Collected Poems (9 page)

this is even sweeter than mickey schwerner or fred hampton right?

even more tender than the cherokee nation or guatemala or greece

having their asses straightened for them isn’t it?

this is none of your oriental imitation

this is iowa corn grown

this is jersey tomato grown

washington salmon maryland crab

this is from children

who’d barely begun ingesting corruption

the bodies floating belly up like polluted fish in cambodia

barely tainting them

the black kids blown up in their churches

hardly souring them

their torments were so meager

they still thought about life

still struggled with urgency

and compassion

so

tender

2.

I’m sorry

I don’t want to hear anymore that the innocent farmer in ohio on guard duty means well but is fucked up by his politicians and raises his rifle out of some primal fear for his own life and his family’s and that he hates niggers hates them hates them because he is warped and deceived by events

and pulls the trigger

I’m sorry I don’t want to forgive him anymore

I don’t want to say he didn’t know what he was doing

because he knew what he was doing

because he didn’t pull the trigger once and run away screaming

they kept shooting the kids said

we thought they were blanks but they kept shooting and shooting

we were so scared

I don’t want to forgive the bricklayer from akron who might or might not hate his mother I don’t care or the lawyer or gas station attendant from cleveland who may or may not have had a bad childhood

I don’t care

I don’t want to know

I don’t want to hear anything about it

another kid said the rocks weren’t even reaching them!

I don’t want to understand why they did it

how could you?

just that

everything else is pure shit

3.

on the front page of the times a girl is screaming

she will be screaming forever

and her friend will lie there forever you wouldn’t know she wasn’t just sleeping in the sun except for the other screaming

and on the editorial page

“the tragic nature of the division of the country … the provocation undoubtedly was great and was also unpardonable…”

o my god

my god

if there was a way to purify the world who would be left?

there is a list

and it says

this person for doing this

and that person for doing nothing

and this person for not howling in rage

and that for desperately hanging on to the reasons the reasons

and

there is an avenger

who would be left?

who is there now who isn’t completely insane from all this?

who didn’t dream with me last night

of burning everything destroying everyone

of tearing pieces of your own body off

of coughing your language up and spitting it away like vomit

of wanting to start at the bottom of your house

breaking everything floor by floor

burning the pictures

tearing the mattresses up

smashing windows and chairs until nothing is left

and then the cars with a sledgehammer

the markets

the stores that sell things

the buses

the bridges into the city

the airports

the international harbors

the tall buildings crumpling like corpses

the theaters torn down to the bare stage

the galleries naked the bookstores like mouths open

there should be funerals in front of the white house

bones in the capitol

where do you stop?

how can we be like this?

4.

I remember what it was to come downstairs

and my daughter would be there crawling toward me as fast as she could

crying
HI DADDA HI DADDA

and what it was to bury my face in my wife’s breasts and forget

to touch a friend’s shoulder

to laugh

to take walks

5.

I don’t want to call anyone pig

meeting people who tell you they want war they hate communists

or somebody who’ll say they hate niggers spics kikes

and you still don’t believe they’re beyond knowing

because you feel comfortable with them even drawn to them

and know somehow that they have salvageable hearts

you try to keep hope

for a community that could contain both of you

so that you’d both be generous and loving

and find ways that didn’t need hatred and killing

to burn off the inarticulate human rage at having to die

I thought if I could take somebody like that in my arms

I could convince them that everyone was alone before death

but love saved us from living our lives reflexively with death

that it could happen

we would be naked now

we’d change now little by little

we’d be better

we would just be here

in this life

but it could be a delusion couldn’t it?

it could be like thinking those soldiers were shooting blanks

up until the last second standing there scared shitless

but inside

thinking americans don’t shoot innocent people!

I know it!

I learned it in school in the movies!

it doesn’t happen like this

and hearing a bullet slam into the ground next to you and the flesh

and every voice in your body saying o no no

and seeing your friend go down

half her head blown away

and the image of kennedy in back of the car

and of king

and the other kennedy

and wanting to explode o no no no no no

6.

not to be loaded up under the flopping bladewash the tubes sucking to be thrown out turning to flame burning on trees on grass on skin burning lips away breasts away genitals arms legs buttocks

not to be torn out of the pack jammed in the chamber belched out laid over the ground like a live fence of despair

not to fog down into the river where the fish die into the rice where the frogs die into the trees where the fruit dies the grain dies the leaves into the genes

into the generations

more black children

more red children

and yellow

not to be screaming

THE LARK. THE THRUSH.

THE STARLING.

(POEMS FROM ISSA)

[1983]

In the next life,

butterfly,

a thousand years from now,

we’ll sit like this

again

under the tree

in the dust,

hearing it, this

great thing.

*   *   *

I sit in my room.

Outside, haze.

