Collected Poems (8 page)

like the blood

over the skull then

the veil and before that in your arms

in all of you

They Warned Him Then They Threw Him Away

there’s somebody who’s dying

to eat god

when the name happens

the juices leap from the bottom of his mouth like waves

he almost falls over with lightheadedness

nobody has ever been this hungry before

you might know people who’ve never had anything

but teaspoons of rice or shreds

from the shin of an ape well that’s nothing

you should know what this person would do

he’d pull handfuls of hair out of his children

and shove them down

he’d squeeze the docile bud in his wife

until it screamed

if you told him god lived in his own penis

he’d bite into it

and tear like a carnivore

this is how men renounce

this is how we obliterate

one morning near the end he’ll climb into the fire

and look back at himself

what was dark will be light

what was song will be roaring

and the worst thing is you’ll still want this

beyond measure you’ll still want this

believe me

you should know this

Ribbons

the goddamned animals might know more than we do about some things

like looking away when somebody they know is hurting them

and the other has to let go and not tear his throat out like us

but we’re still more than them about love

a girl so shy she couldn’t look at me without crying

so I turned the other way too and you could feel how close we were

as though we’d circled the whole world

and met and fallen in love her legs smoothed

I was stronger there were mists we walked in them

now when does that happen with pigs or horses?

the stallion all he’s after is tearing the fence down

the mare gets her tail going like a pump handle

and in the paddock the gelding old sergeant

buries his face in the creaky feed bin and keeps it there

remembering iwo jima remembering the bulge seoul my lai

his wound his two thighs like medals his two thighs

rising into the dark like searchlights only animals would keep quiet then

grind their broad teeth on the grain and shut up not us

The Rampage

a baby got here once who before

he was all the way out and could already feel the hindu

pain inside him and the hebrew and the iliad

decided he was never going to stop crying no matter what

until they did something he wasn’t going

to turn the horror

off in their fat sentences

and in the light bulb how much murder to get light

and in the walls agony agony for the bricks for the glaze

he was going to keep screaming

until they made death little like he was

and loved him too and sent

him back to undo all this

and it happened

he kept screaming he scared them he saw them

filling with womblight again like stadiums

he saw the tears sucked back into the story the smiles

opening like sandwiches

so he stopped

and looked up and said all right

it’s better now

I’m hungry now I want just to sleep

and they let him

The Nut

a man hammers viciously

viciously like fucking

a bad whore who won’t get

undressed even remember?

like trying to crush

the life from the corpse who

sprays blood who won’t

die or stop screaming

until the mouth is gone

utterly the last thread

crawling tenderly down

the backbone tenderly

to the tail the legs men

what are we thinking

hammering? the poor whore

smashing her fists on

the wall the carpenter his

sensitive tools suffering

men the terrible claws

men the hammering not

sleeping the hammering

going on to eternity

what is this so much

like pulse like murdering?

the corpse screams the

woman screams men what

is this?

Yours

I’d like every girl in the world to have a poem of her own

I’ve written for her I don’t even want to make love to them all anymore

just write things your body makes me delirious your face enchants me

you are a wonder of soul spirit intelligence one for every one

and then the men I don’t care whether I can still beat them all

them too a poem for them how many?

seeing you go through woods like part of the woods seeing you play piano

seeing you hold your child in your tender devastating hands

and of course the children too little poems they could sing or dance to

this is our jumping game this our seeing game our holding each other

even the presidents with all their death the congressmen and judges

I’d give them something

they would hold awed to their chests as their proudest life thing

somebody walking along a road where there’s no city would look up

and see his poem coming down like a feather out of nowhere

or on the assembly line new instructions a voice sweet as lunch-time

or she would turn over a stone by the fire and if she couldn’t read

it would sing to her in her body

listen! everyone! you have your own poem now

it’s yours as much as your heart as much as your own life is

you can do things to it shine it up iron it dress it in doll clothes

o men! o people! please stop how it’s happening now please

I’m working as fast as I can I can’t stop to use periods

sometimes I draw straight lines on the page because the words

are too slow

I can only do one at a time don’t die first please

don’t give up and start crying or hating each other they’re coming

I’m hurrying be patient there’s still time isn’t there? isn’t there?

