502 War poems

I watch loud animal bones in their faces & I can smell the earth. Our boys want a public killing in a sunlit piazza They drag a young policeman, a sign in his arms swaying

Through Vasenka: a herd of boys runs. With their icy hands they haul a policeman and for an apple a look they display the man on the asphalt. Snow falls in his nostrils. I watch him. They circle his eyes with a red pencil. They teach his neighbors to spit in two red holes. I watch the snowflakes melt in their hair. The neighbor aims in the red circle, spits. I stand on a park bench and chew snow. Boys walk west of Tedna, carrying snowflakes in their hair. A neighbor aims in the hole, spits. Walking by night with their arms lifted up from their bodies. As if they were about to leave the earth. And were trying out the wind.

Dr. Alfonso Barabinsky wants to go outside I hold him down with my smaller body. He walks, runs from his shoes to my kitchen. He is drinking in my kitchen, He swims in my kitchen with his varicose fat legs. Alfonso, you fool. You think it is brave to drink vodka all morning on an empty stomach. The walls of our apartment flash. The walls of our apartment stand. They are bombing his hospital. He washes my face. He fingerspells the names of patients. The shadow of his fingers huge on the whitewashed wall. The walls of our apartment flash. When the bombs fall we make children. He kneels and kisses through my skin the shape of our only child. They are bombing his office. Takes his glasses off and lays them on the table like a shining weapon. Throws his t-shirt at our cat, fat hangs over his belt. Pulls a stolen lemon out his pocket. They are bombing his hospital office, But I am a ripe woman a man could be happy.

I am not a poet, Sonya I inspect the fragrant feet of younger ladies—

1918 "This is the State above the Law. The State exists for the State alone." [This is a gland at the back of the jaw, And an answering lump by the collar-bone.] Some die shouting in gas or fire; Some die silent, by shell and shot. Some die desperate, caught on the wire; Some die suddenly. This will not. "Regis suprema voluntas Lex" [It will follow the regular course of—throats.] Some die pinned by the broken decks, Some die sobbing between the boats. Some die eloquent, pressed to death By the sliding trench as their friends can hear. Some die wholly in half a breath. Some—give trouble for half a year. "There is neither Evil nor Good in life. Except as the needs of the State ordain." [Since it is rather too late for the knife, All we can do is mask the pain.] Some die saintly in faith and hope— Some die thus in a prison-yard— Some die broken by rape or the rope; Some die easily. This dies hard. "I will dash to pieces who bar my way. Woe to the traitor!    Woe to the weak!" [Let him write what he wishes to say. It tires him out if he tries to speak.] Some die quietly.    Some abound In loud self-pity.    Others spread Bad morale through the cots around . . . This is a type that is better dead. "The war was forced on me by my foes. All that I sought was the right to live." [Don't be afraid of a triple dose; The pain will neutralize half we give. Here are the needles.    See that he dies While the effects of the drug endure . . . What is the question he asks with his eyes?— Yes, All-Highest, to God, be sure.]

From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State, And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze. Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life, I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters. When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

I dredge allegedly to repair and upgrade the Port of Umm Qasr I edge a legibly duty free transrational contract drag well I pledge alien lesions will be doled expensively (not on the cheap) and not to um miss explosives who shell Bechtel by the—that is Shell it by the shore Bechtel sells unflaggingly to the drag of the dividend rates of America I pluck allegiance from an estimated 1.8 billion and to the executive committee— Chicago—the world’s fair—and to Columbus Day in the park—I think it was the fourth of the reprivate which it hands to the drooling class—I mean the measuring cache watch this base—I a semifree colonist in gall— and to the elect by which it assesses, and to the electric by which it stands, and erects, th— rederegulated privates, bow, get down: how much would be chucked if this versus then forest of Arden should burn in the name of the national hamlet— if it be true that good wine needs no bush, we’d choose once we got behind the curtain, we guessed, if it’s there anymore except in Geist . . . while one gush mail addles in accidental against its—when walking Tokyo—wonderful you caming to OOIOO show & I Ill put you on the just list— this against—flurry of finger-pointing—forget it and your phony numbers like in why two okeydoke take it, one ration under planes— Apaches, syllabled to us versus shame— one galaxy under goods, world’s-without-end fair under the indivisible party, beneath security, below God’s belts to humanity, with puberty and enduring as-is and no trial for troglodytes and dogs and tax treats for by for allegiance. The friction has its machine—as you choose it?

Like a wedding ring, or the bride’s green ribbon, you shelter me. No business but war. You remind me of a kind of heaven. A cairn of rocks casting shadows in the shape of a man. Thou art the table before me in the sight of my adversaries, thou dost anoint my head: oil and rain, thou art a ghost with a girl’s mouth, thou art not the making of my dreams—under water, under cliff, under this long suitcase of earth and bombs. More than any mortal could gather beneath the skirt of the sky. You are never eager, nor famished, nor pale with a craving for white clothes or my nocturnes. Let your lynx approach, even tiger, even its wild outline. You need no ferryman or the obolus of the dead. If I put a coin in my mouth I taste copper, not the corpse. They say that bodies fertilized the ground so well the trees grow bright and tall. The bones blur. We return alive.

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee. Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green, That host with their banners at sunset were seen: Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown, That host on the morrow lay withered and strown. For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast, And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed; And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill, And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still! And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide, But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride; And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf, And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf. And there lay the rider distorted and pale, With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail: And the tents were all silent, the banners alone, The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown. And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail, And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal; And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword, Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

There’s a joke that ends with —huh? It’s the bomb saying here is your father. Now here is your father inside your lungs. Look how lighter the earth is — afterward. To even write the word father is to carve a portion of the day out of a bomb-bright page. There’s enough light to drown in but never enough to enter the bones & stay.Don’t stay here, he said,my boy broken by the names of flowers. Don’t cry anymore. So I ran into the night. The night: my shadow growing toward my father.