January 28 1962
My abandoned narcotics have
abandoned me
January 28 1962
7:30 must have dug its
pikes into your blue wrist
January 28 1962
I shoved the transistor up my ear
And putting down
3 loaves of suicide (?)
2 razorblade pies
1 De Quincey hairnet
5-gasfillcd Hampstcad bedsitters (sic)
a collection of oil
2 eyelash garottes (sic)
6 lysol eye foods
he said with considerable charm and travail:
Is this all I give?
One lousy reprieve
at 2 in the morning?
This?
I’d rather have a job.
NOTHING I CAN LOSE
When I left my father’s house
the sun was halfway up,
my father held it to my chin
like a buttercup.
My father was a snake oil man
a wizard, trickster, liar,
but this was his best trick,
we kissed goodbye in fire.
A mile above Niagara Falls
a dove gave me the news
of his death. I didn’t miss a step,
there’s nothing I can lose.
Tomorrow I’ll invent a trick
I do not know tonight,
the wind, the pole will tell me what
and the friendly blinding light.
POLICE GAZETTE
My grandfather slams the silver goblet down.
He clears a silence
in the family talk
to comment on the wine.
It’s hot. Jesus is dying of heat.
There he lies on the wall
of the sordid courtroom
trying to get air into his armpits.
Judge runs a finger
between neck and collar –
hands the sentence down.
Love me this first day of June.
I’d rather sleep with ashes
than priestly wisdom.
Of all the lonely places in the world
this is best
where debris is human.
I kiss the precious ashes
that fall from fiery flesh.
On these familiar shapes
I lay my kisses down.
Hitler is alive.
He is fourteen years old.
He does not shave.
He wants to be an architect.
The first star tonight
insanely high, virgin, calm.
I have one hour of peace
before the documented planets
burn me down.
NO PARTNERS
dancer! cut them with your yellow hair
jawbone of silk slash them down
trouser slices lapel fragments suit debris
heaped with choppedup stumblers
beneath her grapewhite piston feet
She was hardly leaping, almost stilled by all the power in her, shoulders raised, calling in everything, her elbows pressing it into her stomach. She was a single spindle in the centre of a cobweb, gathering, growing, winding us all into particles of her supreme flesh.
She barely moved but her body screamed out motion. Her feet barely struck and lifted, almost stilled by all the power in her. Her shoulders were raised, forward, calling in everything, her elbows pressing it into her belly, fingers getting the tidbits, gathering, growing, winding us all into particles of her supreme flesh, And when we’d begone she would be in the
centre of some vast room
shimmering enormous at rest
ON THE DEATH OF AN UNCHARTED PLANET
Bilesmell in my room
Too cold to open the window
Lying on my bed
Hand over mouth
Didn’t dare speak
Out of razorblades
New pimples
When suddenly
I knew it died
Clean blazing death
So bright
So irrelevant
Puff it went
Ten times the
Weight of the world
Lost to nobody
New meteors
New collisions
What comfort
At my stomach gnawed
The divine emptiness
I ate
The dirty dishes
I squeezed my face
Fat and full
Free as a bullet
I did pushups
On the 11th story
Clean blazing death
So bright
So irrelevant
Who wouldn’t
Laugh himself
Into monstrous health
Just noticing it
I WANTED TO BE A DOCTOR
The famous doctor held up Grandma’s stomach.
Cancer! Cancer! he cried out.
The theatre was brought low.
None of the internes thought about ambition.
Cancer! They all looked the other way.
They thought Cancer would leap out
and get them. They hated to be near.
This happened in Vilna in the Medical School.
Nobody could sit still.
They might be sitting beside Cancer.
Cancer was present.
Cancer had been let out of its bottle.
I was looking in the skylight.
I wanted to be a doctor.
All the internes ran outside.
The famous doctor held on to the stomach.
He was alone with Cancer.
Cancer! Cancer! Cancer!
He didn’t care who heard or didn’t hear.
It was his 87th Cancer.
ON HEARING A NAME LONG UNSPOKEN
Listen to the stories
men tell of last year
that sound of other places
though they happened here
Listen to a name
so private it can burn
hear it said aloud
and learn and learn
History is a needle
for putting men asleep
anointed with the poison
of all they want to keep
Now a name that saved you
has a foreign taste
claims a foreign body
froze in last year’s waste
And what is living lingers
while monuments are built
then yields its final whisper
to letters raised in gilt
But cries of stifled ripeness
whip me to my knees
I am with the falling snow
falling in the seas
I am with the hunters
hungry and shrewd
and I am with the hunted
quick and soft and nude
I am with the houses
that wash away in rain
and leave no teeth of pillars
to rake them up again
Let men numb names
scratch winds that blow
listen to the stories
but what you know you know
And knowing is enough
for mountains such as these
where nothing long remains
houses walls or trees
FINALLY I CALLED
Finally I called the people I didn’t want to hear from
After the third ring I said
I’ll let it ring five more times then what will I do
The telephone is a fine instrument
but I never learned to work it very well
Five more rings and I’ll put the receiver down
I know where it goes I know that much
The telephone was black with silver rims
The booth was cozier than the drugstore
There were a lot of creams and scissors and tubes
I needed for my body
I was interested in many coughdrops
I believe the drugstore keeper hated
his telephone and people like me
who ask for change so politely
I decided to keep to the same street
and go into the fourth drugstore
and call them again
STYLE
I don’t believe the radio stations
of Russia and America
but I like the music and I like
the solemn European voices announcing jazz
I don’t believe opium or money
though they’re hard to get
and punished with long sentences
I don’t believe love
in the midst of my slavery I
do not believe
I am a man sitting in a house
on a treeless Argolic island
I will forget the grass of my mother’s lawn
I know I will
I will forget the old telephone number
Fitzroy seven eight two oh
I will forget my style
I will have no style
I hear a thousand miles of hungry static
and the old clear water eating rocks
I hear the bells of mules eating
I hear the flowers eating the night
under their folds
Now a rooster with a razor
plants the haemophilia gash across
the soft black sky
and now I know for certain
I will forget my style
Perhaps a mind
