872 Life poems

Somewhere in Chelsea, early summer; And, walking in the twilight toward the docks, I thought I made out Robinson ahead of me. From an uncurtained second-story room, a radio Was playing There’s a Small Hotel; a kite Twisted above dark rooftops and slow drifting birds. We were alone there, he and I, Inhabiting the empty street. Under a sign for Natural Bloom Cigars, While lights clicked softly in the dusk from red to green, He stopped and gazed into a window Where a plaster Venus, modeling a truss, Looked out at Eastbound traffic. (But Robinson, I knew, was out of town: he summers at a place in Maine, Sometimes on Fire Island, sometimes the Cape, Leaves town in June and comes back after Labor Day.) And yet, I almost called out, “Robinson!” There was no chance. Just as I passed, Turning my head to search his face, His own head turned with mine And fixed me with dilated, terrifying eyes That stopped my blood. His voice Came at me like an echo in the dark. “I thought I saw the whirlpool opening. Kicked all night at a bolted door. You must have followed me from Astor Place. An empty paper floats down at the last. And then a day as huge as yesterday in pairs Unrolled its horror on my face Until it blocked—”

It’s all of it rigged, she says, Bust-one-wins, Hi-striker, even the Dozer. It’s like you think you’ll score that giant panda for the wife except you can’t, or not without you drop another twenty and then—what?—then you win a thumb-sized monkey or a little comb. She hands me five ones and then stands. She’s worked the whole of the midway, she says, funnel cake to corn-dogs. She’s worked every game plus half the rides, Krazy Koaster, Avalanche, Wing-Ding, Tilt-a-Whirl and if there’s somebody sick she’ll do a kiddy ride too, Li’l Choo-choo, maybe the Tea Cup. There’s a collapsing soft sigh and she sits, opens the paper, turns a page and as if she were the one assigned to face forwards, as if it were her job to intuit the world and interpret the news, Anymore, she says, it’s out of our hands, it’s all we can do—it’s not up to you. You see that bald bronco tearing tickets at the carousel? We worked the Bottle-drop and now he’s mine: he’s no genius but he loves me and he’s mine. Things happen, she says, you can’t take them back.

The dog stops barking after Robinson has gone. His act is over. The world is a gray world, Not without violence, and he kicks under the grand piano, The nightmare chase well under way. The mirror from Mexico, stuck to the wall, Reflects nothing at all. The glass is black. Robinson alone provides the image Robinsonian. Which is all of the room—walls, curtains, Shelves, bed, the tinted photograph of Robinson’s first wife, Rugs, vases, panatellas in a humidor. They would fill the room if Robinson came in. The pages in the books are blank, The books that Robinson has read. That is his favorite chair, Or where the chair would be if Robinson were here. All day the phone rings. It could be Robinson Calling. It never rings when he is here. Outside, white buildings yellow in the sun. Outside, the birds circle continuously Where trees are actual and take no holiday.

As a man may go to Costco, Buy the jumbo pak of diapers, double liters of Coke and Diet Coke and a sixpack and stock up on Doritos and Cheetos and Eveready batteries, so I perhaps Formless in the vast republic Grasp the metaphysical thing, commodity, crucially desired Hologram of national intent. Caught In the managed aisle the Jargon of experts washes o'er the perfectly stacked Special K, Cheerios, Wheaties, Apple Jacks, and Count Chocula Low on the shelves that toddlers might harry their Mothers for sweet breakfast treats. In Niger the children and livestock go hungry Once more but a fortified peanut butter paste Plumpy'nut promises to revive those babies Quickly who are not yet too far gone. Research has given us hope that all Shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well Till the moment it's not. It's not. Unto the lord Julian of Norwich poured forth her Voice. Into the desert the Tuareg Wander, their herds and children starved. Between ocean Expanses a people of plenty' chatter brawl and sometimes Yawn. Days so short it seems the earth is Zooming unto its longsought anonymous abyss.

