Poemunity — your poem community

Aggressive panhandling, public urination, verbal threats, public nudity and violation of the open container law followed us down the days, for why are we here much longer, or even this long? I ask you to be civil and not interrupt night’s business. It was fun getting used to you, who couldn’t have been more nicer. This was as modern as it had ever been. They were influenced by him: some dirty magazine on the air tonight. (Amid the chaos, reports of survivors.) Didn’t the flowers’ restoration cat fugue keep spilling, and like that? It wouldn’t be the first time, either. The pro-taffeta get up and laugh, investigate or communicate. The night you were going to stay up late, others will kiss, and he talks about you, and I don’t know what. Come in, anyway, and don’t lack for tales of the Assertion. We’re talking civilian unrest. Yes, well, maybe you should take one. (Do not bite or chew.)

I have met people who, asked after their names, shyly—as if they had no title to an appellation all to themselves— replied “Fräulein Christian” and added: “like the first name,” they wanted to make it easy for the other, not a difficult name like “Popiol” or “Babendererde”— “like the first name”—please, don’t burden your memory overmuch! I have met people who grew up in a single room with their parents and four brothers and sisters, and studied at night with their fingers in their ears at the kitchen table, and grew up to be beautiful and self-possessed as duchesses— and innerly gentle and hard-working as Nausicaa, clear-browed as angels. I have often asked myself and never found an answer whence kindness and gentleness come, I don’t know it to this day, and now must go myself.

hate the people of this village and would nail our hats to our heads for refusing in their presence to remove them or staple our hands to our foreheads for refusing to salute them if we did not hurt them first: mail them packages of rats, mix their flour at night with broken glass. We do this, they do that. They peel the larynx from one of our brothers’ throats. We devein one of their sisters. The quicksand pits they built were good. Our amputation teams were better. We trained some birds to steal their wheat. They sent to us exploding ambassadors of peace. They do this, we do that. We canceled our sheep imports. They no longer bought our blankets. We mocked their greatest poet and when that had no effect we parodied the way they dance which did cause pain, so they, in turn, said our God was leprous, hairless. We do this, they do that. Ten thousand (10,000) years, ten thousand (10,000) brutal, beautiful years.

We have had our lives. The reservoir visible In the window beside our elbows, and the willow Branches trailing at our stop Are the nature we leave Behind us gladly, since it has no place For all we have recently learned: that sex Is temporary, help Ours to hand down now, and materials science Not the only kind. We thank Calm, careful Minerva, goddess Of adults, who for so many years took us To school: her voice the timbre of fretless bass, Her eyes the color of pencil lead, she taught Us how to behave in order to have our rewards In twenty years. We have them, and if we wish Too often, this fall, to have led another life We do not mean that we would give up ours: Though we stand in a row and sway Before an obstructed view, we are able to find Initials outlined in the crosshatched trees, And pebbles—calculi—around our ponds And cherish them; we like to watch the roads Along which the perennial pollen sifts down As finely as ever, making a soft powder Of brass amid the troughs in softball fields. Our skills are finally in demand. If you mock us, Pan, In whom we also believe, do it As gently as you can.

Pat Dugan……..my grandfather……..throat cancer……..1947. Ed Berrigan……..my dad……..heart attack……..1958. Dickie Budlong……..my best friend Brucie’s big brother, when we were five to eight……..killed in Korea, 1953. Red O’Sullivan……..hockey star & cross-country runner who sat at my lunch table in High School……car crash…...1954. Jimmy “Wah” Tiernan……..my friend, in High School, Football & Hockey All-State……car crash….1959. Cisco Houston……..died of cancer……..1961. Freddy Herko, dancer….jumped out of a Greenwich Village window in 1963. Anne Kepler….my girl….killed by smoke-poisoning while playing the flute at the Yonkers Children’s Hospital during a fire set by a 16 year old arsonist….1965. Frank……Frank O’Hara……hit by a car on Fire Island, 1966. Woody Guthrie……dead of Huntington’s Chorea in 1968. Neal……Neal Cassady……died of exposure, sleeping all night in the rain by the RR tracks of Mexico….1969. Franny Winston……just a girl….totalled her car on the Detroit-Ann Arbor Freeway, returning from the dentist….Sept. 1969. Jack……Jack Kerouac……died of drink & angry sickness….in 1969. My friends whose deaths have slowed my heart stay with me now.