The Nickname of Hell

the president of my country his face flushed

horribly like a penis is walking through

the schoolyard toward my daughter I tell him

mr president I will make it all right but

under his hand his penis is lined with many

buttons I tell him the orders are changing

but commanders deep in his penis prime it

I tell him about love I tell him there

is a new god who believes anything I

cringe alongside him I dance like a daughter

it is the schoolyard the daughters play

on the dangerous fences I tell him I love

him I tell him the daughters aren’t here

even he is holding me now his arms hold

me his lips you are my bliss he tells me

these are my arms these my lips you

are my penis he tells me his face stings

into mine like a penis you are my joy you

my daughter hold me my daughter my daughter

Bad Mouth

for W. S. Merwin

not bad mouth

in bad mouth

you know how to beat women so they love you afterwards

and come crawling

how to torture whole races and next time they fight

on the same side as you the lamb out of you

bad mouth lives in three houses with scabbards

bad mouth has hurt since the dinosaurs

even his sperm hurts

like napalm

bad mouth thinking

who do I kill?

who lock up in my arms for the last moment? pity

me pity me

good mouth I want to be vile enough for us both

so we’ll love more

I want scorpion ladies I want beautiful pain ladies

and wolf brothers to lick their clear breasts with

good mouth worshipping

good mouth wreathing his genes like fuses

good mouth

I want being able to say help me

help me good mouth

the ones down to the raisin like my tongue

are my tongue the last ones before peace

are inside me

good mouth whoever I let live murdered me whoever I pitied burned

please stop me

This Day

probably death fits all right in the world

but every time somebody dies his mother

botches it suddenly she thinks there’s not

enough room in her breasts the nipples

are clogged she says the ducts jammed rifles even

so old they sag like laundry she grabs

them and hangs on she doesn’t understand she

says she can’t understand it mother what

I’m doing is truth mother understand

me at least freedom but o god she can’t find

space for an atom her glands burst her

pores swell like bad fruit mother when

we were wolves remember? she doesn’t

understand the inside of bodies the voids

wasted the patient holes used up

like planets when I count three she says

everything was a dream everything before

now was really dead was I really dead?

The Rabbit Fights for His Life
The Leopard Eats Lunch

for Harvey Finkle

what if the revolution comes and I’m in it and my job

is to murder a child accidentally

or afterwards to get rid of the policemen?

I had a milkshake last week with a policeman

we talked about his pay raise it eats shit

he told me what if I have that one?
SAVAGE

the baby was easy

the baby went up in thin air

I remembered in dostoevsky where they talked

about whether it would all be worth the death of one child

and you decided yes or no according to your character

my character

is how he got back in his car

like a tired businessman and listened to the radio

for a few minutes

and waved

is having to lug him everywhere

I go because I can’t take him to his wife crying like this

the children have learned to throw their arms around you

without meaning it to kiss you without feeling it

to know there is something marvelous

and not pay attention

in order to say any of this at all to you

I have made myself up like somebody

in a novel

in order not

to go out of my mind I make it I can only do two things

hold you

bury you

Cellophane

if only we weren’t so small next to the stars

we could refuse absolutely to be alive in this eon

to be alive now you can’t understand one thing without pain

you can’t feel your own face in the morning

without wanting to blow up

if we were bigger

we wouldn’t keep happening over and over

like truth that hurts worse than anything

with
NO
big as the mint

and
DO IT
filling the air like soot from the incinerator

we’d be as easy as the game war

the wingspan from one death to another

and the centuries the unending centuries

taken away from us in cattle cars

would wail harmlessly

like ghosts

Inches

it would be wonderful to be quiet now

to creak down through the fossils making my last speech

into the blind rocks

or to hang from the bars by my belt

and not speak of us our bellows of helplessness our disgust

to be as silent as planets

even the wind has been burned out

hospitals jails the places learning to be hard like men

something where we would be taken and dispirited

of all things like god to godhead love

in peace

not to have “of” to our deaths anymore

the political would go into the back

it would bury itself in itself

and cry for us

I remember you you were my friend I loved you

very much of it was not for words

The Sting

the not want

jesus

I didn’t know this the not want

for woman country daughter the man

hit rocked back crying holding him

the not want

for wounding myself for your mouth

for what my hand is opening getting sleepy

the not want

to ride hooked in you like a thistle

for long grass the earth broken to take breaths

in you

jesus

not want

for dreaming

to be president

to take the whole nation and kiss it

awake being born being desired

not new minds not even not

this grown into the big

and fuller

not want

for being able to not want

for trees taking me underneath clouds

taking me fury

exaltation

why? why baby? why dog? why wife?

why

not want president?

why not want friend with no anguish?

why

angel I love you god I love you why

not want heart in my body in each hand

picture guitar

holy

leave this

let this be here

let me

not want this not

The Last

when I was sleeping this morning one of my feet

fell out of the covers and my daughter

came in and covered it up with her little dolly blanket

I was dreaming right then that flames were shooting out of my cock

and when I woke up with her patting the soft cloth down on me

I believed I understood the end of eternity for the first time

don’t ever make me explain this

In the Heart of the Beast

May 1970: Cambodia, Kent State, Jackson State

1.

this is fresh meat right mr nixon?