‘Poems from prison! About what?’ ‘Life and God.’ ‘God in prison? Friend, you trifle with me. His face, perhaps, at the bars, fading like life.’ ‘He came in with the warder, striving with him. Where else did the severity of the man spring from, but awareness of a charity he must overcome?’ ‘The blows, then, were God chastening the beloved! Who was the more blessed, the dispenser or receiver of them?’ ‘It is the same outside. Bars, walls but make the perspective clear.Deus absconditus! We ransack the heavens, the distance between stars; the last place we look is in prison, his hideout in flesh and bone.’ ‘You believe, then?’ ‘The poems are witness. If his world contracted, it was to give birth to the larger vision. Not meadows empty of him, animal eyes, impersonal as glass, communicate God. On the bare walls of a cell the oppressor watches the diminishing of his human shadow, as he withdraws from the light.’

id Two ids walk into one body & fight over whether to break melon on the kitchen counter & eat it by the fistful or to throw the melon out a shut window & watch it break on the pavement, stabbed by shards of glass. ego Sorry, for yelling through the speaker at the McDonald’s drive thru. Sorry, for not letting you through the door first. Sorry, I ate the dozen donuts in fifteen minutes over the sink. Sorry, I sound shrill, sound dumb, sound ditzy, sound spacey. Sorry, mom. I mean, mamá. 
I mean, miss. I mean, nevermind. superego Dear body: Cut the melon into slices with the sharpest knife you can find & enjoy the pain you are causing this melon. Stop saying you’re sorry, instead feel guilty for being shrill, being dumb, being ditzy, 
being spacey. Feel guilty because your mom is your mamá is your miss is the one who is guilty for giving you this body with two ids, 
& one ego, & one superego who hush-hushes you whole.

This afternoon the park is filled with brides. Among varieties of persuasion the big trees turn back toward the forest. Adventurers gather in side streets. The police are looking hard at the sky. Down at the bay, boys trapped in solitude fish. Girls hike their pants and stare at the wave line, remembering secrets they once held dear. The day offers a ridiculous variation as an excuse for not coming in on time. Wild imaginings take the place of religion. Someone who can't swim offers to cook. We've devised a means for the obstinate children to be fed, she says, but no one understands this. We crave affection, but give only advice. There are walls topped with broken bicycles. Someone makes an obscene offer and this is the best we get all day. Oh don't give in so easily she says, handing over the keys. We climb the blue fire escape. We would like to keep going, skyline climbers, old men remembering their childhood who devise a few illegal experiences no one wants to try. It gets to be more than the officers can take. The park is dusty, dark, yet the children, ignored all day, play on, convinced their dedication releases a magic that changes everything.

1 only you are allowed to enter voice for the first time the look   hesitant   undemanding body supple as sound the hand   unexpected   a fruit falling skin curves of sand lull below the arms scent of the ocean's salt 2 the body pushed into life's mouth 3 velvet crunch of white under feet   my heart snowy lizards' tails sleeping on branches arms rhyme with bending earth a shadow slants like a calligrapher's quill 4 pass the threshold 5 a genus of the solitary the knitted night       stained-glass boxes where memories ferment unplanned   you come 6 saguaros crack      monsoons consider erosion of rocks water's fire    lit worlds intersect           dusk     purity of ascent ferocious nose of a cat incandescent          through forces stay up waiting planes converge        fates intersect 7 how long does a measure last? 8 sea in the sky knives striking obliquely           army of light beating walls the aquamarine houses are ghosts between crystal trees water steals over skewed floors only this life 9 a cat sleeps one eye opened

He stood on his stoop and clapped her sneakers together hard, a sharp report, smacking right sole against left, trying to shock the mud from each complicated tread, spanking those expensive footprints until clay flakes and plugs ticked onto the boxwood’s leaves like a light filthy sleet from the rubber craters and crannies where they stuck weeks ago, until her shoes were banged clean though that didn’t stop his stiff-armed slow-motion applause with her feet’s emptied gloves, slapping mate against mate without missing a beat, half-wishing that hollow sound echoing off their neighbors’ houses could call her back.

You could grow into it, that sense of living like a dog, loyal to being on your own in the fur of your skin, able to exist only for the sake of existing. Nothing inside your head lasting long enough for you to hold onto, you watch your own thoughts leap across your own synapses and disappear— small boats in a wind, fliers in all that blue, the swish of an arm backed with feathers, a dress talking in a corner, and then poof, your mind clean as a dog’s, your body big as the world, important with accident— blood or a limp, fur and paws. You swell into survival, you take up the whole day, you’re all there is, everything else is not you, is every passing glint, is shadows brought to you by wind, passing into a bird’s cheep, replaced by a rabbit skittering across a yard, a void you yourself fall into. You could make this beautiful, but you don’t need to, living is this fleshy side of the bone, going on is this medicinal smell of the sun— no dog ever tires of seeing his life keep showing up at the back door even as a rotting bone with a bad smell; feet tottering, he dreams of it, wakes and licks no matter what.