Poemunity — your poem community

What I want most is what I deeply fear: loss of self; yet here I stand, a “memsahib,” all decked out in wonder, and still a stranger amid the harvest, old gaffar at my side. Here’s a pandit preaching in the flower stall: he turns funeral wreaths into wheels of rapture. I must shrug off my notion of knowing anything of substance about the world, about the spirit. Sparrows dart between the columns like music. Huge pupae, bananas split their golden skins; flies moisten their hands in bands of dew. Lepers limp by on crutches, in slow motion. Where is there order in the world? None, none, I think—no order, only spirals of power. The pyramids of onion, guava, melon—all defy my reason: they shine like galaxy-driven planets. A balancing scale becomes a barge of plenty, a cornucopia endlessly filling up and emptying. The wages of sin are more sin: virtue’s wages, more virtue—and all such earnings, weightless. I’ve forgotten my errand; I float now through myself like a howl through a phantom mouth— the world’s an illusory marketplace where I must bargain hardest for what I hope I’m worth.

For Russians the stars are always incontinent, ejaculatory smears across the squalor of a boundlessly unhygienic sky. You’d scoff, Marina, at how I go at them with a tiny plastic shovel and my litter box technique, scooping up the sidereal splooge while trying to wipe down the universe. You’d say I tug at God’s Old Testament beard, praying the prayers of a coward. You’d confide to your diary my eyelashes don’t bat sootily enough.Such a lummox could never rumple the sheets of Paris

She stood breast high amid the corn, Clasped by the golden light of morn, Like the sweetheart of the sun, Who many a glowing kiss had won. On her cheek an autumn flush, Deeply ripened;—such a blush In the midst of brown was born, Like red poppies grown with corn. Round her eyes her tresses fell, Which were blackest none could tell, But long lashes veiled a light, That had else been all too bright. And her hat, with shady brim, Made her tressy forehead dim;— Thus she stood amid the stooks, Praising God with sweetest looks:— Sure, I said, heaven did not mean, Where I reap thou shouldst but glean, Lay thy sheaf adown and come, Share my harvest and my home.

They brought me ambrotypes Of the old pioneers to enlarge. And sometimes one sat for me i Some one who was in being When giant hands from the womb of the world Tore the republic. What was it in their eyes? i For I could never fathom That mystical pathos of drooped eyelids, And the serene sorrow of their eyes. It was like a pool of water, Amid oak trees at the edge of a forest, Where the leaves fall, As you hear the crow of a cock From a far-off farm house, seen near the hills Where the third generation lives, and the strong men And the strong women are gone and forgotten. And these grand-children and great grand-children Of the pioneers! Truly did my camera record their faces, too, With so much of the old strength gone, And the old faith gone, And the old mastery of life gone, And the old courage gone, Which labors and loves and suffers and sings Under the sun!

Most have been plowed up or paved over but you can still find them, tracks cut deep into the earth by prairie schooners crossing that great green ocean, pitching waves of pasture out where there's nothing else to do but live. Concealing their detritus— a piece of sun-bleached buffalo skull, a button from a cavalry soldier's coat—the ruts wind their way beneath leafy suburban streets, lie buried under a Phillips 66 and the corner of a Pizza Hut where a couple sits slumped in their booth. Yet here and there, like a fish head breaking the surface of the water, they emerge in a school teacher's back yard or a farmer's field, evidence of wagons packed with hardtack and hard money, thousands of draft animals tended by traders with blistered feet, their journey both bleak and romantic. That's the kind of proof I like, a scar I can put my hand to, history that will dust my fingers with a little bit of suffering, a little bit of bone.

We come here These little pillars of salt Placed into the hands Of physicians With debt sweats A gross product Of the sex apparatus There are expired teens There are the old That die in the summer The situation When a nation Loses its beloved celebrity It tries to out-mourn one another Extort them of their talent Versions of these chosen ones Hair flowing free and unrestricted Meanwhile The curbs are laced With water soluble prescriptions Running down into gutters Phosphorescent in the streetlight Medications Available in avocado Coppertone Aqua and white I suffer from the occasional Emotionally draining dream about turtles However The simple idea of omnipresent neutrality Is difficult Too much blood Spills in my dreams It’s a vascular debacle Mantras and Ak-47s Are boring In the park Getting some vitamin D The sunlight on my blue jeans I’m a deadened sapphire Reading Didion A psychic residue of fortune is on me Didion writes, “I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be” I can’t handle fate The aphrodisiac of lying to myself The battery flavor of anxiety Shooting the messenger Having a god that doesn’t ‘get me’

