one of you has a preordained fate to fulfill.  Ah! could I but be like one of you, a self with a determined lot!  But I have none, I am the do-nothing self, the one who sits in the dumb, empty nowhere and nowhen, while you are busy re-creating life.  Is it you or I, neighbours, who should rebel? When the seventh self thus spake the other six selves looked with pity upon him but said nothing more; and as the night grew deeper one after the other went to sleep enfolded with a new and happy submission. But the seventh self remained watching and gazing at nothingness, which is behind all things.

conjured in a closet; seven minutes in a delusive boon deep breaths shallow, ankles stretched, entwined ribs padded with throbs, bells and trance it never ended and then it ended the spell distant, retrospect, precious the doorways, hall- ways, the fleeting pitter patters gaze up a long flight of stairs something’s still there to behold is it sorcery or charm? invoke a comely name for it recall your palms flattening my thrum, my thrum, my good judgment groped, ravaged, delirious

Seventeen suns rising in seventeen bedroom windows. Thirty-four eyes blooming open with the light of one more morning. Seventeen reflections in the bathroom mirror. Seventeen backpacks or briefcases stuffed with textbooks or lesson plans. Seventeen good mornings at kitchen breakfasts and seventeen goodbyes at front doors. Seventeen drives through palm-lined streets and miles of crammed highways to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School at 5901 Pine Island Road. The first bell ringing-in one last school day on February fourteenth, 2018. Seventeen echoes of footsteps down hallways for five class periods: algebra, poetry, biology, art, history. Seventeen hands writing on whiteboards or taking notes at their desks until the first gunshot at 2:21pm. One AR-15 rifle in the hands of a nineteen year old mind turning hate for himself into hate for others, into one-hundred fifty bullets fired in six minutes through building number twelve. Seventeen dead carried down hallways they walked, past cases of trophies they won, flyers for clubs they belonged to, lockers they won’t open again. Seventeen Valentine’s Day dates broken and cards unopened. Seventeen bodies to identify, dozens of photo albums to page through and remember their lives. Seventeen caskets and burial garments to choose for them. Seventeen funerals to attend in twelve days. Seventeen graves dug and headstones placed—all marked with the same date of death. Seventeen names: Alyssa. Helena. Scott. Martin—seventeen absentees forever—Nicholas. Aaron. Jamie. Luke—seventeen closets to clear out—Christopher. Cara. Gina. Joaquin—seventeen empty beds—Alaina. Meadow. Alex. Carmen. Peter—seventeen reasons to rebel with the hope these will be the last seventeen to be taken by one of three-hundred-ninety-three-million guns in America.

Oh Raphael. Guardian angel. In love and crime all things move in sevens. seven compartments in the heart. the seven elaborate temptations. seven devils cast from Mary Magdalene whore of Christ. the seven marvelous voyages of Sinbad. sin/bad. And the number seven branded forever on the forehead of Cain. The first inspired man. The father of desire and murder. But his was not the first ecstasy. Consider his mother. Eve's was the crime of curiosity. As the saying goes: it killed the pussy. One bad apple spoiled the whole shot. But be sure it was no apple. An apple looks like an ass. It's fags' fruit. It must have been a tomato. Or better yet. A mango. She bit. Must we blame her. abuse her. poor sweet bitch. perhaps there's more to the story. think of Satan as some stud. maybe her knees were open. satan snakes between them. they open wider snakes up her thighs rubs against her for a while more than the tree of knowledge was about to be eaten...she shudders her first shudder pleasure pleasure garden was she sorry are we ever girls was she a good lay god only knows

