Nobody is free
to make shadows with the moon.
Nobody is free.
Nobody’s Nature
Nobody, walking the woods in wonder,
Pauses to gaze on a napping beauty;
Then crash discordances of thunder.
After a pale fragment is found under
Leaves, and the news broadcast, there will be
Nobody walking the woods in wonder.
Strangers, hitchhikers, newlyweds blunder
Into the park, curious why it’s empty.
Then roar the livid crowds of thunder.
When the storm has ripped eight lives asunder,
Washed the park of human life, you’ll see
Nobody walking the woods in wonder.
Nobody doesn’t destroy to plunder,
But loves to drown out the terrified plea
With ten drumming fingers of thunder.
Soon, in from the world, some fool will wander,
Trusting the anonymity of trees.
Shudder to hear footfalls of thunder—
Nobody walking the woods in wonder.
Nobody On a Dead Man
My dear, dead man,
You old woman!
Why didn’t you run?
True, like the sun,
I’d shoot you with my gun,
But a knife’s more fun.
Lullaby
And goodbye,
Enjoy your tight sleep
Without a peep,
You’re buried deep.
Your blood and dirt
Soiled my shirt!
No more to be said.
I knew there was reason
And no treason
In cutting your throat--
You tore my coat!
I know how to kill
With some skill.
No question of will,
Each development
Or evil,
But I feel ill
When I can’t spill
Red blood and kill.
Some love money,
Others go to sea,
Make national policy,
Or teach psychology,
Build homes,
Or write long poems.
My work is the same
Little game.
We’re all willing
To make a killing.
Most do it trading,
Sadly evading
The truth applied
With pride
And genocide
Worldwide.
But you’re dead –
A body and a head –
No more to be said.
To be remembered
For being dismembered.
I’ll relish recalling
Your pathetic bawling.
Every moment
Of your torment,
Each development
Of the event
Your death meant –
Nothing – but sent
Me reeling to a future
Exquisitely purer.
Let other men pray.
I kill to be free
Of meaningless memory.
Amen, I say!
Nobody Before Guernica
First the horse’s eye caught his eye,
Then rioting of eyes, mouths, and blood.
Those in other rooms he’d wandered by,
This picture he understood:
A limp infant at a mother’s breast,
A broken sword and a man’s last breath
(A sanctuary of unrest
Where a prayer brings a man his death).
I know a room this fellow dreams.
That accountant, his wife, his boy.
This guy scribbles what a child screams.
What I make, no man can destroy.
I should call on him today.
Nobody yawned and walked away.
Nobody in Love
Moved, but also made by love, her white hand,
Caressing, gave what he could not have given her.
Her eyes were channels to the promised land,
Not land, he’d learned, but deep blue river.
She said, “The one evil word is ‘Never,’
And, “The only honest promise is a tear,”
And, “Nothing, no, Love, nothing will sever
Our love, unless our love of God disappears.”
But the answer to her prayers did not appear.
His body remained her virgin sister.
Even after the slap, she knew no fear;
Through his bedroom blew a human twister.
He kept the body until it turned black.
A small boy found it in a clothing sack.
The Divine Nobody
I
The cracked walls seep. The commode overflows.
A spider spins her thin thread from the ceiling
And drops herself low, swinging where the dust glows.
Curled up on his cot, Nobody broods, feeling
A red ant crawl along the rim of his ear.
His head aches from the prison church bell’s pealing.
He sees his blind little sister’s awkward leer
The night she nakedly stumbled to his bed,
Stirring him again with the limp worm of fear.
“It’s Mother! She said to!” That’s what she had said.
Would having liked to, he could not believe her.
Either way, Pop would still have cut off her head.
Nobody scratches his legs—hair matted fur
Where peregrinate lice bite, breed, and make nests;
With fingers, Nobody foregoes their torture.
Never was there another one with such breasts.
Smaller or larger, but never quite like those.
Not one body could compare, of all my guests.
Scene: dark room, sofa, table, chairs, and a rose
Without a stem, soaking in a coffee cup;
Above the fireplace, a quiver and two bows.
On the sofa sleeps a German shepherd pup,
Dreaming and drooling on a clear, crinkly sheet.
On the floor is a book the dog chewed up.
A couple enters. He offers her a seat.
He opens a bottle and pours out a drink.
He hands her the gin and says, “Sweets for the sweet!”
He feels the blood in his brain think, think, think!
II
For Nobody, God is opposite action,
What he considers impossibility,
And in the mouths of others, a distraction.
The Bible excuses man’s civility,
For which he feels a secret outrage and shame.
For only in death is there divinity.
If He is or isn’t, I am still the same.
I do what I do because it pleases me.
He is only a proud son bearing my name.
If He were truly as free as I am free,
He’d be the tool of himself, as I am mine.
And should we meet, we’d agree to disagree.
Nobody broods upon the water and wine,
Upon Lazarus and the resurrection.
