From Voca Me (2)

  * * *

“Because nobody loved me, I ate.

  I stuffed myself as though the food

was me, and that satisfied my hate.

  Make no mistake, I tasted good.”

“For months on end I’d barely move,

  wouldn’t do a thing more than eat

or piss or shit, or roughly smooth

  the bone from my stiffened meat.”

“I watched my son become a man,

  not me, envied his youth and vigor,

wanted what he could give a woman,

  not me, so I pulled the trigger.”

“Belief was my hunger, my need.

  A god collector, I was obsessed

with every man’s faith and creed,

  feeling nothing if not possessed.”

“Twelve and trembling behind the fender

  of my Olds, he wagged the twelve-gauge

at his father.  He cried at my tender

  scolding.  He fired at my rage.”

“I’d dance with old Death’s mother

  the dance we do on knees and chest.

I’d explain I was his brother

  and she’d clutch me to her breast.”

“Suns sit on the shoulders of the sky

  no more imperially than my head

floated above all others.  Asked why,

  I’d have told you why not instead.”

  * * *

“He-Who-is spoke and I obeyed,

  until a second voice, my own,

louder than the one to which it prayed,

  commanded, ‘Listen to me alone!’”

“I loved a bust of Beaudelaire.

  I understood its smile—awake

and lewd.  I saw it everywhere—

  idol of man for man’s sake.”

“Beside the swollen creek, we

   swore, strutting pubescent silk.

When the word was explained to me,

  I felt a kid fallen into milk.”

“I heard Daddy say Goddammit.

  I said it too.  And when

he went red swearing and hit

  me, I said Goddammit again.”

“The seventh day was God’s.  He rested.

  The eighth, less holy, made a circle.

On Sunday the power of God is arrested.

  On Monday a man can perform miracles.”

“My parents like two grim wraiths

  booing each other, trapped in a fun-

house that once was love and faith,

  bicker above the song of their grandson.”

“After my rape, before my murder,

  I saw blue eyes, a toothy grin,

and pale hatred, drained of ardor,

  that didn’t know where to begin.”

“Unfaithful?  I have never told

  another woman that I love her.

My marriage vow still holds,

  though I’ve had a hundred lovers.”

“‘Thou shalt not lie or steal?’

  I bought the oath of office,

and did both.  ‘A clever deal,’

  the papers said, ‘A man of promise.’”

“What about my neighbor’s husband?

  He considers me fair game.

Why not the other way around?

  The two, you say, are not the same?”

Note: This is two self-contained sections

from my long poem Voca Me (latin for "call me").

It is one of my "voices poems," in which

each stanza is spoken by a different

voice. More sections to follow.

from Voca Me

  * * *

“I hear a recurring note’s trace

  upon the air, but can’t for long

hold that sound as I race

  to catch up with the song.”

“It is eternal no.  The no

  is eliminated, so . . . 

and we are only yes.  I know

  this this.  Is this this also?”

“Today, the swaying tree made

  the wind make birds fly, swell

hearts, and songs of rejoicing fade.

  When it stopped, the birds fell.”

“If the combining of will and decision

  is the valence of faith—the choices

of the past acting upon one’s vision

  of the future—what are these voices?”

“I stood alone in a field of snow

  and watched a tree shatter the sun.

A voice said, ‘This is all you know—

  a dream and its interpretation.’”

“Sedated on the operating table,

  I ceased to be, or to be to be.

Duration after death is a fable,

  I later reasoned.”  “But is eternity

time?  We think it with our eyes.

  You did awaken after all.

What, moveless, countless, lies

  beyond the clockworks of your soul?”

  * * *

“There is a charm in the taste of tea,

  which makes it seem an ideal form,

that in repetition reveals the

  charm of tea to be the taste of form.”

“Every day I tried to find

  one thing through which spirit

that was my heart or god or mind

  could speak and make me quiet.”

“Welcome, Blossom.  Pink petals—

  pale, pale—white, shrivel

around your spent stigma, settle

  into earth without a shovel.”

“Continuum is continuum—

  at each vanishing point exist

space thought time vacuum

  exhaled upon a single axis.”

“The sun a rock among the canyon

  faces, rapids deafening quiet;

tracklessly, I wade.  The hidden

  shadow trembles.  Swifts riot.”

“The breath left my body for the clock

  and held it stopped.  When wind and rust

dissolved the clock . . . and our deadlock,

  my breath inhaled the air and dust.”

“Sunshine floods the room and red

   birds flash across the window frame.

