Well, death's been here
for a long
time --
it has a hell of a lot
to do with hell
and
suspicion of the eye
and the religious objects
and how I mourned
them
when they were made obscene
by my dwarf-heart's
doodle.
The chief ingredient
is mutilation.
And mud, day
after day,
mud like a ritual,
and the baby on the
platter,
cooked but still human,
cooked also with little
maggots,
sewn onto it maybe by somebody's mother,
the damn
bitch!
Even so,
I kept right on going on,
a sort of human
statement,
lugging myself as if
I were a sawed-off body
in
the trunk, the steamer trunk.
This became perjury of the
soul.
It became an outright lie
and even though I dressed the
body
it was still naked, still killed.
It was caught
in the
first place at birth,
like a fish.
But I play it, dressed it
up,
dressed it up like somebody's doll.
Is life something you
play?
And all the time wanting to get rid of it?
And further,
everyone yelling at you
to shut up. And no wonder!
People don't
like to be told
that you're sick
and then be forced
to
watch
you
come
down with the hammer.
Today life
opened inside me like an egg
and there inside
after considerable
digging
I found the answer.
What a bargain!
There was the
sun,
her yolk moving feverishly,
tumbling her prize --
and
you realize she does this daily!
I'd known she was a
purifier
but I hadn't thought
she was solid,
hadn't known
she was an answer.
God! It's a dream,
lovers sprouting in the
yard
like celery stalks
and better,
a husband straight as a
redwood,
two daughters, two sea urchings,
picking roses off my
hackles.
If I'm on fire they dance around it
and cook
marshmallows.
And if I'm ice
they simply skate on me
in
little ballet costumes.
Here,
all along,
thinking I was a
killer,
anointing myself daily
with my little poisons.
But
no.
I'm an empress.
I wear an apron.
My typewriter
writes.
It didn't break the way it warned.
Even crazy, I'm as
nice
as a chocolate bar.
Even with the witches'
gymnastics
they trust my incalculable city,
my corruptible
bed.
O dearest three,
I make a soft reply.
The witch comes
on
and you paint her pink.
I come with kisses in my
hood
and the sun, the smart one,
rolling in my arms.
So I
say Live
and turn my shadow three times round
to feed
our puppies as they come,
the eight Dalmatians we didn't
drown,
despite the warnings: The abort! The destroy!
Despite the
pails of water that waited,
to drown them, to pull them down like
stones,
they came, each one headfirst,
vblowing bubbles the color of
cataract-blue
and fumbling for the tiny tits.
Just last week,
eight Dalmatians,
3/4 of a lb., lined up like cord
wood
each
like a
birch tree.
I promise to love more if
they come,
because in spite of cruelty
and the stuffed railroad
cars for the ovens,
I am not what I expected. Not an
Eichmann.
The poison just didn't take.
So I won't hang around in
my hospital shift,
repeating The Black Mass and all of it.
I say
Live, Live because of the sun,
the dream, the excitable
gift.