872 Life poems

Man is so afraid, he look down at cock, long ago many centuries ships land on the enemy’s beach, take down mast in the dark, climb up cliffs in the fog, ram enemy’s door, do bad things in castle, oh yea, man go crazy play in blood like baby with duck in bathtub, man think about favorite dog, got worms in heart, takes dog to field trial, dog sniffs out man’s lies, point at fool in frozen water, fool man, dead dog, man look at leaf frozen in pond, man think about woman in new cabin beside fire, walls bleeding rosin, man forget about dog, man want son, boy strong, call boy elephant, man cannot sleep right, have bad itch in butthole, man think cancer maybe, man wake up beside woman, moon come in window, man glad he has no city, city can die for all he cares, man smells fingers, smell bad, man gets up to wash fingers, man steps on broken glass, sits down on commode and sucks his foot, man thinks about God, man says to God If I eat right will You take away cancer, God no say, man flush pot, man decides go to India, study other God, other God take away cancer, bring back dog, make women go crazy, man go visit little naked man on mountain, man give him all his money, little naked man say go back home, stand on head with fresh egg in asshole three times a day, man does what he says, oh yea, man think about troopships, man is so afraid, man take chill, man get old real quick man nobody, everything dark, man spit in papersack, man look at medicine on table beside bed, man look at TV, Tarzan movie already over, so sad so sad, man call doctor, say to make him young, doctor look at secretary pulling up panties, say oh yea, take man’s money, man get young, man decide go to Africa, man think everything swell when he get back home, put many heads on wall, many skins, first night wife run off, fool man, so man read book, man like, so man read another book, soon man read book all time, don’t care about money, don’t care about woman, only thing man remember is what he read, on weekends go to old cabin, look at pine knots, think about what he read, think about history, look down at cock, man learn, once was another man become king, but king had no sons, king get old, get sad, king get so afraid, look at his cock, oh yea, one night king run everybody out of castle, have private dinner, just with family, and favorite dog, tell daughter to hop up on table, king takes pheasant gravy, pours on daughter, rubs daughter’s thighs with gravy, picks up dog, tells dog lick daughter, king tells daughter not to be afraid, not be sad, tell daughter be strong, daughter strong, daughter looks at mother, says watch, daughter takes dog by the mouth, breaks jaws, king says daughter strong, man know lot about history, man afraid, man go crazy on street one day, man go jail, man call lawyer tell lawyer shoot two women save my life, man give lawyer lot of money, lawyer go out to eat, talks about man, man get out of jail, oh yea man like imagine too, man like to clip cut back of magazine, man like sendoff, man also like guns, life strange,

As simply as a self-effacing bar of soap escaping by indiscernible degrees in the wash water is how a man may change and still hour by hour continue in his job. There in the mirror he appears to be on fire but here at the office he is dust. So long as there remains a little moisture in the stains, he stands easily on the pavement and moves fluidly through the corridors. If only one cloud can be seen, it is enough to know of others, and life stands on the brink. It rains or it doesn’t, or it rains and it rains again. But let it go on raining for forty days and nights or let the sun bake the ground for as long, and it isn’t life, just life, anymore, it’s living. In the meantime, in the regular weather of ordinary days, it sometimes happens that a man has changed so slowly that he slips away before anyone notices and lives and dies before anyone can find out.

There was a man of double deed, Who sowed his garden full of seed; When the seed began to grow, 'Twas like a garden full of snow; When the snow began to melt, 'Twas like a ship without a belt; When the ship began to sail, 'Twas like a bird without a tail; When the bird began to fly, 'Twas like an eagle in the sky; When the sky began to roar, 'Twas like a lion at my door; When my door began to crack, 'Twas like a stick across my back; When my back began to smart, 'Twas like a penknife in my heart; And when my heart began to bleed, 'Twas death, and death, and death indeed.

What booth is this? The last was a plastic gallows. In the teach me to kiss booth, you paid your dollar to promote, when prompted, a theory. Advised me about standing close and touching him who might next enter in such a way that draws contrast, rough and smooth, cool and warm, maybe the heel of the hand and thumb at the neck if the collar is open and the fingertips two three four, but never anything about the mouth, and then it was time. I back exited through the heavy drapes and opened shop next door. What booth is this? In this booth I have rescued a dovekie but it will not eat. As the tub fills I need you (tore your ticket, right?) to surrender two of the goldfish from this bag. I’ll be back in a minute. The last of the sun is pinkening the ridge beyond the fairgrounds, and I’d like to see. What booth is this? Keep moving everyone. Careful of the gourds; they’re pursing. I’ve handed over the last admission I can afford. Into this booth the branch of a bean tree descends and in an eventuality brought on by what yet I cannot say the armlong pods burst with pellet shot pressure and release seeds like these embedded in the board behind you. The next booth is one I have to man for someone. An emergency. I’ll meet you there. Is this even a booth? In this booth there is room for one. Get in here and hold me up. I would fall without you. Why are we not told plainly? What good as a booth is this, what booth if it be one? Feel the first drop, as from a shearwater ocean bird held high for miles on the cyclonic air, blown far inland, never otherwise seen. The barometer is bottoming. This booth of ours is an eye of the storm simulation.