1.   Baseball, I warrant, is not the whole occupation of the aging boy. Far from it: There are cats and roses; there is her water body. She fills the skin of her legs up, like water; under her blouse, water assembles, swelling lukewarm; her mouth is water, her cheekbones cool water; water flows in her rapid hair. I drink water 2.   from her body as she walks past me to open a screen door, as she bends to weed among herbs, or as she lies beside me at five in the morning in submarine light. Curt Davis threw a submarine ball, terrifying to right-handed batters. Another pleasure, thoroughly underrated, is micturition, which is even 3.   commoner than baseball. It begins by announcing itself more slowly and less urgently than sexual desire, but (confusingly) in the identical place. Ignorant men therefore on occasion confuse beer- drinking with love; but I have discussed adultery elsewhere. We allow this sweet release to commence itself, 4.   addressing a urinal perhaps, perhaps poised over a white toilet with feet spread wide and head tilted back: oh, what’delicious permission! what luxury of letting go! what luxe yellow curve of mildest ecstasy! Granted we may not compare it to poignant and crimson bliss, it is as voluptuous as rain all night long 5.   after baseball in August’s parch. The jade plant’s trunk, as thick as a man’s wrist, urges upward thrusting from packed dirt, with Chinese vigor spreading limbs out that bear heavy leaves—palpable, dark, juicy, green, profound: They suck, the way bleacher fans claim inhabitants of box seats do. The Fourth of July we exhaust stars from sparklers in the late 6.   twilight. We swoop ovals of white-gold flame, making quick signatures against an imploding dark. The five-year-old girl kisses the young dog goodbye and chases the quick erratic kitten. When she returns in a few years as a tall shy girl, she will come back to a dignified spreading cat and a dog ash-gray on the muzzle. Sparklers 7.   expel quickly this night of farewell: If they didn’t burn out, they wouldn’t be beautiful. Kurt, may I hazard an opinion on expansion? Last winter meetings, the major leagues (al- ready meager in ability, scanty in starting pitchers) voted to add two teams. Therefore minor league players will advance all too quickly, 8.   with boys in the bigs who wouldn’t have made double-A forty years ago. Directors of player personnel will search like poets scrambling in old notebooks for unused leftover lines, but when was the last time anyone cut back when he or she could expand? Kurt, I get the notion that you were another who never discarded 9.anything, a keeper from way back. You smoked cigarettes, in inflation- times rolled from chopped-up banknotes, billions inhaled and exhaled as cancerous smoke. When commerce woke, Men was awake. If you smoked a cigar, the cigar band discovered itself glued into collage. Ongoing life became the material of Kurtschwittersball.

Whose sense in so evil consort, their stepdame Nature lays, That ravishing delight in them most sweet tunes do not raise; Or if they do delight therein, yet are so cloyed with wit, As with sententious lips to set a title vain on it: O let them hear these sacred tunes, and learn in wonder’s schools, To be (in things past bounds of wit) fools, if they be not fools. Who have so leaden eyes, as not to see sweet beauty’s show, Or seeing, have so wooden wits, as not that worth to know; Or knowing, have so muddy minds, as not to be in love; Or loving, have so frothy thoughts, as eas’ly thence to move: Or let them see these heavenly beams, and in fair letters read A lesson fit, both sight and skill, love and firm love to breed. Hear then, but then with wonder hear; see but adoring see, No mortal gifts, no earthly fruits, now here descended be; See, do you see this face? a face? nay, image of the skies, Of which the two life-giving lights are figured in her eyes: Hear you this soul-invading voice, and count it but a voice? The very essence of their tunes, when Angels do rejoice.

No more hangings, no more gas chambers. No one allowed to remain in the center of the labyrinth, guarding their dna from the world, from the future. No more contemplation, no more waste. Everyone leaning toward paradise. Shields down and the word enemy will pass from memory. You are my kind.

Money burns the pocket, pocket hurts, Bootleggers in silken shirts, Ballooned, zooming Cadillacs, Whizzing, whizzing down the street-car tracks. Seventh Street is a bastard of Prohibition and the War. A crude-boned, soft-skinned wedge of nigger life breathing its loafer air, jazz songs and love, thrusting unconscious rhythms, black reddish blood into the white and whitewashed wood of Washington. Stale soggy wood of Washington. Wedges rust in soggy wood. . . Split it! In two! Again! Shred it! . . the sun. Wedges are brilliant in the sun; ribbons of wet wood dry and blow away. Black reddish blood. Pouring for crude-boned soft-skinned life, who set you flowing? Blood suckers of the War would spin in a frenzy of dizziness if they drank your blood. Prohibition would put a stop to it. Who set you flowing? White and whitewash disappear in blood. Who set you flowing? Flowing down the smooth asphalt of Seventh Street, in shanties, brick office buildings, theaters, drug stores, restaurants, and cabarets? Eddying on the corners? Swirling like a blood-red smoke up where the buzzards fly in heaven? God would not dare to suck black red blood. A Nigger God! He would duck his head in shame and call for the Judgement Day. Who set you flowing? Money burns the pocket, pocket hurts, Bootleggers in silken shirts, Ballooned, zooming Cadillacs, Whizzing, whizzing down the street-car tracks.

Since you were not Hume’s sunrise I watch the late-May moonrise alone and a nicotine trance assures me that summer is coming, and the arrival of painted toenails; that at last I truly understand aubades and James Stewart’s vacant hospital gaze after his wits have vanished with his love; that the transmigration of bruises from skin to spirit brings about such splendid depths of character you’ll drop a dime and never hear a sound. Clouds race across the moon’s pale face. I have character to spare, it is no comfort; I will write us down, making nothing happen, it won’t repair this ache of failed induction, these eye that live for sunlight, though the sky stays dark.