I am the man closest to Him in my time,
Waiting to die in a house of correction.
III
The sunlight angles beyond the window niche.
He brushes a cobweb from his face and rolls
Off his cot. He stumbles, groping for the switch.
The light bulb goes on and goes out. “Damn their souls!”
Nobody shouts, “How do I read the Bible,
You bastards! Do you think I’m some breed of mole?”
“I would not be one accused of such libel,”
Says someone in the room, who starts to chuckle.
“But blind and buried alive, you’re not idle.”
Tensed to pounce, Nobody feels his knees buckle,
His lungs deflate on stale air like a balloon,
And then the liquefaction of his knuckles.
He collapses on the floor, fighting a swoon.
Standing in the twilight a mannish shadow
Hugs itself, eyes a mockery of the moon.
“You don’t recognize me? Don’t pretend to know?
Remember the night the three rivers flooded?
You helped my wife and me climb through a window.
“Our new living room was a river of mud.
You offered to help us to bail the water,
Then you raised the flood with our bodies and blood.”
“I particularly enjoyed the slaughter
That night,” Nobody snarls, “and your screaming wife.
I was sorry you didn’t have a daughter.”
“I’ve always loved the man who gambles with life,”
Says the specter, “Only he can savor
The steam that rises from the embedded knife.”
Nobody: “I’d rather show you my razor.”
The visitor laughs. “I am not what I seem.
You can’t slit the throat of your Lord and Savior.”
Nobody: “Dear God, then, tell me what you mean.”
In the shadow’s hand appears a sword, bright blue
And as long as a man. “This is no dream,”
He whispers, “And it will cut a man in two.”
The sword pierces Nobody. “The me you killed,
Killed a thousand girls. I was so proud of you.”
Nobody touches the blade. “Your blood is spilled,
And its flowing is both birth and baptism.
Your arrogance has my arrogance fulfilled.”
The spirit flickers out with its catechism.
Limbs restored, Nobody, no longer afraid,
Stands up in the afterglow of an orgasm.
Remembering what the old Bible stories said,
He laughs and shouts his deepened understanding:
“Now all men are made in the image of God!
We who are begin, begin with His ending!”
Nobody’s Interview
Who knows how long a man can live?
Mom said I was born in one minute.
I might kill you in less with my bow.
You all smell like a dead man’s wind.
Well, make me something folks can read.
You follow like women, I’ll lead.
The first time? With a pipe of lead.
Like television, I am live!
A newspaper shaken to be read!
A year rolled into a minute!
Then I wind the neck with wire, wind
And teach that fellow how to bow.
Then I learned to bend a bow.
Not enough blood with a pipe of lead,
No screaming like a vicious wind
When the arrow sucks, quivering, live,
And proves a minute is a minute.
Now that’s a book that I can read.
You might like to know my Pop read.
His head would shake and nod and bow.
“My brains will dry up any minute,”
Pop would say. “Forget books! They lead
Men to death like sheep. None will live,
‘Cause God gave you their clocks to wind!”
Mom taught me to sniff girls like wind,
How in some honey’s eyes to read
The places where her passions live,
And when’s the time to kneel and bow,
Distract her from the pipe of lead.
Mom taught me to choke each minute.
Who did I kill? Just a minute!
Not while those damn tape machines wind.
I won’t give you the tiniest lead.
The graveyards only I can read.
And you will never see my bow
Until I’m seen on TV live.
But I lead you where there is no “live.”
The time to live is but a minute.
A minute of juice, my head will bow,
But more arrows from my bow will wind,
Like the wind! My death people have read,
Soon they’ll read of more pipes of lead.
Nobody’s Poetry
When the waning moon
Is still full, Nobody knows
It for a pale wound.
By each white dying body grows
What I call my gallows rose.
Nobody’s Death
Every man who’s lived to kill dies waiting
In crowded rooms, where people wonder why
He lived, and they, so lucky, didn’t die.
With mumbling priest and dumb bailiff stating
His crimes and just punishment, he dies waiting
For the thunder and cracking of the sky,
The moment when his brains begin to fry,
When this world and the next grapple, mating.
Divide hatred by fear—no quotient:
He wriggled in his straps, strangled for breath,
Impressed by uncontrollable motion.
Finally, the draining of an ocean,
Nobody plunged the dark sex of death—
Nobody else not empty of emotion.
Nobody in Hell
Nobody knows what seed death sows,
What eerie gardens eternity grows,
What rootless shoots from tarry clay
Sprout wild and gray. No one can say
Nobody knows.
Is he broadcast below like crows
On a dark field, to eat what grows,
Driving off dumb, exhausted jays?
Nobody knows.
Does he hop the mazy furrows
To Hell’s heartland, where a flower glows,
Leaving the hot, cinders of hay
To his fellows? Follow that ray
And devour death’s corundum rose,
Nobody knows.
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