Anthony Madrid

Stepping crow. Moon at half mast. Dawn horse, horse, blanket and mule. The fool knows something you don’t. Stepping crow. Both feet in the boat. Books stacked up, and nowhere to store ’em. Decorum is spontaneous order. Stepping crow. Gone north of the Border. Magic in motion and magic at rest. Only divest, no need to announce it. Stepping crow. Locked in from the outset. Feet in the boat and we’re already rowing. I don’t like thinking, I like already knowing. Stepping crow. Take hammer to coin. Anvil to anvil, and figure to ground. Hateful, the sound of recriminations. Stepping crow. Uncountable Haitians. Hospital, barracks; Harvard and prison. Give the rhythm what it wants. And the people. Stepping crow. Horace primeval. Wrist-deep in sheep’s guts, breaking the set. But memory is the better poet. Stepping crow. Clogged is the conduit. Explain and explain, you try and get on with it: You just give ’em something to fight with. Stepping crow. Christian Enlightenment. A bubble, sluggish, in a carpenter’s level. But bad’s not the Devil.  Bad can be good. Stepping crow. They misunderstood. Nobody rightly prefers a surprise. The wise like looking forward. Stepping crow. Don’t try to ignore it: The strain in the closet and school letting out. I doubt it’ll ever be casual. Stepping crow. I just happen to know. I don’t happen to trust the self I’m serving. This pleasure’s a lie, unless it’s permanent. Stepping crow. And thirteenth tercet. The place where the Wall tunnels into the sea. It’s not not me you’re aiming at. Stepping crow. Gotta add and subtract. I see now we have no choice but to leave The brutal honesty to the brutes. Stepping crow. I know it’s no use. The Sport of Kings and the Book of Love. They’re not above irregular perquisites. Stepping crow. Can never be sure of it. Blood orange, orange; persimmon and onion; And women are young men too … Stepping crow. Oh, say it ain’t so. A fist full of leaves and another of arrows: I’m setting the trap where the passage narrows.

Once upon a time, There was a beautiful shark. She combed her long, blonde hair, And it made the halibut bark. It made the chicken oink, And the whale to run for Congress. A man should never obstruct The course of material progress. Yet a lamb cannot but weep When the kiddies come home from college. For they have forgotten to keep The agreement they made to acknowledge The woodpecker’s right to peck, And the maple’s to be pecked at. Let’s have a little respect For Rubber Duck with a doctorate. That provocative way of standing! All elbows and bangles And hips just like a coat hanger And ankles at right angles! I like The shape of the pouring soy milk, The sound of the splitting log. But Egret finds it regrettable that her Sister is dating a dog. Don’t listen to ’em, kid! And don’t listen to their questions. This corporation’s been ruined by Well-meaning false confessions. And the world is fast a-melting, Though I would have it slow. And I don’t think it’s helping: The way these animals go Straight from hatchery to quackery, And, if only to amuse, I’ll throw my hat in with Mike Thataway in Black patent leather shoes. Maybe I’m just like my mother. She’s never satisfied. Maybe I’m just like my father: Always a bridesmaid, never a bride. Maybe I’m just like my cat: Licking invisible balls. Perhaps you’ll reflect upon that, Next time you’re screening your calls. And all the solvent and the solute, They were walking hand in hand. This the Indian poets were the First to understand. The ancient Indian poets Had their heads screwed on straight. Fixed on the body’s affluence And the effluents that escape. And the influence they enjoyed? Close-focus hocus-pocus. And every gezunte moyd In a juvenile honey locust Will prefer their Hindi distichs To the Indiana Hoosiers. We’re gonna be there from Spit Christmas All the way to Mucus New Year’s. But for now I draw the curtain And settle into Lent. Last person to go to Harvard Without knowing what that meant.

HE has no gift for friendship, for he is void of all curiosity. Or rather, He’s only interested in matters touching the Lord Hamlet himself. He was born in a lab whose walls were lined with giant, steamy jars Of the milk of the various mammals, from the milk of camels to the milk of men. Pig milk, monkey milk, rat milk. Dog and cat milk, and the milk of whales. The milk of the duck-billed platypus and that | of the platitudinous buck. The thick red milk of the vampire bat. And the black milk of the black bear. —A backlit wall of bottles, ranged from commonplace to rare!— There was stallion milk and rooster, anaconda milk and shark; There was tarantula milk, Venus flytrap, and that | of the barking aardvark lark. And he would have been perfectly normal, would have grown up socially adroit, But he stripped the sheet off a drinking straw, took a blade, and shaped a point;— And he syringed into his body a few drops from every jar, Fell in the floor and spoke languages he had never heard before. He spoke Titmouse. He spoke Miaow. He spoke Moo and Gnu and Ha. He spoke three kinds of Chickenhawk and the thirty dialects of Baa. And from that day to this, MARDUD’s been lost in the zoo: A cautionary tale for whoever knows how to read the clues.

