Poemunity — your poem community

Directions Let some one hold the book, and ask one of the questions. The answers being all numbered, the girl or boy who is questioned chooses a number, and the person who holds the book reads the answer to which that number belongs, aloud. For instance: Question. What is your character? Answer. I choose No. 3 Questioner reads aloud: No. 3. Gentle tempered, sweet and kind, To no angry word inclined. What Will Be Your Destiny? FORTY-THREE ANSWERS 1. Just as you think you’ve gained great wealth, Something will make you lose your health. 2. Your hair will be white in a single night, From having an unexpected fright. 3.You will enjoy a sweet old age, So kind and pure, so long and sage. 4.You will fall down at eighty-four, And break a dozen ribs or more. 5. You will finish your days with God for your friend: Who would not be glad of so blissful an end? 6. You will be ever absorbed in books, And never give a thought to looks. 7.In peace and plenty you will lie, And in the arms of friendship die. 8. You will have cause for many tears, To cloud the beauty of your years. 9. Ah, is it so? when you are old, you will be very poor, I’m told. 10. In the night-time you will weep, And your painful vigils keep. 11.Nothing dreadful, nothing sad, Comes to you; for this I’m glad. 12. You always will have an excellent table, And full of horses will keep your stable. 13. The Sibyl says you’ll die in Rome, Which for a time will be your home. 14. Your plenty and peace Will never cease. 15. You will suddenly die in the crowded street, If the age of a hundred years you meet. 16.You will ride in your carriage-and-four, And be very kind to the suffering poor. 17. Never murmur, never care, You will be a millionare. 18.Sick at heart, and sick at head, You will wish that you were dead. 19. As the might of God you see, Religious you will ever be. 20. To California you will go To get the shining gold, you know. 21. Brightest pleasures you will see, And happiness your portion be. 22.Love will gild your joyous life, Free from pain and care and strife. 23. Don’t despond, and do not care, You will be a nabob’s heir. 24. To California you will be sent, But will return as poor as you went. 25.A missionary you will be, Far o’er the billows of the sea. 26. It is your destiny to rule, And you will keep a village school. 27.Ball and parties you will find Alone are suited to your mind. 28. Through the vista of the years I see you mourning and in tears. 29.A country life at length you’ll lead, Rejoicing in your ambling steed. 30. Fair in the wild and prairied west, Your tired frame at length you’ll rest. 31.A public singer’s place you’ll take, And a sensation you will make. 32. You’ll only love your native home, From which you will not care to roam. 33.A great pianist, you will gain Bright laurels from the admiring train. 34.A kitchen garden you will keep, And sell fresh vegetables cheap. 35. To higher virtues you will rise, Until you’re ready for the skies. 36. To the city’s crowded street You’ll direct your willing feet. 37.In digging in a worn-out field You’ll see a box,

Over the honored bones of Boston (resting, as we say) old leaves’ bones underfoot are restless; and boys and schoolgirls going home splash through them, reciting alphabet lately received. They run the known, intone the unsure patterns, repeat the magic, nearly Grecian syllables; and little winds are winding up their strident lmno, R, S, T. She was no snowy witch, but young and turning, a mother-dear more dear now incipiently frosty; witches most live when she died, October; primly colonial, Mother Goose’s grave; who did not rhyme or gather the pages vainly: what mantic abc’s she told she dared make charming only to spell her children’s moral lives. The children passing sing the future, certainly, but knowing nothing (as the lore requires) and recommending nothing as they are merely oracles spelling their letters’ lives, not telling theirs. They have their own games not of the elder nation; certain cobwebs accommodate the young, and special weeds; and these who chant now know no gentle Sibylla but many seemingly answering leaves. What there will be of signs, of sounds so flighty and so friable, the letters as the leaves, boys and girls as letters, and of late Boston’s honorable cinders, laid quietly and always restless: maybe a daisy, my dears, or a white carnation, or only an unanswerable tenderness.

