43 Violence poems

Chop, hack, slash; chop, hack, slash; cleaver, boning knife, ax— not even the clumsiest clod of a butcher could do this so crudely, time, as do you, dismember me, render me, leave me slop in a pail, one part of my body a hundred years old, one not even there anymore, another still riven with idiot vigor, voracious as the youth I was for whom everything always was going too slowly, too slowly. It was me then who chopped, slashed, through you, across you, relished you, gorged on you, slugged your invisible liquor down raw. Now you're polluted; pulse, clock, calendar taint you, befoul you, you suck at me, pull at me, barbed wire knots of memory tear me, my heart hangs, inert, a tag-end of tissue, firing, misfiring, trying to heave itself back to its other way with you. But was there ever really any other way with you? When I ran as though for my life, wasn't I fleeing from you, or for you? Wasn't I frightened you'd fray, leave me nothing but shreds? Aren't I still? When I snatch at one of your moments, and clutch it, a pebble, a planet, isn't it wearing away in my hand as though I, not you, were the ocean of acid, the corrosive in I which dissolve? Wait, though, wait: I should tell you too how happy I am, how I love it so much, all of it, chopping and slashing and all. Please know I love especially you, how every morning you turn over the languorous earth, for how would she know otherwise to do dawn, to do dusk, when all she hears from her speech-creatures is "Wait!"? We whose anguished wish is that our last word not be "Wait."

1. The contours of the girl blur. She is both becoming and fact. A rancor defines the split. Rip into. Flatten the depth of voice. That urgent flex peels off the steady layers. A girl, I say. Girl. Gu-erl. Quell. He. He—unbuttons before emergence. As in yard rake pressed to roof of mouth. A fragrant rod. Suh—sssuh—ssuck. Insistence. Lips go lisp. Our brutish boy. Having not ever been whole. Or simple. Or young. Just split and open. Not of it. For it. Born a cog of hard wheel at five, six, seven . . . What to know of what has never been? 2. No common place would do: bar stool, front porch, sea rock. Such a room should crawl into the soul. Stretch it. Contort it. Could be the straddle of this stranger at the neck.Iam this. She does not waver. She is twenty-five. The bed is wet. As many as had done this thing before. The wound is rupture. Blood-faced. Between sailing and anchor. No, between shipwreck and burial. What does the mouth do? It does not mean no, saying no. It does not mean yes. It gurgles. It swells. It is comfort. A quick kick. Mighty, mighty.

After the 2010 San Fernando massacre Para Luis You novelize a route with flesh dumped at the ranch, can’t backtrack the courage of miles we traversed in the dark, on a sighing speedboat, through jungles that spat only shoes, calzones, bodies twisted as guitarras when there’s no grito left in them to pluck. Back home, we priested our mornings with sun-dried sombreros, communed with our ghosts & had no wish to sacrifice our bellies, our terneros, our Consuelos. With wings from acero, we’d crash latitudinal 
objections, mystify Bengay on the mouths of our map-torn feet, pay no heed to grief’s ambidextrous strophes. If we choked on our own blood we harpooned optimism. But when the vans deadlocked our 
pilgrimage we knew our shadows had crumbed the anesthetic vultures. They pressed their loaded beaks upon our backs until our knees bent sour orange. One asked if we served the enemy, but we took enemy to mean a seed that sits quietly underfoot, abashed to vestibule the grating sun. Blindfolded, we faced the gloom volcanoes of their mothers. How those mothers might’ve screamed like ours in their tortured independence: bloody thunder in the brown-starched symphonies, a wind that howled & shoved its thumbs through feral lands probing for judgment or commiseration. Chingado god that copycatted these legs from monotony. Chingado god that hewed our wrists, a pair of stems to strap behind our wrested boots & jeans. Whoever supplied a plea to that deviant afternoon’s rationed blessings neglected to add chile, sazón, a nosegay of tortillas to the long road. Mothers who’ve come to reclaim our tongues in the dirt: remind us of the braids in the phrasings of our dreams before we vanished. Pat the ground for the bodkinned orchids. Wasn’t it yesterday we were siphoning forecasts with our fingers roving on the table? Or caught your chests pain-leavened & stilled them with the rumpus of our hopes?

