At the War Office, London

                          I
Last year I called this world of gaingivings
The darkest thinkable, and questioned sadly
If my own land could heave its pulse less gladly,
So charged it seemed with circumstance that brings
                    The tragedy of things

                        II
Yet at that censured time no heart was rent
Or feature blanched of parent, wife or daughter
By hourly posted sheets of scheduled slaughter;
Death waited Nature’s wont, Peace smiled unshent
                        From Ind to Occident.

out came the bottle
and up went the skirt
the thrust of these thoughts
on a summer morning
held for youth as coffee brewed
a rain on Sunday soft
enough to darken concrete
the leaves develop like Polaroids
first in light and then in rain
the world, the fire, bloomed
when his hand touched air
and he said bird and lark
shot up from the grass
the land beneath the eyes took shape
groggy continents sharpened out mountains
blinked and their blue expanse of lakes
opened to see the stars above
and blushed to see the first sun
but creation is so soon marred by toilets
contrails circle the planet
no amount of Mars can distill or drain
the death and he contains multitudes
while Venus likes to find her others
but walks alone, mostly, but for a few
poets. The morning gives way and soon
an ordinary round of robins leaves
worm pecking for shade
and cardinals cheep and whistle  to
each other bleak pronouncements
while around St Francis angels of the earth
gather to gossip about his halo

If my father calls I go
Among strange letters of a foe

I tread the ladder of his breath
Ascend my son he says to rest

I cannot hold the bird in place
And see no throne or face

A voice across the valley goes
It startles flocks of crows

A pack of ruffled black arises
Scatters over sun’s disguises

Where my father hides his blue
Mane of fire in the true

Remains of silent corps pass by
Burned banners tattered on the sky

Buried in the soldiers’ brains
Stores of gracious April rains

That water cinders dirt and soot
And sweeten the discarded root

Coiled up in flesh
Wed to nothingness

lately

collisions

with walls.

sharp touches sharp

and soft on soft

always what should be

but not now

nor ever really

like that.

sometimes sharp on soft

collisions.

sometimes hot

like a stove

not like:

did you see

him? i’ll take

one of those;

or hear about

these collisions

they have seen

and paid to see

excited by

rather

thrilled to death

it’s the dry face again

and dark moves

around me

touch soft to sharp

to see what would pop

and what would not

stays, o.k.?

2.

buddy at the loft all night

m.d.a. and dancing

mad, unshaved, uncaged

mouth open wide

screaming to blow

dancing to go bang

to go bang to go bang

buddy outrageous

swishy pasty fat buddy

with a glass full of remy

and twelve marlboros

filling up ashtrays

to all day lucy

strange demented buddy

pasty, thin, unshaved

eyes like grey quarks

of despair

dancing like an ass

unable afraid buddy

busted open from within

busted open by doctors

by the flea

wretched half-alive flea

snorts up his d.n.a.

snorts his brain through its

half-alive flea nose

seizes big unshaved buddy

by the hair

and beats him to the ground

this fucking half alive flea

dragged him over the bones of friends

dragged him through glass

through his own shit

through headlights

over asphalt, black snow banks

over bricks and tires

and through the dog grey air

of the river,

by the dump of potter’s field

in march 1994 he was forty five

with wrecked birds all around him.3.

i couldn’t stand the sight of tangerines.

my throat smelt like a rusty pipe.

all the time walking

through sheets and no ground

pushing at air with feet

so hot and erupting all at once

buddy told them i was dead

and when people would call

this old thing again

i knew i would live

4.

candy apple circles on the ceiling

dilate and shake over steps,

crepe, stone and cellophane

echo back and disappear:

forgotten self

left to hang in the eyes of friends

lovers

and everyone who ever hated

yeah

but you forgotten

drift at my fingertips

always bounce clear

till you’re gone

5.

it takes two days

these days i know

always dropping

from the old inevitable everything

abstract, nounish, spoken,

odd, exploding horses

what ever cold insult you prefer

to this attempt at.

but i don’t know who i’m talking to.

just picked up the phone

and you were there

it was 1989 i think

and a voice had wrung me up at random

barked high and fast

about everything i had left out

of everything i have ever said.

can you imagine that?

this…this stinking pile of….

well

you get the point i said

and hung up before saying.

6.

the air just hardened up with light

and shadow.

branches, wires, birds.

and bright vinyl siding

a tangle of gutter pipes

the dust of this place

reeks dull

the only thing to do–

interrogate the paste

the panels

floor cleanser

chaos of crap

and twice colliding

with the black wall

this soft skin of everyone

popped

as if scissors, walking

had punished the air

and the blue of it

cloud of it

warmth of it

sweet of it

vanished

and this side

and that side

weren’t sides at all

7.

daily despairing of it

chaos of crap forbids

any moment to consider.

and so i went down

to the beach.

clumsy but electric.

it was just past sunset.

smell burning leaves

and forsythia brightens

unexpectedly

rain and bark and mud

with dabs of new moss

shining in shadow

you can hear them laugh

and fight from the sidewalk

voices of fathers and boys

over dishes

cats yowing while the sky slowly drips

out here i can see them

walk through the patterns

pine boughs make with lamps and pavement.

stepping through this filigree

each one stares and thinks at me

before slipping off the edge of my sun

and wondered what i was doing here

why had i come

to circumnavigate their dream

and know what is wrong.