Picture the upturned millipede, dead, and see the streets of Altadena: palm tree rows against the concrete, stiff to the horizon. There have been no birds big enough, we are comforted, to pluck the chitins from before our yards and vanish into the sun like dog-fighting MiGs. War bears litters of similes. Altadena, smog hugs the foothills like mustard gas where our rich peer through their blinds into ravines, Santa Anas sway the mustard plants, yuccas bob, some man—his cigarette, a full gas-can, an itch. We’ve known the orange alert, fires reaching for helicopters like cartoon cats clawing at panicked birds. Yesterday, fire engines and HAZMAT trucks jostled at Alameda and El Molino like beetles eating a four-legged spider. That morning, radios warned of orange. Neighborhood kids watched officers climb in and out an open manhole, consulting the entrails of the great dead millipede. We watched the ground; the sun hotter than all year. The mountains hid Santa Anas, the smog went orange with dusk, the growing shadows of lingering birds.

Darkened not completely dark let us walk in the darkened field trees in the field outlined against that which is less dark under the trees are bushes with orange berries dark green leaves not poetry’s mixing of yellow light blue sky darker than that darkness of the leaves a modulation of the accumulated darkness orange of the berries another modulation spreading out toward us it is like the reverberation of a bell rung three times like the call of a voice the call of a voice that is not there. We will not look up how they got their name in a book of names we will not trace the name’s root conjecture its first murmuring the root of the berries their leaves is succoured by darkness darkness like a large block of stone hauled on a wooden sled like stone formed and reformed by a dark sea rolling in turmoil.

The streets of San Francisco are littered with bodies of bank robbers & mobsters prostitutes & pimps Bullet holes in foreheads Clothes covered with that fake orange blood they used in the seventies Just pretend dead No sirens (those will be dubbed in later) Camera pans an immaculate city Mid-morning weekday only a few tourists about (everyone else is at work) Light traffic on bridges Newly erected Pyramid dominates the scene Sky Maya blue perpetually wiped clean by low-flying clouds Come nightfall even the junkies in the Haight & strippers in North Beach will have a kind of innocence Just extras on the set As close to Utopia as you could get in 1973 & now only attainable in a Dirty Harry movie