Made out under sharp leg knife telephone golden shower boy under pinned under sweat sweet drill drilling broken glass smell faint smell aroma of needle tight bod no more but he kept going the slate eyes fastened on my boots tender touch Bud cop sweet and wet soaking the rub laying there time AM radio bondage songs out of touch brought back hard in the nose in the legs first the socks tight screwing into the ground tight tree phosphorescent beer too much too much a soft boy’s voice beard hair arms legs loose and flowing fast down 18th Street at every corner mouth wet motorcycle cop glasses long to the knees hot and heavy you make me a pleasure machine a pleasure machine in the night you left me on the street to take a leak the dynamite sounds juke box still in my head my head knocked against that wall wet smelling one guy after another too much head hair cut off by your one hand the other leg stretched out body you’ve got it the tender touch in the palm of my hand in the insides of your legs your spell is tying me up in the stomach in the cock your hands keep moving in and out a heart a fist a piece of my heart goes with it and I’ve got you on the list starmaker bright gloves wristwatch try me piece of glass stuck in the heart a needle in my arm you’ve got the power to turn on the gas the electricity playing dead gun smoke your den my ass red tied into the socket dying to get you under my skin liquid popper scat b/m w/s Long Island master looking for expert slave meet at Interstate blacking out blacking one eye eye patch no leg Vietnam veteran marine action pow action muddy boots taken care of ready now to take what you’ve got giving you what’s good for you taking you out on the street you dirty son of a bitch trigger happy in it for the action I never wanted to hear that phone voice again when he said to come drumming in the heart pumping slumping over on the sidewalk moonlight carlight headlight sideview walking down the street in front behind jewelry sounds my ear is in my head smell you robin fly fly robin fly right up to the sky pinned underneath heavy builder shit house rubber slit up the arm try to get away long day at work waiting to get home to my boy make him eat it blonde boy beard man extra money stay for a day in service in the tight bathroom for three days no way zinc gold spray today the gay bars are full the gay bars are full I met him in the hall tall black cowboy no face under the hat sat on his boot ready to shine to shine skin wet ready dogs eyes ready no room two more and keep going until I say

What is the sound of sounds sounding indefinite fist in face again and sound of the surprise of it coming from nowhere, of breaking the arm on a small fall in your own house, a respiratory failure, wound opening like a little mouth. We inhabit the brutal. We are shattered everyday. We look askew. Head broken floor array, light array, great distances, life goals. Staked upon every border, guardians. Protections have many faces. Misuse of the face as a streaming desire. Solution posted: “Get rid of all the niggers.” The state exacts its controls. That the pepper spray happens against kneeling children— That the search for the secret leaker is unyielding— If you want, you can make a myopic focus, concentrate on a shone shadow or drift off into space.

The boy who is kind to animals has tied a firecracker to the cat’s tail he is stoning the spotted bitch he is called Wind-Chaser Yesterday he gave bread and broken meat to the street dogs, his friends His friends are catching lizards behind the wall they killed a songbird with their catapults with the boy who is kind to animals they set fire to a grasshopper, laughing Along the road the children are shaking boxes something wants to get out The mother spits curses she says we should pay because they are hungry Wind-Chaser, Eye-of-the-Heart, Comes-Again, run away from their baffled eyes

A great crime: she has plunged a dagger into the heart of her mother. Strange. The strangest thing: a mocking little pride with a sinister click as of a fitting together of bad pieces. Beyond knowing. The mesmerist’s only child. A certain indication of anemia, too much candy, and her charming eyes. A privilege to be near her. My inspiriation. I risk an approach, what I call “the light of day.” Movements, with perfect indifference, turn place and shrink.One might have seen less:

