I G N O R I N G T H E S W A N S • . .
Found once again shamelessly ignoring the swans who inflame the spectators on the shores of American rivers; found once again allowing the juicy contract to expire because the
telephone has a magic correspondence with my tapeworm;
found once again leaving the garlanded manhood in danger
of long official repose while it is groomed for marble in
seedily historic back rooms; found once again humiliating
the bank clerk with eye-to-eye wrestling, art dogma, lives
that loaf and stare, and other stage whispers of genius;
found once again the chosen object of heavenly longing
such as can ambush a hermit in a forest with visions of a
busy parking lot; found once again smelling mothball
sweaters, titling home movies, untangling Victorian salmon
rods, fanatically convinced that a world of sporty order is
just around the corner; found once again planning the ideal
lonely year which waits like first flesh love on a calendar of
third choices; found once again hovering like a twine-eating
kite over hands that feed me, verbose under the influence
of astrology; found one again selling out to accessible local
purity while Pentagon Tiffany evil alone can guarantee my
power; found once again trusting that my friends grew up
in Eden and will not harm me when at last I am armourless
and absolutely silent; found once again at the very beginning, veteran of several useless ordeals, prophetic but not seminal, the purist for the masses of tomorrow; found once
again sweetening life which I have abandoned, like a fired
zoo-keeper sneaking peanuts to publicized sodomized elephants; found once again flaunting the rainbow which demonstrates that I am permitted only that which I urgently
need; found once again cleansing my tongue of all possibilities, of all possibilities but my perfect one.
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I •93
W H E N I H E A R Y O U S I N G
When I hear you sing
Solomon
animal throat, eyes beaming
sex and wisdom
My hands ache from
I left blood on the doors of my home
Solomon
I am very alone from aiming songs
at God for
I thought that bes�de me there was no one
Solomon
194 I
H E W A S L A M E
He was lame
as a 3 legged dog
screamed as he came
through the fog
If you are the Light
give me a light
buddy
I A M T O O L O U D W H E N Y O U A R E G O N E
I am too loud when you are gone
I am John the Baptist, cheated by mere water
and merciful love, wild but over-known
John of honey, of time, longing not for
music, longing, longing to be Him
I am diminished, I peddle versions of Word
that don't survive the tablets broken stone
I am alone when you are gone
I 1 95
S O M E W H E R E I N M Y T R O P H Y R O O M . . .
Somewhere in my trophy room the crucifixion and other
sacrifices were still going on, but the flesh and nails were
grown over with rust and I could not tell where the flesh
ended and the wood began or on which wall the instruments were hung.
I passed by limbs and faces arranged in this museum like
hanging kitchen tools, and some brushed my arm as the
hallway reeled me in, but I pocketed my hands along with
some vulnerable smiles, and I continued on.
I heard the rooms 'behind me clamour an instant for my
brain, and once the brain responded, out of habit, weakly,
as if thinking someone else's history, and somewhere in that
last tune it learned that it was not the Queen, it was a
drone.
There ahead of me extended an impossible trophy: the
bright, great sky, where no men lived. Beautiful and empty,
now luminous with a splendour emanating from my own
flesh, the tuneless sky washed and washed my lineless face
and bathed in waves my heart like a red translucent stone.
Until my eyes gave out I lived there as my home.
Today I know the only distance that I came was to the
threshold of my trophy room. Among the killing instruments