The clear orange bottle was empty. It had been empty a day. It suddenly seemed so costly and uncalled for anyway. Two years had passed. They had passed more or less the way years should. Maybe he’d changed. Or maybe the doctors had misunderstood. It was June. The enormous elm tree was green again, and the scent of   hyacinth reached through the window and followed wherever he went. And the sky was the firmament! His life was never better. Each small white spotless cloud that passed was like a long-wished-for letter. But then he remembered his promise. It came like a mild cramp, and it sat there all day in the back of   his mind like a gas bill awaiting a stamp. He saw three faces that Sunday, mother, sister, niece, all with the same kind, brown, scared eyes that brought him no peace. The sidewalk sparrows were peeping. His whole house smelled like a flower. But he remembered his promise. The drugstore said one hour. Back home again, he was tired. The label said caution, said warning. He left the clear orange bottle on the lip of   the sink till morning. The insert said warning, said caution. The insert said constipation. It said insomnia, vivid dreams, and hypersalivation, and increased urination, and a spinning sensation. It also said night sweats, and agranulocytosis, and strongly suggested a full glass of   water be drunk with all doses. The insert said all this, the insert he never read. But he didn’t have to read it to know what it said. The bedroom was calm with moonlight and the breeze through the screen was cooling. Through the elm leaves the shivery light on the wall came like quicksilver pooling. But   just before five, something woke him — a close whisper — or maybe a far cry — and the bedroom was queasy with light the color of   lapis lazuli. He lay there listening hard till six, till seven, till eight    ... At nine he remembered the bottle. But nine, nine was too late. “Don’t take me!” cried the Clozapine. “Don’t take me!” cried the pill. By ten he was feeling restless, with a whole day left to kill. “Don’t take me!” cried the Clozapine. “Yes, don’t!” cried the medication. And the bright yellow morning seemed suddenly edged with a shady fascination. Why should he go to his workplace? Who was his supervisor? He had a sickening feeling that he was becoming wiser. His room filled up with interest. He had begun to think! He thought of the knives in the kitchen and the bottles under the sink. He thought as he switched the stove on or stood at his shaving mirror, or reached for his belt in the wardrobe. Thinking made things clearer. Even the bedroom window, the open window full of sun, continually hinted at something that should be done. But he was crooked and useless. He was a piece of shit. And so, as everyone knew he would, he failed to go through with it. “Don’t take me!” cried the Clozapine. “Don’t take me!” cried the drug. Just then, the telephone rang. Just then, he ripped out the plug. “Don’t take me!” cried the Clozapine. “Don’t take me!” cried the poison. And the door of   the house creaked open, and the cellar door lilted and murmured, and the garden gate groaned and yawned and let a little noise in. There, just outside his window, lurked life like a cheap cartoon. He shut the sash, locked it, and checked it, and checked it all afternoon. He lowered the blinds on that world, no longer an agent of   it, but then, with one finger, pulled down a slat and set his eye above it. At first it was grimly amusing, at last it was grimly grim, to watch all those hunched, hurried people, who made like they weren’t watching him. The neighbors were thinking out loud. They knew he was no fucking good. So he slumped on a stool in the corner like a bad little snaggletooth should. They called him a dirty pig, and laughed, and said he shouldn’t exist. Sometimes they made a tsking sound, or oinked at him, or hissed. They hissed that he was to blame for everything, and everyone knew it, and that if   he weren’t such a pussy he’d know what to do, and he’d do it. He lay on his side on the rug unable to move at all except for his big right toe, which dug and dug at the wall, which dug at the wall, which dug. “Don’t take me!” cried the Clozapine. “Don’t take me!” cried the cure. And they begged him to sew his mouth shut just to make goddamn sure. “Don’t take me!” cried the Clozapine. “Don’t take me!” cried the poison. And the gate to the wicked city gaped, and the gates of the temple screamed and screamed, and the gates of the garden groaned and yawned, and the gates of the ziggurat gabbled in grief, and sucked all life’s sorrows and joys in. His thoughts were advancing like wolves. He lay still for an hour and a half, then reared up onto his rickety legs like a newborn calf. Then     rug hall stairs porch stoop street and the blacktop humanly warm on the soles of   his naked feet. His walk was stiffened by fear, but it took him where he was going, into the terrible world of children and daffodils growing, and friendly people helloing, and the Super out doing the mowing, and the two old sisters out in wool sweaters with their wrinkled cheeks pinkly glowing, and the pretty lady who would give birth by Christmas barely showing but showing, and the policeman helping to keep the lazy afternoon traffic flowing, and time itself slowing, and none of them, none of them knowing that an odious axis was forming, that it would not be controlled, that schemes were afoot, that a foot was a thing for a jackboot to hold, that the street was a movie set, that it was not warm and sunny, that a creditor was calling who could not be paid with money, that the world