75 Darkness poems

Someone buried red slippers under the floorboards and the mice nested in them. The floors splintered no matter how many cans of deck paint we used. And one night at the Embajada I broke a tooth, and the very next night three teenagers were shot dead as they sat at a booth by the window eating mofongo. The neighbor woman used to sing a funny song from the forties about a “road” and “clear day,” a fast car and a woman with a pistol. You could see her back had been broken, and she dragged her left foot behind her down the stairs to the mail room. And Junior began smoking crack after his church on Columbus failed and started going by his birth name which was Jesus, until he fell in love with Irma of the hideous rabbit-fur-and- white-leather jacket, who stopped the cars by waving her watery hands, smoothing her moth-bitten hair from her moon-pale face, the violet lipstick she always wore, until she wound up drowned in the East River, and no one would say if it was suicide or murder. But Junior said there were eels inside her and began preaching again, doped on the corner. Mr. Rodriguez fired him, though he didn’t want to, and after Mr. Rodriguez often looked sweaty and pale as he labored to move stuff to the basement, which he had once done with Junior to help him. We painted our rooms cinnamon, Aegean blue, repainted them eggshell, gris-perle. We fought, and you tore all my letters and diaries and sprinkled them out the window where they landed on the roof of your car, plastered there by a violent summer storm. It took hours to scrape them off; I wept and Mr. Rodriguez gave me a small plastic-wrapped packet of Kleenex and a month later you wound up in St. Luke’s on lockdown and Junior caught pneumonia, died that November. He was thirty-eight, though we had believed him older. They buried him in Calvary Cemetery in Queens. Once I rode a cab out that way — we got lost, so many ticking minutes among the slender white spikes of the graves. The red slippers — they must have been for dancing, thin soled as if with mouse skin, a powder inside that might have been talc, rosin, or years of plaster dust, a piece of   broken ribbon, black at the edges as if   burned off or torn and smeared with shoe polish. Or the mice had gnawed it. And you said “The name of the film,” and I said I thought it was a story older by far, a girl who puts on the shoes and cannot get them off, who skips down a road, then another and across the world, until her feet fall off, and her hands and they make her wooden ones.

The driver has no knife. He has no knife, no, you think, and lower your head into his car. A ride in the rain? The dark clouds bellow. You saw him drinking at the local bar, you think, and lower your head into his car. Rain taps on the roof, falls on this familiar man: You saw him drinking at the local bar. He shrugs and offers up his empty hands. Rain taps on the roof, falls on this familiar man, and sugarcane stalks bend in the breeze. He shrugs and offers up his empty hands. As sewer pipes burst, flooding the street, and sugarcane stalks bend in the breeze, machetes swing into the green stems, low. As sewer pipes burst, flooding the street, bile is a blade at the back of your throat. Machetes swing into the green stems, low. A ride in the rain? The dark clouds bellow. Bile is blade at the back of your throat. The driver has no knife. He has no knife, no.

The sleds of the children Move down the right slope. To the left, hazed in the tumbling air, A thousand lights smudge Within the branches of the old forest, Like colored moons in a well of milk. The sleds of the children Make no sound on the hard-packed snow. Their bright cries are not heard On that strange hill. The youngest are wrapped In cloth of gold, and their scarfs Have been dipped in blood. All the others, from the son Of Tegos, who is the Bishop Of Black Church—near Tarn, On to the daughter of the least slut, Are garbed in love's shining dress; Naked little eels, they flash Across the amazed ice. And behind each sled There trots a man with his sex Held like a whip in his snaking hand. But no one sees the giant horse That climbs the steps which stretch forth Between the calling lights and that hill Straight up to the throne of God. He is taller than the highest tree And his flanks steam under the cold moon. The beat of his heart shakes the sky And his reaching muzzle snuffles At the most ancient star. * The innocent alone approach evil Without fear; in their appointed flame They acknowledge all living things. The only evil is doubt; the only good Is not death, but life. To be is to love. This I thought as I stood while the snow Fell in that bitter place, and the riders Rode their motionless sleds into a nowhere Of sleep. Ah, God, we can walk so easily, Bed with women, do every business That houses and roads are for, scratch Our shanks and lug candles through These caves; but, God, we can't believe, We can't believe in anything. Because nothing is pure enough. Because nothing will ever happen To make us good in our own sight. Because nothing is evil enough. * I squat on my heels, raise my head To the moon, and howl. I dig my nails into my sides, And laugh when the snow turns red. As I bend to drink, I laugh at everything that anyone loves. All your damn horses climbing to heaven

This is what you changed me to: a greypink vegetable with slug eyes, buttock incarnate, spreading like a slow turnip, a skin you stuff so you may feed in your turn, a stinking wart of flesh, a large tuber of blood which munches and bloats. Very well then. Meanwhile I have the sky, which is only half caged, I have my weed corners, I keep myself busy, singing my song of roots and noses, my song of dung. Madame, this song offends you, these grunts which you find oppressively sexual, mistaking simple greed for lust. I am yours. If you feed me garbage, I will sing a song of garbage. This is a hymn.

We go on and we tremble. God says we can screw now. God says to give up all your lovers, Time to die. When I was younger I drove a Lincoln. God said to trade it in. A tad lovely, then, and terrible, And sick of my own kind, I wanted to become a woman. I wanted to wash the feet of other women In public, I wanted his eyes On me, olives on the ground. I gave you my hand, Now I go around with my sleeve Tucked in my coat. I climb no trees, touch One breast at a time, Hold no hands myself. I go on and I tremble With your back in my blood, The clap my mother left me. With me no more, and now, And forever, and even always The dust of my feet In the desert I give you stranger my sign, My peace, But God you remember You fucked me out of my hand.

