22 Anger poems

Angered, may I be near a glass of water; May my first impulse be to think of Silence, Its deities (who are they? do, in fact, they Exist? etc.). May I recall what Aristotle says of The subject: to give vent to rage is not to Release it but to be increasingly prone To its incursions. May I imagine being in the Inferno, Hearing it asked: “Virgilio mio, who’s That sulking with Achilles there?” and hearing Virgil say: “Dante, That fellow, at the slightest provocation, Slammed phone receivers down, and waved his arms like A madman. What Attila did to Europe, What Genghis Khan did To Asia, that poor dope did to his marriage.” May I, that is, put learning to good purpose, Mindful that melancholy is a sin, though Stylish at present. Better than rage is the post-dinner quiet, The sink’s warm turbulence, the streaming platters, The suds rehearsing down the drain in spirals In the last rinsing. For what is, after all, the good life save that Conducted thoughtfully, and what is passion If not the holiest of powers, sustaining Only if mastered.

You’re gonna strike the match— You’re gonna strike it— Flame the bank up into pods of fire, be a masterhand— — And someone said, Gasoline. Someone said, We have to change the images inside their heads, said Gasoline? And motor oil, he bought at a mini-mart. — And the cat said Don’t even though it was dead and the squirrel said Don’t and the little dog missing an eye and a leg even though they were dead, said Don’t Don’t but you did it anyway. And someone said, That boy is sick— And someone said, It was kind of pretty when you didn’t know what it was from the road. — Hours now, by the trashed banks, counting the colored glass— Brown for beer. Green for the fizzy water, clear for anything and tail lights smashed, cars mucked like big cats trapped in tar, who ate the flesh right off their legs, if they were lighter they could hurry home, they could float on home— killed cat dead at the end of your stick, who could do that, shot in the head— Like in the shows where the cop cleans up his town, then the ambulance comes for the drowned. — You felt bad, so you did it. You thought it was pretty, so you did it again. You felt charged and buoyant as you picked your way home to the blue-lit fatherless den— So you did it again. The BB’ed mutt, leg smashed, home-bum toasting you with his beer as you dragged it to the sludgy bank, the match, the gas, the pile of tires someone had dumped,were you dumped? you had asked after another one left, and she had slapped you, and slapped— You were an ambulance, you could see she had drowned— Like in the shows where the warrior collects his dead and brings them to the shore, to burn them in their body-boats, release the spiritual — smoke— And the parents said, Didn’t he have a house key around his neck, didn’t he have a pager, an electrical tether to a list of chores and a stocked refrigerator— And the teachers said Yes, but what were the images inside his head, they see it and they make it be— And you put it in a tire, your viking boat, you set it on fire and it kept afloat as it sailed down the river— to the heaven of not being here.

I was angry with my friend; I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow. And I waterd it in fears, Night & morning with my tears: And I sunned it with smiles, And with soft deceitful wiles. And it grew both day and night. Till it bore an apple bright. And my foe beheld it shine, And he knew that it was mine. And into my garden stole, When the night had veild the pole; In the morning glad I see; My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

Rebuked, she turned and ran uphill to the barn. Anger, the inner arsonist, held a match to her brain. She observed her life: against her will it survived the unwavering flame. The barn was empty of animals. Only a swallow tilted near the beams, and bats hung from the rafters the roof sagged between. Her breath became steady where, years past, the farmer cooled the big tin amphoræ of milk. The stone trough was still filled with water: she watched it and received its calm. So it is when we retreat in anger: we think we burn alone and there is no balm. Then water enters, though it makes no sound.

I am wearing dark glasses inside the house To match my dark mood. I have left all the sugar out of the pie. My rage is a kind of domestic rage. I learned it from my mother Who learned it from her mother before her And so on. Surely the Greeks had a word for this. Now surely the Germans do. The more words a person knows To describe her private sufferings The more distantly she can perceive them. I repeat the names of all the cities I’ve known And watch an ant drag its crooked shadow home. What does it mean to love the life we’ve been given? To act well the part that’s been cast for us? Wind. Light. Fire. Time. A train whistles through the far hills. One day I plan to be riding it.

Katherine, Katherine, Katherine, Katherine. Black hair, small cold eyes, whom you loved. Cock-tease Katherine, chewer of souls. The door blew open and she blew in, a ghoul. Black air, small cold wind, taking everything. Fish-eater Katherine, whose nails dig blood. I’m going to call her pinch-cunt, pickle-lip, piss-dribble, shit-smear, goat’s-meat breath. I want to throw stones at her mother’s corpse, send her children to name-change foster homes. May the coat she is wearing burst into flames and boil the flesh blistering off her bones. May she be refused in both heaven and hell and wander the earth forever without rest— a hungry ghost clinging to the rocks and trees.