was like a sliver of   iron held in the hand, and his mind the lodestone above it that made it stir or stand, that the air was slowly changing to a color they didn’t know, that he was a famous doctor on a television show. But what could he do? Even friends would take these facts for lies, and he couldn’t tell who the enemies were, though he felt the hot breath of their eyes, so he kept his big mouth shut and tried to play along, and plowed down the street toward the coffeeshop as if nothing at all were wrong. He tried not to notice the numbers painted on garbage cans. He tried and he tried not to look at the black unmarked sedans. The coffeeshop smelled like coffee, but it felt different inside. A new waitress went by. She winked. He kept his eyes open wide. Everything screamed “Run away!” But he wasn’t really there! So he stood by the gumball machines and smiled and tried not to stare. “The power is yours!” said a T-shirt. “Look for lightning!” reported the weather. And the stranger who offered the Sports section said, “It’s all there, Chief. Just put it together.” Then wild-eyed out of the kitchen stormed a small, hard old man, shouting in a strange language and waving a frying pan, shoving him out the door and into the chattering street, shoving him, waving, shouting, and pointing at his feet, at his bare, gray feet. Then came the dark blue uniform, the badge glinting in the sun, and the belt jangling like a storm trooper’s as the boots broke into a run. “Take that!” cried the patrolman. “Take that!” cried Johnny Law. Street, knee, neck — cuffs, curb, jaw. And the flatfoot pushed him, bleeding, into the sleek cruiser, and he heard all the gawkers thinking that he was a pig and a loser, and his chin throbbed, and the handcuffs ate at his wrist, and he would be hacked into pieces soon and would not be missed. “Don’t take me!” cried the victim. “Don’t take me!” cried the threat. But the angry back of a head was the only response he could get. Lying on his side like a child at the end of a big day, he gazed up through the window and watched it all slip away. The little pen where they put him had a toilet but no stall. Here and there a message scarred the gloss-white wall. Time passed. But you couldn’t tell it on the trapped fly ticking the ceiling, or the flickering light overhead, or the sore on his chin congealing, or on the sound of the other pigs in the other pens, squealing. When the men came, he was ready. He talked. They took it all down. And soon they were back in the cruiser, on their way across town. Then, into the mirrored building, over the waxed lobby floors, down miles of echoing hallways, through the heavy brown doors, into a humming beige room with a bed and a river view, and an outside lock, and jailers who wore white instead of blue. “Take that,” smiled the doctor. “Take that,” smiled the nurse. He pressed his lips still tighter, and things got worse and worse. “Please!” threatened the nurse. “Please!” growled the doctor. He raised his fists to cover his mouth, but the nurse was too close, and he clocked her. Now into the room came the big men, who did not clamor or shout, but pinned him with ease to the bed, strapped him down, and went out. And the doctor was there again, trailing a spider web of cologne, and the doctor told what would happen next, in an expert monotone, and the nurse took a needle and emptied it into his arm, and they both left, content that he could do no more harm, and he fought, and the straps cut his shoulders, and he gnawed at his lip, and it bled, and he held his bladder for three long hours, then shivered and pissed the bed. When the doctor came a fifth time, it was long past dawn. They’d found him a room, said the doctor, gently restraining a yawn. The next two days were sleep, and words through a fine white mist. Then he woke inside a machine whose motion he couldn’t resist: “Tick-tock,” said the clock. “Creak, creak,” said the bed. “Drip, drip,” said the sink. “Throb, throb,” went his head. “Ho-hum,” sighed the night nurse. “Heh-heh,” said the sicko. “Why? Why?” screamed the patient. “Howl, howl!” cried the psycho. “Wolf! Wolf!” cried the boy. “Gobble, gobble!” sang the freaks. “Sa, sa!” cried the king. “Tick-tock,” went the weeks. “Bang, bang,” said the tv. “Teeter-totter,” went his brain. “Click, click,” went the checkers. “Pitter-patter,” went the rain. “Bring-bring,” said the pay phone. “Snip, snip,” went Fate. “Jangle-jingle,” went the keys. “Clank-clink,” went the gate. “Bye-bye,” said the nurse. “Bye-bye,” said the guard. “Bar-bar,” said the doctor. “Baa-baa,” said the lamb. “My, my,” said his mother. “Boohoo!” cried Bo Peep. “Bow-wow,” said the wolf. “Baa-baa,” said the sheep. In the car away from that place, the family had a pleasant chat. He seemed fine again, and humble, though his speech was oddly flat. He said that the halfway house where he would be residing was located on a quiet block and had green vinyl siding. There he met new people and watched the television, which did not watch him back or speak to him with derision, and he performed certain tasks, meant to teach certain skills, and he got small checks from the government to pay his enormous bills. Each night he fell asleep, and each morning he got up, and he washed down his medicine and squashed the paper cup, feeling, in all, much better, more in touch with common sense, and also slightly bored by the lack of consequence. And the church bells rang and a dinner bell tinkled and the school bell tolled and called all the good girls and boys in. And all of them brought all their toys in. And all of them swallowed their poison.