The whole world

is haze

and I can’t figure out

one room.

*   *   *

So

mucked up with

kneading

dough she is

she has to use

her wrist to

push her hair back

from her eyes.

*   *   *

That the world

is going

to end someday

does not concern

the wren:

it’s time to

build your nest,

you build

your nest.

*   *   *

Spring: another

joke.

This run-down

house: me.

Go ahead, ask,

how’s

spring?

Average, just

average.

*   *   *

You’re two, that’s great.

Go ahead, laugh, crawl

around.

You’ll find

out,

you’ll see.

*   *   *

Winter,

damn,

again.

Same

frost, same

fire.

*   *   *

Listen carefully.

I’m meditating.

The only thing in my mind

right now

is the wind.

No, wait … the autumn

wind, that’s right,

the
autumn
wind!

*   *   *

The hail goes

dancing

into the fire.

The coal flares.

I watch the embers

going out, one

by

one.

*   *   *

What a sound his

shell made, that

big cockroach!
Crack!

like a church bell:

Crack!

Crack!

Crack!

*   *   *

They wash you

when

you’re born, then,

when you’re finished,

if you’re very lucky,

you get washed

again.

*   *   *

A holiday:

every

yard or

two, in

the grass,

among

the flowers,

along

the rushing

stream,

picnickers

sprawled.

*   *   *

What we are

given:

resignation.

What is

taken from us:

resignation.

It is ours that

we can see, do

see, must see

our own bones

bleaching

under the warm moon.

*   *   *

Baby, I don’t want

to tell you

again: you can’t go out

in weather like this.

Can’t you teach

yourself to play

checkers or

something?

*   *   *

The most excruciating

thing

I could imagine: to see,

the way

I am now,

the place I

was born

with all its

mist

blown away.

*   *   *

In the middle

of a bite of

grass,

the turtle stops

to listen for,

oh, an

hour, two

hours,

three hours …

*   *   *

When

you were small, I

put you

in

a swing, you

held

a flower.

Next thing

I

knew …

*   *   *

This is what,

at last, it is

to be

a human being.

Leaving nothing

out, not

one star, one

wren, one tear

out.

*   *   *

I’d forgotten and

how could I ever

have

my mother, peeling

the apple, giving me

the heart-

flesh.

*   *   *

That night,

winter,

rain,

the mountains.

No guilt. No

not-guilt.

Winter,

rain,

mountains.

*   *   *

I know

nothing anymore

of roads.

Winter

is a road,

I know,

but the body,

the beloved

body,

is it, too,

only a kind

of road?

*   *   *

The fleas, too,

have fled

my burned-down

house. Oh,

there you are,

old friend, and

oh, you, too,

old,

old friend.

*   *   *

It’s over now. I watch

the fire. I watch the firelight

wash

the wall. I watch

the shadow on

it of the woman.

I don’t

understand it, but

I watch, I

watch.

*   *   *

Did I write this

as I was

dying?

Did I really

write

this?

That I wanted to thank

the snow

fallen on my blanket?

Could I

have written

this?

WITH IGNORANCE

[1977]

The Sanctity

for Nick and Arlene de Credico

The men working on the building going up here have got these great,

little motorized wheelbarrows that’re supposed to be for lugging bricks and mortar

but that they seem to spend most of their time barrel-assing up the street in,

racing each other or trying to con the local secretaries into taking rides in the bucket.

I used to work on jobs like that and now when I pass by the skeleton of the girders

and the tangled heaps of translucent brick wrappings, I remember the guys I was with then

and how hard they were to know. Some of them would be so good to be with at work,

slamming things around, playing practical jokes, laughing all the time, but they could be miserable,

touchy and sullen, always ready to imagine an insult or get into a fight anywhere else.

If something went wrong, if a compressor blew or a truck backed over somebody,

they’d be the first ones to risk their lives dragging you out

but later you’d see them and they’d be drunk, looking for trouble, almost murderous,

and it would be frightening trying to figure out which person they really were.

Once I went home to dinner with a carpenter who’d taken me under his wing

and was keeping everyone off my back while he helped me. He was beautiful but at his house, he sulked.

After dinner, he and the kids and I were watching television while his wife washed the dishes

and his mother, who lived with them, sat at the table holding a big cantaloupe in her lap,

fondling it and staring at it with the kind of intensity people usually only look into fires with.

The wife kept trying to take it away from her but the old lady squawked

and my friend said, “Leave her alone, will you?” “But she’s doing it on purpose,” the wife said.

I was watching. The mother put both her hands on it then, with her thumbs spread,

as though the melon were a head and her thumbs were covering the eyes and she was aiming it like a gun or a camera.

Suddenly the wife muttered, “You bitch!” ran over to the bookshelf, took a book down —