Poems 1959-2009 (42 page)

Midnight

Milan

Mirror Full of Stars

Mr. Delicious

Mood Indigo

Morphine

Mother Nature

Mu'allaqa

MV Agusta Rally, Cascina Costa, Italy

My Poetry

My Tokyo

Nectar

Negro Judge, A

New Cosmology, The

New Frontier, The

New Woman, The

New Year's Day, 2004

Night Sky, The

Nigra Sum 1968

Noon

Nothing Will

“Not to Be Born Is Obviously Best of All,”

November

November 24, 1963

October

Ode to Spring

On Being Debonair

One Hundred

On Wings of Song

Opposite of a Dark Dungeon, The

Organized Religion

Our Gods

Ovid,
Metamorphoses
X

Owl You Heard, The

Pain Management

pH

Pierre Hotel, New York, 1946, The

Poem

Poem by the Bridge at Ten-Shin

Pol Pot

Portia Dew

Prayer

Pressed Duck

Pretty Girl, A

Puberty

Quantum Mechanics

Racer

Racine

Rackets

Rain in Hell

Recessional

Red Flower, A

Red Guards of Love

Resumption of Nuclear Testing in the South Pacific, The

Rilke

Ritz, Paris, The

Robert Kennedy

Room and the Cloud, The

Row of Federal Houses, A

Royal Palm, The

Scotland

Seal, The

Second Coming, The

September

Serpent, The

Sex

Sickness, The

“Sii romantico, Seidel, tanto per cambiare,”

Song

Song: “The Swollen River Overthrows Its Banks,”

Song for Cole Porter, A

Sonnet

Soul Mate, The

Special Relativity

Spin

Spring

Spring

Springtime

Stanzas

Star, The

Star Bright

Starlight

Stars

Stars above the Empty Quarter, The

St. Louis, Missouri

Storm, The

Stroke

Summer

Sunlight

Sunrise

Supersymmetry

Take Me to Infinity

Tenth Month, The

Thanksgiving Day

That Fall

The

This New Planetarium

To Die For

To My Friend Anne Hutchinson

To Robert Lowell and Osip Mandelstam

To Start at End

To the Muse

Trip, The

True Story

Twittering Ball, A

Universes

Untitled

Vampire in the Age of AIDS, A

Venus

Venus Wants Jesus

Vermont

Victory

Violin

Walk There, The

Wanting to Live in Harlem

Wanting to Live in Harlem

War of the Worlds, The

We Have Ignition

Weirdly Warm Day in January

What Are Movies For?