“you ask so much of this,”

she said.

8.

to the beach.

i pour my own salt into sand

to wake and admit them.

even lurid pictures of them

with bloody chins

staggering from horn to horn

twisting from trees

in arc lights clogging the river

swarming through sixes of graveyards

with liver and spleen on a hook

and eyes like dekooning

whatever astonishes will do.

9.

where did you go.

and how was it.

was it.

10.

“he came home drunk every night

and on prozac i didn’t know what

to believe the doctor he said

said to take six a day

he was forty five and talked

such shit so loud and stupid

all the time a quart of vodka a day,”

peter said on the phone.

buddy

up from the small

soft hole.

i used his face

and body

in the other half

but not his voice

in a camel hair coat

with greying hair

slicked back and full

always talking such shit

and full of my blood

and spit he stood before me

against the sand

and the words weren’t his

but peter’s

swelled from his mouth

and moved gently

and relentlessly

around him.

he always talked such shit jon

ever since i met him

even at the loft

i couldn’t stand it.

ßthe rubbed grey eyes

and big cheeks before gaunt

with his white scarf

crossed in front

he looked beautiful

and prosperous

and gone.

11.

you

crowd out the others

till they pull you in

and kick you back

to get at the bloody hole

i’ve opened into

for finding and feeding them

so jon comes up

tousled jon

in his floor length flannel gown

so sick, i had never seen….

his krishna man and siva man

his blue man with bangles

and a playful wicked smile

these peacock gods of yours jon

and incense and things collected

from men who wouldn’t need them

yeah

well

you are boiling a pot

of nasty smelling herbs from chinatown

and roasting a goose with juniper and current sauce

your eyes bleached like canvas

look, i have to do this you flea bitten

taoist madman you political poet

jon you first avenue freak

no one ever scratched so hard and well

and loved so well to scratch like a dog

as you did almost to make me wish

i too was covered with itchy sores

and had to shit my brains out for a year

till the seat was always stained a pale

greenish yellow and the poster from germany

of a man sucking cock hung from one thumbtack

and swung when i shut the door

are you all right

and i am walking up university

to union square, dean and deluca for coffee

and organic bacon for hoppin’ john on new year’s eve

but you were making lentils

and leaves circled over asphalt and concrete

we walked with our heads down

and you never stopped talking

or years before in my kitchen

5 of us around a bottle of scotch

touching shoulders, when we all smoked

and sat sweating and laughing

the door open

red and white tile, fridge and stove crammed in

smell of dead mice, radiators, still water

in air shafts and garbage

laughing so hard and you never stopped talking

or once, when i was as mad as you were

and both of us were dying only you much faster

laughing outside about how there were less

homeless these days we both remarked

cause so many dead of.

i saw you big jon

when there was no meat left

you gave your skin.

and someone got

everything you got

from those men

who wouldn’t

be needing them.

12.

peter

found a cheap crematorium

so buddy was saved from potter’s field

peter

climbed over the black

wrought iron fence of grace church

and scattered his ashes

in ivy

and tulips

that circle the trees.

13.

some with eyes came.

some without.

no tiresias, no one to beat off.

some still ragged with the anger of life

some like buddy stifle the laughter

of crows to go bang to go bang to go bang.

sometimes just a box

these eyes

to hold pictures

sometimes nothing

but a smell.

then bubble gum, bracelets

of jasmine

your breath close to mine

when few could touch you

cause so many gone

and i see peter

slide towards the hole

but i can put his panel off today

renew in boxes

that are eyes ears nose and mouth

the taste and touch of him

the soft of his humor

the warm of his chest

the moist of his speech

and the sweet of his breath

before evening.

Poem Day 8

Today I think
Of the pregnant woman’s belly
Like a bag of swag
In a white T shirt
And her swollen face
She’s relaxed
Letting go
Because she might fart
Any second
And her heart
Is harrowed with puke

She leans back in her chair
Like a boss
But there’s that belly big
Rising like a moan
Above the desk
That belly full of baby

Mammaries swell
And vein the breast
And pucker nipples
Her hair grows thick
Her asshole pricked
With hemorrhoids

She waddles by on four-by-fours
Pissing every time she coughs
Or laughs or bounces
On a trampoline

But how soft and wet
The vagina is
As it leaks beneath
The bulging belly
The swelling cup of jelly

I’ve caught 5 baby bodies
Touched 5 hot placentas
Cut 5 pulsing umbilical cords
And suckled side by side
All 5 times

The first was fraught with guilt
Done in the dark, half asleep
And the last
How desperate I was
For her not to desiccate

GILBERT:

“I think serious poems should make something happen that’s not correct or entertaining or clever. I want something that matters to my heart, and I don’t mean “Linda left me.” I don’t want that. I’ll write that poem, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about being in danger—as we all are—of dying. How can you spend your life on games or intricately accomplished things? And politics? Politics is fine. There’s a place to care for the injustice of the world, but that’s not what the poem is about. The poem is about the heart. Not the heart as in “I’m in love” or “my girl cheated on me”—I mean the conscious heart, the fact that we are the only things in the entire universe that know true consciousness. We’re the only things—leaving religion out of it—we’re the only things in the world that know spring is coming.”

I gather the sun
from out of the blinds
I gather the sun in my hands
weaving the strands of light on the floor
sunbeams like cobwebs of lion and lemon
forsythia pale on the snow