Has it coming, the pest. Gets irritated, the stuck up. Gets approval, the dimpled. Gets cold, the talk. The sidewalk separates from the curb. Frogs peek out there. There are passages there, channels. Gardens, orderly, get respect; no one hurts them. Only animals, insects, beings without comprehension. A house on a corner lot, good to look up at from the corner, compels. Branches of live oak reach across the way. There must be acorns, black, green, green with earth yellow. The wind cools the walker. There is nothing to stop the wind up. It finds every walker in its path, cools him, cools her. Director must direct and make decisions. Buildings on the edges of developments look out over edges. The other world never nearer. Between towns, roads are lonely. Lonely, too, who cannot bear being lied to. The angry become less intelligent. Do and undo, the day is long enough. Liars do not think they are lying; that’s how they do it. The nut gives way to the teeth; the teeth crush it. Smashed frog in the parking lot turns colors, becomes flat, extends its fingers, does not come back to life when it rains, yet disappears. Wonderfully, beliefs antedate evidence. Wonderfully, people seldom believe a thing unless they already wanted it. Many cry when signaled, not pursuant to cognition. What is offered as proof is suspect. Summer makes strategic. Strategy is a pleasure. Whatever people say, to obey, of itself, does not hurt. Stray feline must lie in shade, under tree, distrust her well-wisher first. Grackle must shelter under car, direct its thirsty attention to the water there. Cut of meat must lose its color on the fire, exchange it, be seasoned. To be accused, rightly or wrongly, feels the same. Old man must speak against his own best interests, for he cannot swallow his complaints, not all of them. Glassware touching glassware gets chipped, broken into triangles, in the move. Vital sheet of paper must sometimes be lost. Papers are many. The thing learned at length, the memorized rigmarole, must fade from memory, in time. The kind word given unexpectedly is good. The hearer must be relieved. The thought that nothing can ever go right again must depart for a time. The light must change. The waiting person wait longer. The walker must step out of the summer heat wet to the hair roots, the shirt wet. The sky is the same but seems grander where no buildings are. Colored clouds are remarked; white ones less. One’s looks, one’s skin color matter less if money has its feet in it. The hated one, the cheated many, are the poor. Lean grackle must stalk a branch, mouth open like scissors. Striped raptors, wings in fixed positions, must kite, must circle. Beautiful Soul wants a world in which he or she has no place. Godspeed, sweet intent. Love will creep where it cannot go. Stick-figure reptiles, black, must cross the sidewalk by the pool, dartingly. They weigh one paperclip. Beauty enslaves on contact. Better have it than hear of it. Sweet and cunningly seldom meet. In dragging a bamboo tree, one must snatch it by the eyebrows. The rusty sword and the empty purse plead performance of covenants. Even Graceful must sometimes, in putting on her coat, sweep everything off the table and into the floor. If many strike on an anvil, they must in meter. He, only, pursues honesty honestly, who has destroyed any possibility of good repute. Whether you boil snow or pound it, you can only have water out of it. Cities must have boulevards, vast channels not possible or dangerous to cross. There must be holes in the decomposing concrete, paint invisible at sunrise and sunset, guardrails, median strips, shrines. The student must wait to do the assignment, wait beyond the advisable point, stay up against a deadline. Must turn in a paper never read, not by the writer, not by the friend. Must muster, thunder, one or two times in a life, a sound to frighten the unfrightenable. Must pour, from the sky, rarely, chips and balls and coins and smooth clusters of partly white, partly clear ice. Some believe, helplessly. Others, less. Some count, tabulate, helplessly. They check calendars. They can’t shake it. Winter travels, hides, shelters. It pursues the lightly dressed into buildings during summer. It lies in wait in restaurants, miscalculates. The pill and its coating, obnoxious to the child, are welcome enough to the grown swallower. First deserve and then desire. Blow first and sip afterwards. The wise let it go a great deal. Sorrow is wondrously clinging; clouds glide. The friend who comes apologizing and promising must be received. He is sorry and not sorry and sorry. Courage comes up. Sacrifice, oftener. The disintegrating parking lot is witness to the exchange. Drugs are traded, caresses. The dog in its heavy coat must lie, half dead, on the porch. Eyes like a bear, tongue like a lion, lethargy. One must consciously retire. Comes off a train none but was on it. The heirloom ring, wrong-gendered, trash, gets rescued. When the spirit of praising is upon him, a man will judge linen by candlelight. Burr oaks yield fewer fruit, but bigger, shag-capped. One must consciously retire. A helve must fit its ax head. Most laugh before understanding. Fame is best.

The ampalaya, no matter how bitter, Is sweet to those who like it. The hardest person to awaken Is a lover feigning sleep. The basketball held underwater Wants violently to come up. Easily split asunder is that Which never was united. The water is cold at first, for it Takes time to heat the pipe. The kids run away from home, only to Sit through endless classes. You take the battery out of a watch, You turn it into a liar. You strip the sheet off a drinking straw And stab it into the scalp. The basketball held underwater Wants violently to come up. The one who reads the sutra is not The one who knows what is said. My life is as unchanging As the surface of the moon. And I give you the same reason: I have no atmosphere. El hacha ya está puesta A la raíz de los árboles, Y todo árbol que no produzca buen fruto Is hewn down and cast into the fire. You take a rose by the throat. How much blood comes out your hand Is how recklessly you took hold, Is how shamelessly. Who wants to be great or holy Has no lust for peace. For peace is a thread only spools on a thing That’s good for nothing else.

