who resigned in 41?
Wipe that smirk off your face.
Captain Marvel signed the whip contract.
Joe Palooka manufactured whips.
Li’l Abner packed the whips in cases.
The Katzenjammer Kids thought up experiments.
Mere cogs,
Peekaboo Miss Human Soap.
It never happened.
O castles on the Rhine.
O blond SS.
Don’t believe everything you see in museums.
I said WIPE THAT SMIRK including
the mouth-foam of superior disgust.
I don’t like the way you go to work every morning.
How come the buses still run?
How come they’re still making movies?
I believe with a perfect faith in the Second World War.
I am convinced that it happened.
I am not so sure about the First World War.
The Spanish Civil War – maybe.
I believe in gold teeth.
I believe in Churchill.
Don’t tell me we dropped fire into cribs.
I think you are exaggerating.
The Treaty of Westphalia has faded like a lipstick
smudge on the Blarney Stone.
Napoleon was a sexy brute.
Hiroshima was Made in Japan out of paper.
I think we should let sleeping ashes lie.
I believe with a perfect faith in all the history
I remember, but it’s getting harder and harder
to remember much history.
There is sad confetti sprinkling
from the windows of departing trains.
I let them go. I cannot remember them.
They hoot mournfully out of my daily life.
I forget the big numbers,
I forget what they mean.
I apologize to the special photogravure section
of a 1945 newspaper which began my education.
I apologize left and right.
I apologize in advance to all the folks
in this fine wide audience for my tasteless closing remarks.
Braun, Raubal and him
(I have some experience in these matters),
these three humans,
I can’t get their nude and loving bodies out of my mind.
THE BUS
I was the last passenger of the day,
I was alone on the bus,
I was glad they were spending all that money
just getting me up Eighth Avenue.
Driver! I shouted, it’s you and me tonight,
let’s run away from this big city
to a smaller city more suitable to the heart,
let’s drive past the swimming pools of Miami Beach,
you in the driver’s seat, me several seats back,
but in the racial cities we’ll change places
so as to show how well you’ve done up North,
and let us find ourselves some tiny American fishing village
in unknown Florida
and park right at the edge of the sand,
a huge bus pointing out,
metallic, painted, solitary,
with New York plates.
LAUNDRY
I took a backward look
As I walked down the street
My wife was hanging laundry
Sheet after sheet after sheet
She ran them down the clothesline
Like flags above a ship
Her mouth was full of clothespins
They twisted up her lip
At last I saw her ugly
Now I could not stay
I made an X across her face
But a sheet got in the way
Then the wind bent back
This flag of armistice
I made the X again
As a child repeats a wish
The second X I drew
Set me up in trade
I will never find the faces
For all goodbyes I’ve made
THE REST IS DROSS
We meet at a hotel
with many quarters for the radio
surprised that we’ve survived as lovers
not each other’s
but lovers still
with outrageous hope and habits in the craft
which embarrass us slightly
as we let them be known
the special caress the perfect inflammatory word
the starvation we do not tell about
We do what only lovers can
make a gift out of necessity
Looking at our clothes
folded over the chair
I see we no longer follow fashion
and we own our own skins
God I’m happy we’ve forgotten nothing
and can love each other
for years in the world
HOW THE WINTER GETS IN
I ask you where you want to go
you say nowhere
but your eyes make a wish
An absent chiropractor
you stroke my wrist
I’m almost fooled into
greasy circular snores
when I notice your eyes
sounding the wall for
dynamite points
like a doctor at work on a TB chest
Nowhere you say again in a kiss
go to sleep
First tell me your wish
Your lashes startle on my skin
like a seismograph
An airliner’s perishing drone
pulls the wall off our room
like an old band-aid
The winter comes in
and the eyes I don’t keep
tie themselves to a journey
like wedding tin cans
Ways Mills
November 1963
PROPAGANDA
The coherent statement was made
by father, the gent with spats to
keep his shoes secret. It had to
do with the nature of religion and
the progress of lust in the twentieth
century. I myself have several
statements of a competitive
coherence which I intend to spread
around at no little expense. I
love the eternal moment, for
instance. My father used to remark,
doffing his miniature medals, that
there is a time that is ripe for
everything. A little extravagant,
Dad, I guess, judging by values.
Oh well, he’d say, and the whole
world might have been the address.
OPIUM AND HITLER
Several faiths
bid him leap –
opium and Hitler
let him sleep.
A Negress with
an appetite
helped him think
he wasn’t white.
Opium and Hitler
made him sure
the world was glass.
There was no cure
for matter
disarmed as this:
the state rose on
a festered kiss.
Once a dream
nailed on the sky
a summer sun
while it was high.
He wanted a
blindfold of skin,
he wanted the
afternoon to begin.
One law broken –
nothing held.
The world was wax,
his to mould.
No! He fumbled
for his history dose.
The sun came loose,
his woman close.
Lost in a darkness
their bodies would reach,
the Leader started
a racial speech.
FOR ANYONE DRESSED IN MARBLE
The miracle we all are waiting for
is waiting till the Parthenon falls down
and House of Birthdays is a house no more
and fathers are unpoisoned by renown.
The medals and the records of abuse
can’t help us on our pilgrimage to lust,
but like whips certain perverts never use,
compel our flesh in paralysing trust.
I see an orphan, lawless and serene,
standing in a corner of the sky,
body something like bodies that have been,
but not the scar of naming in his eye.
Bred close to the ovens, he’s burnt inside.
Light, wind, cold, dark – they use him like a bride.
WHEELS, FIRECLOUDS
I shot my eyes through the drawers of your empty coffins,
I was loyal,
I was one who lifted up his face.
FOLK
flowers for hitler the summer yawned
flowers all over my new grass
and here is a little village
they are painting it for a holiday
here is a little church
here is a school
here are some doggies making love
the flags are bright as laundry
flowers for hitler the summer yawned
I HAD IT FOR A MOMENT
I had it for a moment
I knew why I must thank you
I saw powerful governing men in black suits
I