There is no ease in joy.  The dead

  relax.  The mind dances like flame.”

Note: This is two self-contained sections

from my long poem Voca Me (latin for "call me").

It is one of my "voices poems," in which

each stanza is spoken by a different

voice. More sections to follow.

My Dear Udnie, Part Three of Three

"My Dear Udnie" is one of what I call my "voices poems." (The title comes from a painting by Francis Picabia.) This is part three of three. Each stanza is a separate voice, though not necessarily a separate person. I bought postcards of great paintings I'd seen at great museums and these stacked up on my writing desk. Eventually, I composed this poem with each stanza prompted by a single painting.

IX

I’m in diamonds.  I do my best to provide.

But last night my wife acted out a strange scene.

God knows she was absolutely pie-eyed.

Dressed only in a bow, she grabbed my thing!

Solitaire sprawled on the rug with the dog—

goddamned loneliness, card game, my burnt knees,

the wallpaper samples in that catalog!

He says he’s good when he isn’t with me!

I buy this bird.  It’s dead but soft.  Nice.  Soft.

My woman could make nothing of these others.

So many birds you’ve brought down from aloft.

Shut up!  I don’t bargain with her lovers.

 X

 These women never let us get things done.

It’s such a basic thing to hang a man

on a cross.  And he’s not even their son.

I suppose they must do what they can.

The women weary of calling their men

to lunch they’ve made in the golden hay fields.

Harvest is a working madness for them.

They eat, to the sound of scythes, poverty’s meal.

Hurry!  The night finds the darkness.  The sea

will empty before our lamps are lit!

The fish peck eyes that can no longer see.

Hungry, we work to milk our mother’s tit.

XI

 She is the only woman left who has her hair.

Alone, in that shattered window, she sits,

nourished by food she gets from god knows where,

while I lug starving corpses to the pits.

Come, Perfect Fool!  I’ll tell your fortune,

while my girls cut your purse, pick your pocket.

I predict a fall in self-satisfaction.

You have a brain, but your actions mock it.

The sockets in the skull have been worn to

pinholes.  The jaw is a flower of flakes

in a desert stretched from red hills to blue

lakes, blooming for a dead man’s dead wife’s sake.

XII

See?  Here she is.  No man held her life.

Barbed wire and bullets were to no avail.

How swift a bird to fly above the knife.

Her body is still warm.  Her eyes are pale.

Trees are a curse on the moon, which is far

and updateless, while they stand here and grow.

My eyes stir a whirlpool of dim stars;

Diving for death, I see her and follow.

Udnie, my dear one, I see you idealized—

A fervent virgin staring at a house.

You were more than that, I realize—

A god my fervent prayer could not arouse.

My Dear Udnie, Part Two of Three

"My Dear Udnie" is one of what I call my "voices poems." This is part two of three. WARNING: THIS CONTAINS SOME SUGGESTIVE LANGUAGE. Each stanza is a separate voice, though not necessarily a separate person. I bought postcards of great paintings I'd seen at great museums and these stacked up on my writing desk. Eventually, I composed this poem with each stanza prompted by a single painting.

V

She’s flat-chested and bald between her legs,

just like me.  Not exactly.  More tummy.

But she has three boys who moon and beg,

who don’t even care if she’s a dummy!

Sister says reflections off pump and pearl

will make a window of a girl’s dress.

I know boys who laugh with their eyes, so sure

of success—if not I, then others undress.

Yeah, they were naked all right, the whores,

jiggling, cooing, squatting, touching themselves.

About as exciting as two-by-fours.

I took a big one—boobs like swinging bells.

VI

I stretch every minute looking to see

that we’re still here beneath this crooked butte.

A short nap has creased my unworthy dreams.

Alone, she’d trade the sun her red suit.

I wonder what he’s like on trapeze?

She locks her legs about his waist and must

feel it.  That and the way he grabs her knees

And dives between them, flying with lust!

Later, she said, Lover, you are a top,

spinning madly.  Clear the floor and drill

the points of the compass until we drop

down blurred dimensions, dizzy, almost ill.

VII

Holding hands, the five dancers circle

on rippling grass, naked in spirit.

As the dance turns each dancer’s miracle,

the virgin breaks the ring without regret.

The truest is the dawn dream.  Fair bodies

bathe in cool waters, or pluck roses

for the golden basket.  Stirred, she flees

the crescent-moon-crowned bull’s hypnosis.

The King has said, “Her love is food for war.”

A slut fattens him daily for the job.

How they walk!  Their genitals must be sore.