Now, when he and I meet, after all these years, I say to the bitch inside me, don’t start growling. He isn’t a trespasser anymore, Just an old acquaintance tipping his hat. My voice says, “Nice to see you,” As the bitch starts to bark hysterically. He isn’t an enemy now, Where are your manners, I say, as I say, “How are the children? They must be growing up.” At a kind word from him, a look like the old days, The bitch changes her tone; she begins to whimper. She wants to snuggle up to him, to cringe. Down, girl! Keep your distance Or I’ll give you a taste of the choke-chain. “Fine, I’m just fine,” I tell him. She slobbers and grovels. After all, I am her mistress. She is basically loyal. It’s just that she remembers how she came running Each evening, when she heard his step; How she lay at his feet and looked up adoringly Though he was absorbed in his paper; Or, bored with her devotion, ordered her to the kitchen Until he was ready to play. But the small careless kindnesses When he’d had a good day, or a couple of drinks, Come back to her now, seem more important Than the casual cruelties, the ultimate dismissal. “It’s nice to know you are doing so well,” I say. He couldn’t have taken you with him; You were too demonstrative, too clumsy, Not like the well-groomed pets of his new friends. “Give my regards to your wife,” I say. You gag As I drag you off by the scruff, Saying, “Goodbye! Goodbye! Nice to have seen you again.”

I When in a farmhouse kitchen that smelled of old rinds and wet cigarette butts I hoisted the shotgun to my shoulder and aimed but did not fire it at the man who had just taken my virginity like a snack, with my collusion, but still — When I sat in a conference room in an inquisition at the “newspaper of record,” across from the one slurping his pipe, the one arching her eyebrow, and I felt the heat like a wet brand in my chest, repaid insult for insult and left their fancy job like a squashed bug on the floor — When I was twelve, too old, the last time my father spanked me, pants down, because I had “distressed” my mother and my vision went red-black and I did not forgive — When, during my travels along the Gulf Coast, the intruder returned in the night and I did not call the cops again but stood with a butcher knife facing the door, yelling, “Come in!” although this time it was just the wind flapping and banging the screen door — When across a skating-rink-sized glistening table I told the committee chair and her brooch I was a fan of Marx and lost the fellowship — When I threw a pot of hot coffee and it just missed a man’s head, and the black-brown spatter stains were still there four years later long after he’d left me when I finally moved out of that East Village hole — II I would have had to be thinking in order to have thought — loaded, not loaded? — and I was not thinking, I was only dripping hot and oh the pleasure, I can still feel its prickling, crackle over the furnace of my rage, to see his face go pale, his eyes widen, his “put it down, put it down” — and I put it down and allowed my life as well as his to go on. III I miss my anger. Decades go by when all I can muster is absent-minded invective, you know, directed at the news; or a brief fantasy of shoving someone in front of a bus. Yesterday I slammed my fist on my desk and then apologized, to the desk. Consider the tapestry of the seven deadly sins, at Saint-Denis: Anger, wild-haired and half-dressed, picked out in blue and silver thread bunched against the crimson, rough against the fingertips, she rides a black boar dappled with blood and waves her double-headed axe — Yes, I remember her. I always lie when I always say I didn’t know the gun was loaded.

—kept losing self control but how could one lose the self after reading so much literary theory? The shorter "i" stood under the cork trees, the taller "I" remained rather passive; the brendas were angry at the greed, angry that the trees would die, had lost interest in the posturing of the privileged, the gaps between can't & won't... Stood outside the gate of permissible sound & the wind came soughing through the doubt debris (soughing comes from swāgh— to resound... echo actually comes from this also—) we thought of old Hegel across the sea—the Weltgeist—& clouds went by like the bones of a Kleenex... it's too late for countries but it's not too late for trees... & the wind kept soughing with its sound sash, wind with its sound sash,    increasing bold wind with its sound sash, increasing bold—

And where my organ of veneration should be— wormwood and gall. Grudge sliver. Wailbone, iron, bitters. I mean to say the miniature waterfalls have all dried up in this miniature place where day is duty cubed, time is time on task and every mind optimized for compliance. Time to delint my black denim traveling stuff. The flourescent major highlighter has dimmed to minor. I'm so dying I wrote when I meant to write so tired. And when I sleep I dream only that I'm sleeping. Please see my black stuff's dusted off. Night has no dilution anxieties, but only the infinites are happy: Math. Time. Everything happy goes to many decimal places while flesh passes through gradations of glory. I visualized it, the nurse said of the bedsore. Everything exists at the courtesy of everything else. Please see that my grave is kept clean. Beloveds, finite things in which the infinite endangered itself, excarnate to memory and the divine substance has limited liability. You're kind, I tell the infinite. Too kind.