Sing me a thrush, bone.
Sing me a nest of
cup and pestle.
Sing me a sweetbread fr an old grandfather.
Sing
me a foot and a doorknob, for you are my love.
Oh sing, bone bag man,
sing.
Your head is what I remember that Augusty
you were in love
with another woman but
taht didn't matter. I was the gury of your
bones, your fingers long and nubby, your
forehead a beacon,
bare as marble and I worried
you like an odor because you had not
quite forgotten,
bone bag man, garlic in the North End,
the book
you dedicated, naked as a fish,
naked as someone drowning into his
own mouth.
I wonder, Mr. Bone man, what you're thinking
of your
fury now, gone sour as a sinking whale,
crawling up the alphabet on
her own bones.
Am I in your ear still singing songs in the
rain,
me of the death rattle, me of the magnolias,
me of the
sawdust tavern at the city's edge.
Women have lovely bones, arms,
neck, thigh
and I admire them also, but your bones
supersede
loveliness. They are the tough
ones that get broken and reset. I
just can't
answer for you, only for your bones,
round rulers,
round nudgers, round poles,
numb nubkins, the sword of sugar.
I
feel the skull, Mr. Skeleton, living its
own life in its own
skin.
I would like to bury
all the hating
eyes
under the sand somewhere off
the North Atlantic and
suffocate
them with the awful sand
and put all their colors to
sleep
in that soft smother.
Take the brown eyes of my
father,
those gun shots, those mean muds.
Bury them.
Take
the blue eyes of my mother,
naked as the sea,
waiting to pull
you down
where there is no air, no God.
Bury them.
Take the
black eyes of my love,
coal eyes like a cruel hog,
wanting to
whip you and laugh.
Bury them.
Take the hating eyes of
martyrs,
presidents, bus collectors,
bank managers,
soldiers.
Bury them.
Take my eyes, half blind
and falling
into the air.
Bury them.
Take your eyes.
I come to the
center,
where a shark looks up at death
and thinks of my
heart
and squeeze it like a doughnut.
They'd like to take my
eyes
and poke a hatpin through
their pupils. Not just to
bury
but to stab. As for your eyes,
I fold up in front of
them
in a baby ball and you send
them to the State
Asylum.
Look! Look! Both those
mice are watching you
from
behind the kind bars.
This singing
is a kind of dying,
a
kind of birth,
a votive candle.
I have a dream-mother
who
sings with her guitar,
nursing the bedroom
with a moonlight and
beautiful olives.
A flute came too,
joining the five
strings,
a God finger over the holes.
I knew a beautiful woman
once
who sang with her fingertips
and her eyes were
brown
like small birds.
At the cup of her breasts
I drew
wine.
At the mound of her legs
I drew figs.
She sang for my
thirst,
mysterious songs of God
that would have laid an army
down.
It was as if a morning-glory
had bloomed in her
throat
and all that blue
and small pollen
ate into my
heart
violent and religious.
The day of fire is coming, the
thrush,
will fly ablaze like a little sky rocket,
the beetle
will sink like a giant bulldozer,
and at the breaking of the morning
the houses
will turn into oil and will in their tides
of fire be
a becoming and an ending, a red fan.
What then, man in your easy
chair,
of the anointment of the sick,
of the New
Jerusalem?
You will have to polish up the stars
with Bab-o and
find a new God
as the earth empties out
into the gnarled hands
of the old redeemer.
Many a miner has gone
into the deep
pit
to receive the dust of a kiss,
an ore-cell.
He has gone
with his lamp
full of mole eyes
deep deep and has brought
forth
Jesus at Gethsemane.
Body of moss, body of
glass,
body of peat, how sharp
you lie, emerald as heavy
as
a golf course, ruby as dark
as an afterbirth,
diamond as white
as sun
on the sea, coal, dark mother,
brood mother, let the sea
birds
bring you into our lives
as from a distant
island,
heavy as death.