In gardens sweet each flower mark did I, How they did spring, bud, blow, wither and die. With that, contemplating of man's short stay, Saw man like to those flowers pass away. Yet built he houses, thick and strong and high, As if he'd live to all Eternity. Hoards up a mass of wealth, yet cannot fill His empty mind, but covet will he still. To gain or keep, such falsehood will he use! Wrong, right or truth—no base ways will refuse. I would not blame him could he death out keep, Or ease his pains or be secure of sleep: Or buy Heaven's mansions—like the gods become, And with his gold rule stars and moon and sun: Command the winds to blow, seas to obey, Level their waves and make their breezes stay. But he no power hath unless to die, And care in life is only misery. This care is but a word, an empty sound, Wherein there is no soul nor substance found; Yet as his heir he makes it to inherit, And all he has he leaves unto this spirit. To get this Child of Fame and this bare word, He fears no dangers, neither fire nor sword: All horrid pains and death he will endure, Or any thing can he but fame procure. O man, O man, what high ambition grows Within his brain, and yet how low he goes! To be contented only with a sound, Wherein is neither peace nor life nor body found.

A man said to the universe: “Sir, I exist!” “However,” replied the universe, “The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation.”

In a drawer I found a map of the world, folded into eighths and then once again and each country bore the wrong name because the map of the world is an orphanage. The edges of the earth had a margin as frayed as the hem of the falling night and a crease moved down toward the center of the earth, halving the identical stars. Every river ran with its thin blue brother out from the heart of a country: there cedars twisted toward the southern sky and reeds plumed eastward like an augur’s pens. No dates on the wrinkles of that broad face, no slow grinding of mountains and sand, for— all at once, like a knife on a whetstone— the map of the world spoke in snakes and tongues. The hard-topped roads of the western suburbs and the distant lights of the capitol each pull away from the yellowed beaches and step into the lost sea of daybreak. The map of the world is a canvas turning away from the painter’s ink-stained hands while the pigments cake in their little glass jars and the brushes grow stiff with forgetting. There is no model, shy and half-undressed, no open window and flickering lamp, yet someone has left this sealed blue letter, this gypsy’s bandana on the darkening Table, each corner held down by a conch shell. What does the body remember at dusk? That the palms of the hands are a map of the world, erased and drawn again and Again, then covered with rivers and earth.

When the sun’s whiteness closes around us Like a noose, It is noon, and Molina squats In the uneven shade of an oleander. He unfolds a map and, with a pencil, Blackens Panama Into a bruise; He dots rain over Bogotá, the city of spiders, And x’s in a mountain range that climbs Like a thermometer Above the stone fence The old never thought to look over. A fog presses over Lima. Brazil is untangled of its rivers. Where there is a smudge, Snow has stitched its cold into the field. Where the river Orinoco cuts east, A new river rises nameless From the open grasses, And Molina calls it his place of birth.

she at last had permission to use the marble bath for the marble bath she untied a paper bag of periwinkle bath salts & flicked them into the water as though cracking a whip she untied her hair she untidied her hair tested the water with the soft pads of her toes (tips of bladder wrack in the sun) her skin her markings (as for the bath) — interior-of-Stilton at last underwater she drew breath from every shell collected from every beach later in the evening when dressed for bed she rejoined her brothers & sister & they were each served a portion of the last portion

The sight of beauty simply makes us sick: There are too many hours in the day, Too many wicked faces built like flowers And far too many bargains for a song. Jade and paste, cashmere and ormolu— Who said that all the arts aspire to music? It’s obvious, for time is obvious, That all that art aspires to is junk. Blackmailed by these mathoms of the past, One is indebted for another perspective To quaint giraffes and quainter wallabies, The nearly human and the faintly monstrous, The outrageously contemporary joke. Trespassing on a no man’s territory, Unlike the moralist one is at a loss Where to be human is not to be at home. In a zoo, you see, one can acquire nothing: Zebras aren’t wishes. Nor is the flea market Exactly the place for those who know what they want. Like far out stations on the Metro (which they are) Somewhere, in heaven perhaps, they correspond, In the heaven of open arms and unpaid bills, Where beer is drunk on the lawn all afternoon And every night we bid, and make, a slam.