William My Man

I A cave with arms at the mouth. Our hero is blind: everything he hears he sees. Hear! Gold light sifts to his ear. A roar. The seas beaten—his duodenum, colon, blind intestine and appendix, destined for heat, they blush. II William's cabbage heart shook. He dragged himself from the dirt. If he could rest his ears he could see ginkgos in his city. The pretty boy I mean & Will, who were both aging with their senses curbed until they knew New York City by the root & crack. III As if there is a fig tree rooted in heaven & each of its leaves knows all the rules. 8:45 a.m. hum: he saw the boy had fallen into a manhole & the fig tree had fallen into a manhole & neither could be the sound of hands splitting gold hands landed up the breadth of William's back. God bleeding me a kind of blooded cry my lady makes me a heron or my leg for a stump the cursed in loam my venomous thumbs my His guts an a-readied muck. IV If your hand had been dusk- yellow not a lantern but winged —a bridge or a dove sprung from the dirt. Trying to make a shape. The feathered thumb herring— bone. We would not fall. V I brought you in from the garden since I can't stand the trees' visions. William you will be there the last stately in ribbons. But the vision is a fattened glee. The glee is a clubfoot. The glee is a mutt. The eyes sewn up the air & nothing can be seen but visions. You are burst sideways like a fist in water. Your maker staring into an apron of mud. Thou art bore a hole in the man. Thou art not a bloody bit, not the man.