What One Must Contend With

White Butterflies

White Tiger, A

Who the Universe Is

Widower, A

Yankee Doodle

Year Abroad, A

Years Have Passed

A baby elephant is running along the ledge across

Above the Third World, looking down on a fourth

A can of shaving cream inflates

A cat has caught a mouse and is playing

A coconut can fall and hit you on the head

A daughter loved her father so much

A dog named Spinach died today

A fall will come that's damp and delicate

A fat girl bows gravely like a samurai

A football spirals through the oyster glow

A gerbil running on an exercise wheel whirs away the hours

Alive. Yes and awake. Flowers

A man comes in from the whirl

A man is masturbating his heart out

A man picks up a telephone to hear his messages

A naked woman my age is a total nightmare

An angel's on his knees in front of her

And isn't it

And the angel of the Lord came to Mary and said

And they overwhelm you and force

And when the doctor told me that I could have died

Another muse appeared, but dressed in black

Another perfect hour of emptiness

Antonioni walks in the desert shooting

Anything and everyone is life when two

Anything is better than this

A pink stick of gum unwrapped from the foil

A rapist's kisses tear the leaves off

A river of milk flows gently down the Howard Street gutter

A row of Federal houses with one missing

A shallow, brutal flood of energy

As he approaches each tree goes on

As he approaches each tree goes on

A slight thinness of the ankles

A stag lifts his nostrils to the morning

A terrorist rides the rails underwater

At night, when she is fast asleep

A twittering ball of birds

A window sighs

A woman waits on a distant star she is traveling to

A woman watches the sunrise in her martini

A young aristocrat and Jew and German

Below the window wine-washed Rome

Blessed is the childhood sunlight

Brought to the surface from the floor of the ocean

But we are someone else. We're born that way

Caneton à la presse at the now extinct Café Chauveron

City of neutered dogs

Clematis paniculata
sweetens one side of Howard Street

Cold drool on his chin, warm drool in his lap, a sigh

Cosmopolitans at the Paradise

Dapper in hats

Dawn. Leni Riefenstahl

Decapitated, he looks much the same

Do they think they are being original when they say

Drinking and incest and endless ease

Each June there is a memorial Mass

East Hampton Airport is my shepherd

Eternal life begins in June

Even her friends don't like her

Everyone knows that the moon

Fifth Avenue has the flickers, heat

Freddy Dew was Portia's younger brother

God begins. The universe will soon

God made human beings so dogs would have companions

Great-grandson of George Boole as in Boolean algebra

Gulls spiral high above

Half Japanese, half Jewish

Hart Crane wrote
The Bridge—

“Have the bristles at an angle and gently

He discovered he would have to kill

He moves carefully away from the extremely small pieces

Herbert Brownell was the attorney general

Here I am, not a practical man

Her hobby is laughter

Her lighting all the candles late at night

Her name I may or may not have made up

He still reads his paper in there; the john's what he comes home for

His dick is ticking …

His space suit is his respirator breathing him

Holding his breath, he watched the whole wing flex

How many breasts a woman has depends

How small your part

Hundreds stand strangely

Huntsman indeed is gone from Savile Row

I am presenting

I am pushing the hidden

I attend a concert I can ruin

I brought a stomach flu with me on the train

I can only find words for

I come from

I could only dream, I could never draw

I'd been so seized by passion for this delectable lover

I describe you

I'd had a haircut at Molé

I do

I don't believe in anything, I do

I don't believe in anything, I do

I don't believe in anything, I do

I don't want to remember the Holocaust

I enter the center

I fly to Paris with the English language

If you're a woman turning fifty

I get a phone call from my dog who died

I had a question about the universe

I have a dream

I like motorcycles, the city, the telephone

I live a life of laziness and luxury

I look at Broadway in the bitter cold

I look out the window: spring is coming

I'm a liar with a lyre. Kiss me, life!

I'm back at Claridge's, room

I'm having a certain amount of difficulty

I'm seeing someone and

I'm waiting in my urine specimen in the cup provided

Infinity was one of many

In paradise on earth each angel has to work

Inside the dining room it was snowing

In the middle

Into the emptiness that weighs

Into the emptiness that weighs

I often go to bed with a book

I once loved

I own nothing. I own a watch

I ride a racer to erase her

I sat in my usual place with my back to the corner, at the precious corner table

I saw the moon in the sky at sunset over a river pink as a ham

I see a first baseman's mitt identical to mine

I shaved my legs a second time

I spend most of my time not dying

I spend most of my time not dying

Is there intelligent life in the universe?

I stick my heart on a stick

I still lived, and sat there in the sun

Itching from Kotex pads, from green, polluted perch

I think you do

It is

It isn't every day, but most

It is raining on one side

It is the invisible

It is the morning of the universe

It is time to lose your life

I travel further than

It sang without a sound: music that

I turn from Yeats to sleep, and dream of Robert Kennedy

It used to be called the Mayfair

It was a treatment called

It was summer in West Gloucester

I've never been older

I wake because the phone is really ringing

I want to date-rape life. I kiss the cactus spines

I was the only child

I was thinking about dogs

I woke in the middle

Japanese schoolgirls in their school uniforms with their school chaperones

Kitsy and Bitsy and Frisky and Boo

Literally the most expensive hotel in the world

Monsoon is over but it's raining

More than one woman at a time

Moshi-moshi. (Hello.)

Mother Nature walked from Kenya

My Christmas is covered

My dog is running in his sleep

My face had been sliced off

My last summer on earth

My life

My own poetry I find incomprehensible

My tiny Pitts

Native Americans were still Indians

Never again to wake up in the blond

Noël Coward sweeps into a party late in 1928

None of the Above

Nothing is human or alien at this altitude

Nothing is pure at 36,000 feet either

Now the green leaves of Irish Boston fly or wither

Oh never to be yourself

Older than us, but not by that much, men

One was blacker

Past nine and still snowing

People in their love affairs

Phineas has turned

Phineas is crossing the pont des Arts

Pictures of violins in the Wurlitzer collection

Pictures of violins in the Wurlitzer collection

Razzle-dazzle on the surface, wobbled– Jello-O sunlight

Red

Reginald Fincke was his name

Root canal is talking

Sagaponack swings the Atlantic around its head

Seeing you again

She loves me? She loves me not?

Shirts wear themselves out being worn

Sixty years after, I can see their smiles

Sky-blue eyes

Someone is wagging a finger in her face—
Charlotte!

So now you've fettered that sweet bride

Suddenly I had to eat

Suddenly the pace

Sunset rolls out the red carpet

That wasn't it

That was the song he found himself singing

The ants on the kitchen counter stampede toward ecstasy

The attitude of green to blue is love

The baby born dead

The bald still head is filled with that grayish milk—

The beauty in his arms could kill him easily

The beauty of the boy had twisted

The best way not to kill yourself

The big jet screamed and was hysterical and begged to take off

The body on the bed is made of china

The book of nothingness begins

The bowl of a silver spoon held candlelight

The child stands at the window, after his birthday party

The cord delivers electricity

The darkness coming from the mouth

The elephant's trunk uncurling

The endangered bald eagle is soaring

The first is take the innards out when you

The golden light is white

The golden person curled up on my doormat

The gold watch that retired free will was constant dawn

The homeless are blooming like roses

The honey, the humming of a million bees

The horsefly landing fatly on the page

The images received are

The innocence of the tornado

The instrument is priceless

The intubated shall be extubated and it rains green

The irrigation system wants it to be known it
irrigates

The juice glass throbs against his lips

The lagoon of the biggest atoll in the world

The leopard attacks the trainer it

The man in bed with me this morning is myself, is me

The Man of La Mamma is a tenor as brave as a lion

The Master Jeweler Joel Rosenthal, of the Bronx and Harvard

The most beautiful power in the world has buttocks

The murderer has been injecting her remorselessly

The opposite of everything

The owl you heard hooting

The perfect body of the yoga teacher

The perfect petals

The poem as a human torch. I burn. Burns out

The poet stands on blue-veined legs, waiting for his birthday to be over