In the tower, his Queen gives birth to sobs.

VIII

Pregnant, your belly grew longer, then round.

Your breasts too.  Painful for you.  Not for me.

I watched you sleeping nude and listened, found

a new life swimming in an ancient sea.

If there’s nothing but eyes to justify

her expense, what is all this darkness?

She ignores the child.  When I get mad, she cries.

Mother laughs, thinking, poetic justice.

Our breakfast room is a chapel of light

where my husband prays to the newspapers.

It has been years.  We no longer fight.

I serve him currant jelly with capers.

My Dear Udnie, Part One (of three)

 "My Dear Udnie" is one of what I call my "voices poems." Each stanza is a separate voice, though not necessarily a separate person. It was spurred by visits to great museums, including the Hirshorn Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Toledo Museum of Art, and the National Gallery. I bought postcards of great paintings I'd seen at each museum and these stacked up on my writing desk. Eventually, I composed this poem with each stanza prompted by a single painting. (The title, My Dear Udnie, is the name of a painting by Francis Picabia (the third image in section II.)

I

Your face is energy beauty expends

in the gilded bust green in blue lamplight.

Molded by thumbs, the lumpish moon ascends

to fright the sky and hush the dream of night.

Steeple, cornice, dome, gable, pyramid—

today I must speak to you in flat roofs,

simple boxes, as to a crown amid

capitals, monumental and aloof.

Who did these paintings in my studio?

I’ve kissed that flesh, rubbed it raw as roses.

Who did these paintings?  Do you know?

You’ve sat for me in similar poses?

II

It’s one thirty.  We should go to our homes.

Maybe next time we won’t just walk these streets,

adding to the shadows.  We’ll talk in poems,

let them distinguish the truth from deceit.

Lovers stare at themselves through a window—

faces motionless behind glass and frame.

Blinking unseen, they’re bored by what they know.

Either might break a smile and nothing change.

You are my private demon in this hell,

my love.  A lady who carries a fan,

soothingly forever saying farewell.

Give the fan to me and wave your hand.

III

All thought of you is memory in abstract—

congeries of blades and thudding saps.

A nice nose, long-licking tongue: discrete facts

hold harmless stupid phrases, futile haps.

You are like to god as stones multiplying arcs.

I don’t say this to anger you, but explain

the hard singularity of your remarks,

which leave me faithless on a pebbled plain.

We all dreamt deserts in rainbow clothes,

wanderers following mirages of love.

A lioness breathed on me, whispering oaths—

the moon’s kiss a slap of a limp glove.

IV

You see a candle in the mirror, cry

tears of a skull couched in a maiden’s lap.

Her breasts grow white and rigid, calcify—

orgasms crack in the cranial gap.

The life inside my soul is a black crow

kissed and stroked by flesh I can’t control.

No old boy, no new man is not my foe.

I give myself to each to char his soul.

New crystal, blown white hot from inside—

cool simplicity, single purposes.

It changes when faceted, like a bride—

innerness revealed in spectral surfaces.

Haiku: Moon

The autumn moon glides

on its blade of light - leaving

no scratch on the night.

The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), by Marcel Duchamp

 

Red lines pressed upon the large glass—

a clear field where small acts take place.

Her gaze lost in three tissues of cloud,

her waist in stays closing off the air,

she’s mad and will not greet her suitors.

Beyond the street—dust collecting in homes’

new windows, grit loosening from shingles.

She watches children teach birds to kneel.

Her priest instructs:  In prayer you whistle

because god grows old and only birds

can make a sound to pierce his tired ear.

Oaken wainscoting, parquet floors, the house

beneath a coat of white paint; white curtains

adorn the flat shoulders of the window seat,

where she sat as a child, her back to the street,

and memorized the rattle’s conversation.

The pad of flesh between her lips dances:

Tell us, Old Town, the color of your buildings,

like sawdust of the ancient windbreak blighted,

shown no pity by the time, taken at the fullness

of its usefulness, and what will bring it back?

Show us trees descending staircases.

Explain the wind.  Don’t show us what it blows.

One man will know the whiteness of her body.

It will cost money to fill her with his fluid.

Shirking his vigil duty, a drunk male

slips from his tin coat and runs away—

his scream knocks a cloud out of the sky.

The other eight, glazed by window sweat,

spin in place, fool with spoons, sip

from hot cups the taste of her nipples.

Beneath the floor hard earth holds back

the odor that aspires to ghosthood and hopes

one day to mount the basement steps.

Note: The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass),

by Marcel Duchamp, is installed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.