Lincoln? He was a mystery in smoke and flags Saying yes to the smoke, yes to the flags, Yes to the paradoxes of democracy, Yes to the hopes of government Of the people by the people for the people, No to debauchery of the public mind, No to personal malice nursed and fed, Yes to the Constitution when a help, No to the Constitution when a hindrance Yes to man as a struggler amid illusions, Each man fated to answer for himself: Which of the faiths and illusions of mankind Must I choose for my own sustaining light To bring me beyond the present wilderness? Lincoln? Was he a poet? And did he write verses? “I have not willingly planted a thorn in any man’s bosom.” I shall do nothing through malice: what I deal with is too vast for malice.” Death was in the air. So was birth.

(through smoke) My mother became an ornithologist when the grackle tumbled through barbecue smoke and fell at her feet. Soon she learned why singers cage birds; it can take weeks to memorize a melody — the first days lost as they mope and warble a friendless note, the same tone every animal memorizes hours into breathing. It’s a note a cologne would emit if the bottle was struck while something mystical was aligned with something even more mystical but farther away. My father was an astronomer for forty minutes in a row the first time a bus took us so far from streetlights he could point out constellations that may or may not have been Draco, Orion, Aquila, or Crux. When they faded I resented the sun’s excess, a combination of fires I couldn’t smell. The first chemist was a perfumer whose combinations, brushed against pulse points, were unlocked by quickening blood. From stolen perfumes I concocted my personal toxin. It was no more deadly than as much water to any creature the size of a roach. I grew suspicious of my plate and lighter Bunsen burner, the tiny vials accumulating in my closet. I was a chemist for months before I learned the difference between poisoned and drowned. When my bed caught fire it smelled like a garden.

—for Travis and Vaughan and all the St. Catherine’s Indian School kids dust, leaves twirling whirlpool up off road under wheels undercarriage automotive    winds turning,    lifting giving force to such delicate    particles ends attached in former position to branch soft paper thin petal- like reds and golds much as the mane swings blows back    from higher plane winds    Percheron    gold mane    that red Percheron on the right the north side you’ve seen her in the early morning when it’s snowing she raises her dignity laughing at motorists distressed by ice and Pueblo patrol cars we catch in peripheral focus    signal    turn the halogens off and on on and off    until they code the signal distress signal approaching tribal police traffic trap commuting    the 35 mph racket through Nambe Pojoaque turn    50 Tesuque Bingo/Pull-Tabs long before the lodge turned stone    near Camel Rock before the Congested Area in approach to the “City of the Oldest Catholic Church in North America” we convey these danger signs    to local yokels    perhaps even tourists    if we’re in the mood consideration strange nation neither of us belong though    we do stay in close    proximity to these other    Native peoples very different than where we come from    still the same only sometimes though they know the patrol man he’s their cousin all of theirs they know this whirl these leaves    rising now before our heated grill Chevy 4x    ’91 they know the Percheron she steals the scenery easily with her laughter and turn pitching hoof and tail in mockery    indispensable humor she takes this morning under gray the shade of nickel to cloud the stress enabling me to speak to you of beauty

My sister and I went out to them with sugar cubes and bridled their heads when they bent down to eat from our palms. We led them over to the long white fence on which we climbed to the topmost rail, then threw our legs across their backs, clutching the reins to steady ourselves against their girth, steering them out into the hills until we were lost, or thought we were, only to find ourselves at Judith Creek or Holcomb Rock where we’d turn back in the early dark, gripping their manes, crouching low, galloping hard on the high soft road across the fields to the open barn.

Today I managed something that I’ve never done before. I turned in this week’s spelling quiz and got a perfect score. Although my score was perfect, it appears I’m not too bright. I got a perfect zero— not a single answer right.