I will to the King, And offer him consolation in his trouble, For that man there has set his teeth to die, And being one that hates obedience, Discipline, and orderliness of life, I cannot mourn him. W.B. YEATS I. THE PROLOGUE Patting good-bye, doubtless they told the lad He’d always show the Hun a brave man’s face; Father would sooner him dead than in disgrace,— Was proud to see him going, aye, and glad. Perhaps his mother whimpered how she’d fret Until he got a nice safe wound to nurse. Sisters would wish girls too could shoot, charge, curse … Brothers—would send his favourite cigarette. Each week, month after month, they wrote the same, Thinking him sheltered in some Y.M. Hut, Because he said so, writing on his butt Where once an hour a bullet missed its aim And misses teased the hunger of his brain. His eyes grew old with wincing, and his hand Reckless with ague. Courage leaked, as sand From the best sand-bags after years of rain. But never leave, wound, fever, trench-foot, shock, Untrapped the wretch. And death seemed still withheld For torture of lying machinally shelled, At the pleasure of this world’s Powers who’d run amok. He’d seen men shoot their hands, on night patrol. Their people never knew. Yet they were vile. ‘Death sooner than dishonour, that’s the style!’ So Father said. II. THE ACTION One dawn, our wire patrol Carried him. This time, Death had not missed. We could do nothing but wipe his bleeding cough. Could it be accident? - Rifles go off… Not sniped? No. (Later they found the English ball.) III. THE POEM It was the reasoned crisis of his soul Against more days of inescapable thrall, Against infrangibly wired and blind trench wall Curtained with fire, roofed in with creeping fire, Slow grazing fire, that would not burn him whole But kept him for death’s promises and scoff, And life’s half-promising, and both their riling. IV. THE EPILOGUE With him they buried the muzzle his teeth had kissed, And truthfully wrote the Mother, ‘Tim died smiling’.

On Friday, at twilight of a summer day While the smells of food and prayer rose from every house And the sound of the Sabbath angels’ wings was in the air, While still a child I started to lie to my father: “I went to another synagogue.” I don’t know if he believed me or not But the taste of the lie was good and sweet on my tongue And in all the houses that night Hymns rose up along with lies To celebrate the Sabbath. And in all the houses that night Sabbath angels died like flies in a lamp, And lovers put mouth to mouth, Blew each other up until they floated upward, Or burst. And since then the lie has been good and sweet on my tongue And since then I always go to another synagogue. And my father returned the lie when he died: “I’ve gone to another life.”

They have no sense of what they’re looking at, Unless the object moves. (Or so he’s read; who knows if that’s the case?) A painted bird’s an empty analogue To the oblivious cat. And it is not his still familiar face So much as that distinctive gait which proves The master to his dog, Who frolics for him like an acrobat. His eyes need movement too, but make their own. His most fixated gaze— On one small figure in a Bruegel scene, Or on the camber of his lover’s lip He worships unbeknown, As though no time or change will supervene— Aflicker with saccade, adjusts and strays Minutely to equip His mind to take in what is being shown. And maybe consciousness employs saccade As well, and flickers back And forth, now in the world, now, briefly, out— The way the gum tree’s canopy overhead Flickers with light and shade, So every leaf is momently in doubt— Its faith saved by such intermittent lack From being surfeited, Its constant sense being constantly unmade.

i make signs everywhere, with sticks, stones and leaves for those in the clouds from below the line to arrive i don’t have a language to speak to you with, my tongues are all fish i know that a one is a circle, and that nothing is round, except every corner i saw by the hearts lined up on the spine i know that the winter will finally be here again, and that the summer will die and be born with its ice i unravel the token you gave me for freedom, i bury the flags in your eyes under each Arabic sign. . . 1,2,3, on and on. . . and before i varnish again all the battle grounds freed          to travel the face of 2 yews i remake every button with children put down by 5 tons of your crosses i am flaking with crust at the dangling ushers        they fall for light signs i make my car shake with my fear, the headlights are showing me songs by the road for the now disappeared, shots crack by the ones that remain i can tell by your lies and your pride that your heart is as small as your pupils opening up for your strokes and getting smaller for light i am the siphon that gravity fills up the blanks in your face with i sing a throat full of gritos, for the safety releases that shots spill for you i salivate for your spiraling warmth, in the morning when i collapse, over and over i have all our love letters taped to the ceiling, my sleep is the end of our flies their warbles keep rolling i double the maps on your roads i put a slab of meat on your cheeks i thaw every word that pours ends through your blood i turn in the hair that your father hung with, erasers ring mountains for more i pick up a chair for the lightning, satellites put out a bead i bleed in the real that you see with a shine, pieces of chicken pile up to count nukes i tear off the rain, and cut its numerical age into passing truck tombs i force your faces to mine, and bother your ebony whirls to circle the holes in the sky i fire electrons to make your promise discard its word, and fall through i tie miseries to drains, and pay off my debt with suns i am more cruel than a counter i pick a safe with your words, until my distance is short i slap at your monthly returns, and tie your animals to 5 dirt seas i ride through your roads in the glass, and steal tiny cracks i blame the small stone       hid       in my colorless mouth, and pin rags to your lips i volunteer for your wars, and lose them all i borrow your daydreams, and purse up their gardens, into our hands i pulse with you standing by rocks i say all you said by the iron door i throw kites in the room where they found me i sell off inseparable fingers i throw windows to walls i whispers hard rings into telephones, and scratch at the bed i fade into water i remember the hands i open holes through barbed houses i blow darts through your tunnels and doors i pile roofs through our wounds i move through your runs and your screens i see the news in the sand i digit up noontimes i peel off my skins with old sounds i walk through the valley of lead i unplug your pages of light i frost over programs and ride            3 roads on 5 deer