Herbs, garlic,
cheese, please
let me in!
Souffles, salad,
Parker House rolls,
please let
me in!
Cook Helen,
why are you so cross,
why is your
kitchen verboten?
Couldn't you just teach me
to bake a
potato,
to bake a potato,
that charm,
that young
prince?
No! No!
This is my county!
You shout
silently.
Couldn't you just show me
the gravy. How you drill it
out
of the stomach of that bird?
Helen, Helen,
let me
in,
let me feel the flour,
is it blinding and
frightening,
this stuff that makes cakes?
Helen, Helen,
the
kitchen is your dog
and you pat it
and love it
and keep it
clean.
But all these things,
all these dishes of
things
come through the swinging door
and I don't know from
where?
Give me some tomato aspic, Helen!
I don't want to be
alone.
There they
are
drooping over the breakfast plates,
angel-like,
folding
in their sad wing,
animal sad,
and only the night
before
there they were
playing the banjo.
Once more the
day's light comes
with its immense sun,
its mother
trucks,
its engines of amputation.
Whereas last night
the
cock knew its way home,
as stiff as a hammer,
battering in with
all
its awful power.
That theater.
Today it is
tender,
a small bird,
as soft as a baby's hand.
She is the
house.
He is the steeple.
When they fuck they are God.
When
they break away they are God.
When they snore they are God.
In
the morning thet butter the toast.
They don't say much.
They are
still God.
All the cocks of the world are God,
blooming,
blooming, blooming
into the sweet blood of
woman.
Someone lives in a
cave
eating his toes,
I know that much.
Someone little
lives under a bush
pressing an empty Coca-Cola can against
his
starving bloated stomach,
I know that much.
A mokey had his
hands cut off
for a medical experiment
and his claws
wept.
I know that much.
I know that it is all
a matter of
hands.
Out of the mournful sweetness of touching
comes
love
like breakfast.
Out of the many houses come the
hands
before the abandonment of the city,
out of the bars and
shops,
a thin file of ants.
I've been abandoned out
here
under the dry stars
with no shoes, no belt
and I've
called Rescue Inc. -
that old-fashioned hot line -
no
voice.
Left to my own lips, touch them,
my own dumb eyes, touch
them,
the progression of my parts, touch them,
my own nostrils,
shoulds, breasts,
navel, stomach, mound, kneebone, ankle,
touch
them.
It makes me laugh
to see a woman in this
condition.
It makes me laugh for America and New York City
when
your hands are cut off
and no one answers the phone.
They sit in a
row
outside the kindergarten,
black, red, brown, all
with
those brass buckles.
Remember when you couldn't
buckle your
own
overshoe
or tie your own
overshoe
or tie your own
shoe
or cut your own meat
and the tears
running down like
mud
because you fell off your
tricycle?
Remember, big
fish,
when you couldn't swim
and simply slipped under
like
a stone frog?
The world wasn't
yours.
It belonged
to
the big people.
Under your bed
sat the wolf
and he
made a shadow
when cars passed by
at night.
They made you
give up
your nightlight
and your teddy
and your
thumb.
Oh overshoes,
don't you
remember me,
pushing
you up and down
in the winter snow?
Oh thumb,
I want a
drink,
it is dark,
where are the big people,
when will I
get there,
taking giant steps
all day,
each day
and
thinking
nothing of it?
The rain drums down like red ants,
each
bouncing off my window.
The ants are in great pain
and they cry
out as they hit
as if their little legs were only
stitche don
and their heads pasted.
And oh they bring to mind the grave,
so
humble, so willing to be beat upon
with its awful lettering and
the body lying underneath
without an umbrella.
Depression
is boring, I think
and I would do better to make
some soup and
light up the cave.
Let the flowers make a journey
on Monday so
that I can see
ten daisies in a blue vase
with perhaps one red
ant
crawling to the gold center.