L ike a cloud above a ravine is the hell you already know: That sublime work of the imagination by Dante Alighieri. But the rain that falls from that cloud is not made up of human souls. It rains, and the rain funnels down into the something-other-than-human sewer. Look how a Chinese writing brush ends in a cone of rigid horsehair. Loaded with ink, the cone will flex, will leave a wet trench in the rice paper. It will leave an attractive trench, and the daylight sucked into the ink Will give it a reflective “shine dot” — like looking into an animal’s eye. Which of you has looked into the looking-up eyes of a hair-trigger fox? A backyard fox or a campsite coyote: Daoist, unintelligible, brave  . . . Which of you knows how not to part the pebble on the beach from its colors? The songbird from its social network? the fruit from its multifaceted peel? Oh, that sugary piece of phosphorus in its form-fitted velvet casing! That unappreciated Egyptian sarcophagus meant | to be opened from the inside. And each seed-bearing fruit has an atmosphere. Each has its several moons, Has tides (subject to gravity), changing weather, lunar eclipses . . . But should an arrow suddenly snatch the waiting pomegranate out of your hand, If it snatches the cap off your head, recall: its circuit has only begun . . . For the arrow of the luckless archer returns to the middle of his or her back. There, between athletic shoulder blades, is a diploma tube full of arrows. Is a diploma tube full of arrows, and so | it is time for graduation. The genie’s gone back to his bottle; the devils to their fallow hells. And the C hinese writing brush , and the cloud above the ravine (wherein The charged particles have sorted themselves along their up-and-down axis), And the looking-up eyes of the fox, and the sarcophagus, and the campsite Are irreducible to a system, are each of them floating over a void. Truly: “All hells and hierarchies are works of the imagination.” And equally: “It is not the part of the Daoist sage to conjure meaningless hells.”

It is with words as it is with people: Actual beauty is rare. We call things beautiful, not as such, but because of what they mean. Because we commonly attribute beauty to whatever does us a favor, We are reduced to puzzled despair whenever actual beauty says no. Indeed, our calling a thing beautiful almost means it is not. For how can we know it is beautiful until it betrays us? A sage once said “The trouble with these great philosophers Is their only way of doing honor to an idea is to say the idea is true.” It is the same with words as it is with people: Actual beauty is rare. Humiliated, we are no longer willing to call the beautiful beautiful . . . Madrid is reading his poetry to a roomful of unearthed cultural relics. He compares the white hair on their heads | to the flag that signals surrender.

The unit of wine is the cup. Of Love , the unit is the kiss.That’s here. In Hell, the units are the gallon and the fuck. In Paradise, the drop and the glance. Ants are my hero. They debate and obey. They can sit at a table for Eight hours, drawing. They spot out the under-theorized . . . Have some. For they are as abundant here as the flecks of mica in the Iowa night sky. What are twenty-sided dishes of fancy almonds? What use jewels? He is Kālidāsa. You are nothing. Or rather, you’re a tray of stainless steel cones. Meanwhile, one opens Kumārasambhava to rainbow-colored crystals pointing every which way. Nice try. You’re a tank-builder but you refuse to build tanks. And so now you are to be watched over By three heckling birds, evilly named, discomfiting to children. ¡Fijate! you’re to be watched by three fowl, commonplace in Florida. Even these Three hearty objectionables: the blue tit, the woodpecker, and the swampcunt. I’m one to talk. I’m so twisted up, my only hope is Salena. My physical therapist, With the eyes of Athena, and the hands of a destroying eagle.

I TOO have been to Candyland, but I found myself missing the death cult. I missed the spectacle of the wounded bones being opened and instrumented. Bill Varner, when he was still just a boy, wrote a stunning line of Arabic verse. He wrote: “The crescent moon is a scimitar; the sun, a severed head.” ¡Gran cantar! and this, when he still had to keep his books in a locker! And he’d never even held hands with a girl—God! Penn State in the 1980s! In those days, we all sat at the feet of a pig poet, deaf in one ear. One of these Dreadful “white-haired lovers”—oh, but he knew how to touch fire to fuse! That little stick of fire apt to launch a poetic career! But what is it now? Merely a billowing cloud of humidity floating out of a tree. Every turtle, snake, and bird is “born again”—oh, isn’t that so? The first time, Out the fêted cloaca—and the next, through the top of the shell. The “I” is Greek, the “it” Italian, and Dickinson is our Ghalib. But that Ridiculous piece of dirt you’re kissing on can never be anything but. Shut your eyes to what a worm he is, concentrate on his caress—but know Every half-truth is bound to call up its suppressed synoptic double. Close your eyes and moan softly, your head full of packed cotton—but know Every hidden camera’s cockpit must one day be delivered of its black box.