The orange-peelers of Mérida, in the wrought- iron midday, come with mechanical skewers and live oranges, to straddle the paths on caissons of bicycle wheels and work in the dark of the plaza, like jewelers’ cloths. The orange is ceremonious. Its sleep is Egyptian. Its golden umbilicus waits in pyramidal light, swath over swath, outwitting the Caesars. It cannot be ravaged by knives, but clasps its mortality in, like the skein of an asp. The bandstand glitters like bone, in laurel and spittle. Behind their triangular catafalques, the orange-peelers move through the thirst of the world with Rameses’ bounty caulked into the hive of the peel while ratchets and wheels spin a blazing cosmology on their little machines. Under skewers and handles, the orange’s skin is pierced, the orange, in chain-mail and papyrus, unwinds the graveclothes of Pharaoh in a helix of ribbon, unflawed, from the navel’s knot to the rind and the pulp underneath, like a butterfly’s chrysalis. And sleeper by sleeper, the living turn with their thirst to each other, the orange’s pith is broken in a blind effervescence that perfumes the palate and burns to the tooth’s bite. And the dead reawaken.

I’ll choose for myself next time who I’ll reach out and take as mine, in the way I might stand at a fruit stall having decided to ignore the apples the mangoes and the kiwis but hold my hands above a pile of oranges as if to warm my skin before a fire. Not only have I chosen oranges, but I’ll also choose which orange — I’ll test a few for firmness scrape some rind off with my fingernail so that a citrus scent will linger there all day. I won’t be happy with the first one I pick but will try different ones until I know you. How will I know you? You’ll feel warm between my palms and I’ll cup you like a handful of holy water. A vision will come to me of your exotic land: the sun you swelled under the tree you grew from. A drift of white blossoms from the orange tree will settle in my hair and I’ll know. This is how I will choose you: by feeling you smelling you, by slipping you into my coat. Maybe then I’ll climb the hill, look down on the town we live in with sunlight on my face and a miniature sun burning a hole in my pocket. Thirsty, I’ll suck the juice from it. From you. When I walk away I’ll leave behind a trail of lamp-bright rind.

A horse is shivering flies off its ribs, grazing Through the stench of a sodden leachfield. On the broken stairs of a trailer A laughing fat girl in a T-shirt is pumping Milk from her swollen breasts, cats Lapping at the trails. There's a sheen of rhubarb On her dead fingernail. It's a humid morning. Tonight, with the moon washing some stars away, She'll go searching for an old bicycle in the shed; She'll find his father's treasures: Jars full of bent nails, a lacquered bass, And the scythe with spiders Nesting in the emptiness of the blade And in the bow of its pine shaft. Milling junk in the dark, She'll forget the bicycle, her getaway, And rescue A color photograph of an old matinee idol. Leaving the shed, she'll startle An owl out on the marsh. By November It will be nailed through the breast to the barn. In a year the owl will go on a shelf in the shed Where in thirty years there will be a music box Containing a lock of hair, her rosaries, Her birth certificate, And an impossibly sheer, salmon-pink scarf. What I want to know of my government is Doesn't poverty just fucking break your heart?

A creamy tear descended here when Cupid squeezed the teat of Venus. Dripping down the Milky Way it puddled beneath old oak, new pine. Love’s selfish thirst did pluck a cosmic note, set every entombed entangled bit of me in roots both new and old to singing. I was become in earth and by harmony a million bits of tongue and ear, sound funnels upwhorled in song conducting cones. Fresh music from old flesh corrected my (most melancholy) record of this last go round the planet. Now I was first things: elementals, vegetable and mineral in form, dust to kick it on the breeze, loam to feed old oak, new pine, Eros-greedy energy on hunt for nourishment, cream to suck, breast to squeeze.