A bit of the field on my
table,
close to the worms
who struggle blinding,
moving
deep into their slime,
moving deep into God's abdomen,
moving
like oil through water,
sliding through the good brown.
The
daisies grow wild
like popcorn.
They are God's promise to the
field.
How happy I am, daisies, to love you.
How happy you are
to be loved
and found magical, like a secret
from the sluggish
field.
If all the world picked daisies
wars would end, the
common cold would stop,
unemployment would end, the monetary
market
would hold steady and no money would float.
Listen
world.
if you'd just take the time to pick
the white flowers,
the penny heart,
all would be well.
They are so
unexpected.
They are as good as salt.
If someone had brought
them
to van Gogh's room daily
his ear would have stayed
on.
I would like to think that no one would die anymore
if we
all believed in daisies
but the worms know better, don't
they?
They slide into the ear of a corpse
and listen to his
great sigh.
One day He
tipped His top hat
and
walked
out of the room,
ending the argument.
He stomped
off
saying:
I don't give guarantees.
I was left
quite
alone
using up the darkness
I rolled up
my sweater,
up
in a ball,
and took it
to bed with me,
a kind of
stand-in
for God,
that washerwoman
who walks out
when
you're clean
but not ironed.
When I woke up
the
sweater
had turned to
bricks of gold.
I'd won the
world
but like a
forsaken explorer,
I'd lost
my
map.
Moist,
moist,
the heat leaking through the hinges,
sun baking the roof
like a pie
and I and thou and she
eating, working,
sweating,
droned up on the heat.
The sun as read as the cop car
siren.
The sun as red as the algebra marks.
The sun as red as
two electric eyeballs.
She wanting to take a bath in jello.
You
and me sipping vodka and soda,
ice cubes melting like the Virgin
Mary.
You cutting the lawn, fixing the machines,
all htis
leprous day and then more vodka,
more soda and the pond forgiving our
bodies,
the pond sucking out the throb.
Our bodies were
trash.
We leave them on the shore.
I and thou and she
swin
like minnows,
losing all our queens and kinds,
losing our hells
and our tongues,
cool, cool, all day that Sunday in July
when we
were young and did not look
into the abyss,
that God
spot.
Something
cold is in the
air,
an aura of ice
and phlegm.
All day I've built
a
lifetime and now
the sun sinks to
undo it.
The horizon
bleeds
and sucks its thumb.
The little red thumb
goes out
of sight.
And I wonder about
this lifetime with
myself,
this dream I'm living.
I could eat the sky
like an
apple
but I'd rather
ask the first star:
why am I
here?
why do I live in this house?
who's
responsible?
eh?
Darkness
as black as your
eyelid,
poketricks of stars,
the yellow mouth,
the smell of
a stranger,
dawn coming up,
dark blue,
no stars,
the
smell of a love,
warmer now
as authenic as soap,
wave after
wave
of lightness
and the birds in their chains
going mad
with throat noises,
the birds in their tracks
yelling into their
cheeks like clowns,
lighter, lighter,
the stars gone,
the
trees appearing in their green hoods,
the house appearing across the
way,
the road and its sad macadam,
the rock walls losing their
cotton,
lighter, lighter,
letting the dog out and
seeing
fog lift by her legs,
a gauze dance,
lighter,
lighter,
yellow, blue at the tops of trees,
more God, more God
everywhere,
lighter, lighter,
more world everywhere,
sheets
bent back for people,
the strange heads of love
and
breakfast,
that sacrament,
lighter, yellower,
like the yolk
of eggs,
the flies gathering at the windowpane,
the dog inside
whining for good
and the day commencing,
not to die, not to
die,
as in the last day breaking,
a final day digesting
itself,
lighter, lighter,
the endless colors,
the same old
trees stepping toward me,
the rock unpacking its
crevices,
breakfast like a dream
and the whole day to live
through,
steadfast, deep, interior.
After the death,
after
the black of black,
the lightness, -
not to die, not to die
-
that God begot.
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