873 Life poems

Stilled as in image, at dawn sliding into blue harbor, boats clang, where does he the man I imagine gripping several ropes return from. Is he conflicted, does he perceive the sky oscillating like a dimmer machine, a mouth, a war, language not declaring its most effective self,bellum grazing ever nearer to beauty, a possible apotheosis how what is left of sense is comfort. Not inebriated much anymore, I rented a lawn to stand in with you, crueler was always singing to our mutual forks, knives. Our translation of a subject drones on unblinking, something black for him returning, his forearms there laid themselves down, ships gone out another pale-plated night.

My husband was in the CIA. That’s the kind of woman I am. Lived all over Asia in suites decked out for the embassy staff, lounged around pools with sweet Singapore Slings, but now that I’m on my own, I can’t stand to waste a minute, not a breath. You may know my regular work at Helen’s Mademoiselle Beauty Nook downtown, but on the side I help women trim their belly fat. “Lose weight now, ask me how.” A thin American girl is a happy one, I always say. Oprah, too, but the drugs witch doctors sell can kill brain cells quicker than liquor. And your will, your liver. Listen, herbs are just what you need to cut that cellulite. I learned that in the Orient. I had spare time to spare and paid attention. Embrace herbs and exercise daily with a proper purge, just like the monks of Buddha. Tablets help, and fruit shakes, too, make you frisky as a prime-time preacher, but here’s my recent love and pleasure: invention. True, I mixed a chemical rinse that made great colors like the ao dais in Saigon, but some of the girls said it burned. Then I worked with Gene Graddick on a special quick perm you can get wet, but he cut out before we got it perfectly perfected. Beauty, though, that’s the ticket. I knew that even in Nam, while Jim-ass was off on his secret missions. The new machine I’m the mother of will move senior citizens and the, you know, “crippled” gals to the swivel chair without a hitch. I saw too many women, men, and sad children with stiff legs (or one or none) who couldn’t move after one government or another gave invitations to mortar fire or a claymore mine. With this machine I could prop them straight and wet-cut any willing guinea pig—pardon my calling the handicapped that—blow dry and comb them out with no inconvenience. My prototype is getting made in a LaGrange body shop this minute, if Bish is working late like he promised, and I aim to franchise, since Jim left me flat busted—well, you can see that’s a figure of speech—with back bills piled to the ceiling. The government has laws that business can’t fairly slight the challenged, so if I get it right, it’s got to sell. I can’t tell you how it works, you know. I learned secrecy from an expert, covert fool. It’s called “The Phyllis,” after me. What’s wrong with that? It’s no brag if you really did it. Hell—excuse my French—you know Snake Grillis of Snake and the Grass? He can pick the fiddle better than any man alive, and says so on stage. It’s no lie, so let him waller in it, I say. Look, I’m salt of the earth and have all the right attitudes and skills, not that selfish royal act my Jim put on when we went to the market. He called the people “slants” and laughed when they didn’t savvy. It’s no wonder he carried a Colt in his belt; they could tell how superior he felt, and they hated him hard. That asshole—pardon my French, but it’s so. No thanks, I stick to coffee. Hard stuff was what my ex used to wet his whistle and make him sharp for following spies, and cocaine, too, I suspect. Myself, I don’t need a jumpstart when loving’s on my mind. I got a tummy tuck, a boob job, a wardrobe straight from Penney’s Gay Parisian line. You’re a devil, but you smile like a G.I. on leave, and I can cure your entire cowlick problem. I’ve got a chair and a whole outfit at home, plus a queen waterbed and a Sony VCR on credit. I’m maxed out! Grab your jacket, buckaroo, and to hell with any sour memories. I’ve got bourbon and branch, black lace, and oodles of time. I’ve got a Walther in my purse and boudoir kung fu tricks for two. I’m here now and just for you. Call me Phyllis or The Phyllis or Boo, then just call me in time for breakfast. Ain’t this a lucky rendezvous?

Last night whistling I passed by their alley, saw them in a sidelong blink of light from traffic, a speeding car, then I went home. Dreamed of gold skies, black money.  I felt so stupid, to talk about them feels stupid.  I’m the sullen red Sun. Bernadette leans from tenement windows, sailors keep searching world after world for Bernadette, and her arms are black, her outstretched proffered palms all milky. From them coins drop into Pickpocket’s pockets freely. Pickpocket’s face is pocked, his arms are pocked.  I threw his face in a lake to make it ripple, he smokes a cigar to an orange hot hole in his face, a glow.  At night the Sun’s a kid brought behind the woodshed and abased.

"After a white reception in the crystal room of the Hotel Kenmore, Mrs. George Eustic (Patricia Hays) and her husband left on a wedding trip to the Pocono Mountains, Pa. They will live in good old Noodleville." (Home.) Where the friendly purple heart is. I like to do things. I like to eat, and things like that. I like the things that go on around me. People are nice. And, really, I like this place I live in. However, some people don't. Sally doesn't. Sick at heart, the trembling girl shuddered at the words that delivered her to this terrible horrible fate of the East. "Nasty!" How could she escape from this oriental monster into whose hands she had fallen—this strange man whose face none had seen. Smile! It is only a little picture, In a little silver frame, And across the back is written My darling mother's name. (Valentine) Pink and purple and orange ones with Venetian rose buds Imported from Venetian In eleven thrilling volumes I heard a shot—I saw him run—then I saw her fall—the woman I love. My leg was broken—and my gun was gone! I had only one thought—(tee! hee!)—his strange, astounding plots must be avenged—he must die for a coward at my hands! He had the courage of a lion and the cunning of a rat. He came running towards me when—suddenly, I— Ran. Forgetting the ripped lace, $35, green violence, & free samples. "I always run when I hear 3 rings!" . . . and remember those swell picnics in Birch Grove?