There is no warning rattle at the door nor heavy feet to stomp the foyer boards. Safe in the dark prison, I know that light slides over the fingered work of a toothless woman in Pakistan. Happy prints of an invisible time are illumined. My mouth agape rejects the solid air and lungs hold. The invader takes direction and seeps through the plaster walls. It is at my chamber, entering the keyhole, pushing through the padding of the door. I cannot scream. A bone of fear clogs my throat. It is upon me. It is sunrise, with Hope its arrogant rider. My mind, formerly quiescent in its snug encasement, is strained to look upon their rapturous visages, to let them enter even into me. I am forced outside myself to mount the light and ride joined with Hope. Through all the bright hours I cling to expectation, until darkness comes to reclaim me as its own. Hope fades, day is gone into its irredeemable place and I am thrown back into the familiar bonds of disconsolation. Gloom crawls around lapping lasciviously between my toes, at my ankles, and it sucks the strands of my hair. It forgives my heady fling with Hope. I am joined again into its greedy arms.

Raymond Roussel Two girls runaway from the Home.  They have a revolver in their possession.  The Sisters Of Our Lady have given up looking for them, returning in the night with soft candles. The sleek clouds have thrown their riders, and the bees are returning to the honey, the clover at the edge of the cliff black as eyelids, damp as blue mussels flexing at the moon. The girls look in the stolen mirror, then throw their shoes in the sea.  They take off one another’s dress, posing on the rocks that jut out over the faded water of the last days. The clover beat down from their splendid feet, the clover quiet like a vault.  Nearby in a ship named for early death, I drink wine like a city.  Anchored far off the continent of love. Strange, but bees do not die in their own honey, and how the dead are toted off, how the sweet moons are deposited in the catacombs. The clover at the edge of the sea like a chemise, place where animals have lain.  They help one another with their hair, their dresses blowing back to land.  They look over the cliff, spit on the beach.  Birds I have never seen going by.

The rain set early in to-night, The sullen wind was soon awake, It tore the elm-tops down for spite, And did its worst to vex the lake: I listened with heart fit to break. When glided in Porphyria; straight She shut the cold out and the storm, And kneeled and made the cheerless grate Blaze up, and all the cottage warm; Which done, she rose, and from her form Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl, And laid her soiled gloves by, untied Her hat and let the damp hair fall, And, last, she sat down by my side And called me. When no voice replied, She put my arm about her waist, And made her smooth white shoulder bare, And all her yellow hair displaced, And, stooping, made my cheek lie there, And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair, Murmuring how she loved me — she Too weak, for all her heart's endeavour, To set its struggling passion free From pride, and vainer ties dissever, And give herself to me for ever. But passion sometimes would prevail, Nor could to-night's gay feast restrain A sudden thought of one so pale For love of her, and all in vain: So, she was come through wind and rain. Be sure I looked up at her eyes Happy and proud; at last I knew Porphyria worshipped me; surprise Made my heart swell, and still it grew While I debated what to do. That moment she was mine, mine, fair, Perfectly pure and good: I found A thing to do, and all her hair In one long yellow string I wound Three times her little throat around, And strangled her. No pain felt she; I am quite sure she felt no pain. As a shut bud that holds a bee, I warily oped her lids: again Laughed the blue eyes without a stain. And I untightened next the tress About her neck; her cheek once more Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss: I propped her head up as before, Only, this time my shoulder bore Her head, which droops upon it still: The smiling rosy little head, So glad it has its utmost will, That all it scorned at once is fled, And I, its love, am gained instead! Porphyria's love: she guessed not how Her darling one wish would be heard. And thus we sit together now, And all night long we have not stirred, And yet God has not said a word!

“Press out an opiate juice From berries culled in prick of June-time heat; Pound nettles in a cruse Of crimson sard till mixing is complete; And strain the brew through bags of sarcenet, Mumbling the runes that crazed Sir Dagonet.” So spoke the slobbering witch, Wagging her shaky head incessantly; Then, with an agile twitch Stove oddly crackling through the briery. I caught the swish of her broomstick up to the moon, And her tattered skirt afloat like a black balloon. Old Witch, whither art gone? Hopped off to the well like Chick-o’-my-Craney-Crow? Here’s work for thy dudgeon, A brew and a bake for a devilish calico! What’s but a kettle ready for mad ferment, Black mouth a-grin at me, the innocent! I pressed and pounded duly, And sat to watch the slop at bubble slow; Fed coals with knots unruly Of thornbush boles till pot-legs stood aglow. And thrice the pot gave forth a piggish grunt, And thrice a bellowing as of hounds on hunt. A great red swine sprang out, With bristling gleams as bright as Freyr’s boar; Then, at his grubbing snout, Two black dogs leaped, two white-fanged lusts for gore. They three made hideous noise through brush and dew— Trembling I stooped and strained the mulling brew. And there was born a girl Within a sudden mist wizardry, And came some faint pipes’ thirl, While she danced, with lips turned sly, and beckoned me, And we danced mad till night’s low-burning wick Snuffed out, hearing like us the Old Hag’s stick.

The leaves had fallen in that sullen place, but none around him knew just where they were. The sky revealed no sun. A ragged blur remained where each man's face had been a face. Two angels soon crept forth with trays of bread, circling among the lost like prison guards. Love is not love, unless its will affords forgiveness for the words that are not said. Still he could not believe that this was Hell, that others sent before him did not know; yet, once his name and memory grew faint, it was no worse, perhaps, than a cheap motel. It is the love of failure makes a saint. He stood up then, but did not try to go.