Exchange in greed the ungraceful signs. Thrust The thick notes between green apple breasts. Then the shadow of the devil descends, The violent space cries and angel eyes, Large and dark, retreat in innocence and in ice. (Run sister run–the Bugga man comes!) The violent space cries silently, Like you cried wide years ago In another space, speckled by the sun And the leaves of a green plum tree, And you were stung By a red wasp and we flew home. (Run sister run–the Bugga man comes!) Well, hell, lil sis, wasps still sting. You are all of seventeen and as alone now In your pain as you were with the sting On your brow. Well, shit, lil sis, here we are: You are I and this poem. And what should I do? should I squat In the dust and make strange markings on the ground? Shall I chant a spell to drive the demon away? (Run sister run–the Bugga man comes!) In the beginning you were the Virgin Mary, And you are the Virgin Mary now. But somewhere between Nazareth and Bethlehem You lost your name in the nameless void. “O Mary don’t you weep don’t you moan” O Mary shake your butt to the violent juke, Absorb the demon puke and watch the white eyes pop, (Run sister run–the Bugga man comes!) And what do I do. I boil my tears in a twisted spoon And dance like an angel on the point of a needle. I sit counting syllables like Midas gold. I am not bold. I cannot yet take hold of the demon And lift his weight from you black belly, So I grab the air and sing my song. (But the air cannot stand my singing long.)

He never saw a violin. But he saw a lifetime of violence. This is not to presume That if he had simply seen A violin he would have seen Less violence. Or that living among Violins, as though they were Boulangeries or toppling stacks Of other glazed goods like young adult Fiction, would have made the violence Less crack and more cocaine, Less of course and more why god oh why. More of one thing Doesn’t rhyme with one thing. A swill of stars doesn’t rhyme With star. A posse of poets doesn’t rhyme With poet. We are all in prison. This is the brutal lesson of the 21st century, Swilled like a sour stone Through the vein of the beast Who watches you while you eat; Our eternal host, the chummed fiddler, The better tomorrow, MMXVI.

On the porch, unbreeched shotgun dangling Across one arm, just after the killing, The murderer, Billy Winkles, made polite Small talk with my father while we waited For the sheriff to come. The reek of cordite Still loomed above the sheeted corpse, his uncle Ben, whose various dark and viscous organs Jeweled the lawn. “Want some coffee, Von?” I heard, and thought, A man is dead. And then: Why had my father brought me there to stand Alone, out of place, half-terrified, bored With the slow yammer of weather and crops? I stepped carefully across the rotted planks Toward an oak where an engine block Depended from a blackened limb and watched A dull dazzle of horseflies, a few puddles Hounds had dug like chocolate ruffles Hemming the chicken yard. “I told the son Of a bitch, come back, I’ll shoot you dead,” And he sure had, for sniffing round his wife. He said, “It just ain’t right.” He rolled A smoke and dragged a steady flame alive While neighbors shyly stomped from pickups And lifted the sheet to poke and peek. “That’s Ben,” one said. “That’s Ben to a T.” But was it? Was any of it real, the empty House, the creek? My father saying, “Now Your mother, she was a Partain, wasn’t she?” “Naw, she was a Winkles, too. My wife was A Partain, she’s over at Mai-Maw’s now.” It went like that, and this. The wind drove Up and set the shirts to popping on the line. A red tricycle leaned above a one-eyed doll. The mountain’s blue escarpment unwound Green bolts of fields, the white shelters Where we lived, all of it somehow wrong, And magical not to have changed while Trucks backed up along the ditch and men With their grown boys clambered uphill To gawk at Uncle Ben who lay like shortcakes Lined up on sawhorses on decoration days. How strange, I thought, that no one prayed, And strange that I was there, actually there, With grown men, not sad or happy, but proud, Knowing even then, the years would mostly Amount to sleep, my father would come back As history, and still there would be To say the strobe of the ambulance light; The sheriff, a tall, portly man, stooping To help the handcuffed killer into the car; And on the grass, bits of liver or spleen— Whatever I’d dream, the world is not a lie.