I think I like this room. The curtains and the furniture aren’t the same Of course, but the light comes in the window as it used to Late in the morning, after the others had gone to work. You can even shave in it. On the dresser with the mirror Are a couple of the pictures we took one afternoon Last May, walking down the alley in the late sunlight. I remember now how we held hands for fifteen minutes Afterwards. The words meander through the mirror But I don’t want them now, I don’t want these abbreviations. What I want in poetry is a kind of abstract photography Of the nerves, but what I like in photography Is the poetry of literal pictures of the neighborhood. The late afternoon sunlight is slanting through the window Again, sketching the room in vague gestures of discontent That roll off the mind, and then only seem to disappear. What am I going to do now? And how am I going to sleep tonight? A peculiar name flickers in the mirror, and then disappears.

After the jostling on canal streets and the orchids blowing in the window I work in cut glass and majolica and hear the plectrum of the angels. My thoughts keep dwelling on the littoral where china clocks tick in the cold shells and the weeds slide in the equinox. The night is cold for love, a chamber for the chorus and the antistrophe of the sealight.

When I brood on Germany in the night No hope for sleep. I know I'll lie Awake with my eyes wide open while Tears scald my cheeks. The years are a blur of past and future: A good twelve of them have passed since I last Laid eyes on my mother—which may be why I'm in such a frenzy to see her. And I am desperate with desire. I am under the old mutter's spell. She circles my mind like a ring of fire. I hope to god she is alive and well. She loves me to pieces, the old woman, And when in her letters her script breaks down, I know she's shaken to her depths, I know When the mother in her's shocked by her role. My mother never leaves my mental space Free of time past, the twelve long years, Twelve! —that vanished without a trace Since our last satisfying hug and kiss. Don't worry about Germany: it's the picture Of health. It will outlast us. All and all. I'll know its borders again by the flare Of its barbarous oaks and lime-trees' salute. I wouldn't waste a moment thinking on Germany were it not for my mother...; Fatherland-is-forever; but the old Woman, being mortal, may soon grow...cold. Since I left the country death has taken Many I loved. And now the unbreathing Impinge too much upon my sympathy. Numbering the dead does me in. And yet I feel compelled to count and each Body added to the tally has a say In how my mourning grows: hordes of corpses Crush my chest. What—relief—when they...give way. Praise the lord. And the lighter light of France That through this window breaks as my wife, well- Tempered, radiant as dawn, dispels My German burden with her lovely smile. after Heinrich Heine

I. I like to travel to L.A. by myself My trips to the crowded smoggy polluted by brown indigenous and immigrant haze are healing. I travel from one pollution to another. Being urban I return to where I came from My mother survives in L.A. Now for over forty years. I drive to L.A. in the darkness of the day on the road before CHP one with the dark driving my black truck invisible on my journey home. The dark roads take me back to my childhood riding in the camper of daddy’s truck headed home. My brother, sister and I would be put to sleep in the camper and sometime in the darkness of the day daddy would clime into the cab with mom carrying a thermos full of coffee and some Pendleton blankets And they would pray before daddy started the truck for journey mercies. Often I’d rise from my lullaby sleep and stare into the darkness of the road the long darkness empty of cars Glowy from daddy’s headlights and lonesome from Hank Williams’ deep and twangy voice singing of cold nights and cheatin’ hearts. About an hour from Flagstaff the sun would greet us and the harsh light would break the darkness and we’d be hungry from travel and for being almost home. II. I know the darkness of the roads endless into the glowy path before me lit by the moon high above and the heat rising from my truck’s engine. The humming from tires whisper mile after mile endless alongside roadside of fields shadowy from glow. I know the darkness of the roads It swims through my veins dark like my skin and silenced like a battered wife. I know the darkness of the roads It floods my liver pollutes my breath yet I still witness the white dawning.

Chico whines, no reason why. Just now walked, dinner gobbled, head and ears well scratched. And yet he whines, looking up at me as if confused at my just sitting here, typing away, while darkness is stalking the back yard. How can I be so blind, he wants to know, how sad, how tragic, how I won’t listen before it is too late. His whines are refugees from a brain where time and loss have small dominion, but where the tyranny of now is absolute. I get up and throw open the kitchen door, and he disappears down the cement steps, barking deeper and darker than I remember. I follow to find him perfectly still in the empty yard— the two of us in the twilight, standing guard.

All summer, the city engine's low roar capsizes our bodies into sleep, groans, evacuation— Lost to a watery anamnesis so warm it requires a raft thatched from death's flotsam to necklace its shore I swim on, calling your name In my dreams, something is always deserting But tonight, no fast shadows of birds No oceanic flowers disrobing butterflies or bright beach of child's porridge and bones— Instead, someone weaving a net from fallen hair in and around our bed to catch the breath, blood, and ritual motions that oiled us as one candle in a cave In your dreams, someone is always resisting being saved My teethare on fire, you say I said Don't fly for the labyrinth, once I thought you were admonishing me to go away I don't remember most others, a thousand seasons phonographed in through a wounded window Everyone can't have a cactus Just o.k. empty all the rice from my legs