Collected Poems (6 page)

but we are suffering seven directions at once

the mouths in our mouths don’t tell us

the sorrowful faces in our tears not

touch us nothing holds us nothing reaps

us we are not lived we are not suffered

the dreams come for us but they fail

I AM THE BITTER NAME

[1972]

I Am the Bitter Name

And Abraham said to him, “And art thou, indeed, he that is called Death?”

He answered, and said, “I am the Bitter Name.”

the little children have been fighting

a long long time for their beloved country

their faces are hardening like meat

left out their bodies squashed flat

like flowers in lawbooks don’t fit

with the keys to eternal sorrow anymore

is the best toy always death? everyone

crying in the sleepy hair inexhaustible

agony in the dark cups of the skull

unquenchable agony your hands shriek

on my spine like locked brakes in

the torn nostrils tendrils in the mouth

vines the little soldiers play

wounding the little generals play hurt

forever they sharpen things they put

things in things they pull them out

will you make freedom for me? in

the cheekbone fire in the lips my

justice is to forget being here my liberty

wanting to hate them how they are shipped

home in ice-cream bags and being able to

Keep It

the lonely people are marching

on the capital everyone’s yelling not

to give them anything but just

buying dinner together was fun

wasn’t it? don’t give them a thing

the boss said the boss

is dreaming of beautiful nurses

the lonely people are taking

all their little dogs to washington

back home the channels change

by themselves the soap changes

to perfume perfume to cereal the boss

dreams of the moon landing on

spruce street nobody is lonely

on locust nobody is left

at all the sun comes by himself

the buses go along by themselves

and wonder have I told you about

my disease? the lonely people

hold tight at night

on the coast they are tucked

in under the twilight

together the boss walks

across them it was fun it was

so much fun wasn’t it?

The Spirit the Triumph

do you remember learning to tie your shoes?

astonishing! the loops you had to make the delicate

adjustments the pulling-through tightening impossible!

the things we learn!

putting a bridle on a horse when he’s head-shy

getting your hands under a girl’s sweater

no wonder we are the crown of all that exists

we can do anything how we climb chimneys

how we put one foot on the gas one on the clutch

and make the car go nothing too difficult nothing!

crutches artificial arms have you seen that?

how they pick their cups up and use razors? amazing!

and the wives shine it for them at night

they’re sleeping the wives take it out of the room

and polish it with its own special rag

it’s late they hold it against their bellies

the leather laces dangle into their laps

the mechanisms slip noiselessly

lowering the hook softly onto their breasts

we men! aren’t we something? I mean

we are worth thinking about aren’t we?

we are the end we are the living end

Madder

“People can screw dead bodies, but they never feed them.”

the nations have used up their desire

the cunts of the mothers the cunts

of the bad daughters stinking

of police stations of the sisters

and generations of men saying

look cunt what about me saying look

cunt how I’m bleeding saying cunt cunt

where is forgiveness? what bullshit

you can kiss me goodbye but first put

your hands up let me search you

first goodbye I’ll check your rectum

for poison and recite how we spoiled

from the inside like lettuce I’ll tell

about freedom vomited on our foreheads

I’ll say
LOOK WHAT YOU DID
and men

reading money aloud laughing aloud

I’m fed up with the sugars of raw

human flesh cursing I gallop over her

with my nicked tongue head to toe

I plow in with my notched cock cursing

the suffering of labels the

suffering of elegant canned goods of

mercy vengeance witness borne

for no end the governments are silent

or I’m dying of grief and loving both

ends of it or of solace and mixing

up whether we’re here at all and revenge

or peace and who did it first dear

husbands dear wives tighter they’re

washing my mouth out with soap I promise

not to accuse you but this time you

be the secret this time you comfort me

Poor Hope

which is worse the lieutenant raising his rifle

toward the astonished women and children jammed

into the bomb crater raising it not even aiming just carelessly

beginning to do it the way you’d rake a lawn you start

anywhere that or when I saw a boy in a department store

with his mother he was skipping along going toot toot toot

when the mother saw me I could see her flinch about something

and when I passed them she cracked him him! not me

across the mouth stunning him terribly hissing

don’t you know where you are? which is worse

to be in the world with that or with that? or is it

that there’s god and you think they’ve killed him?

then the dread god did you really say hit them! kill them!

then to the children then the mothers forgive me then myself then

nothing no sacrament for the people forgotten

in mid-sentence gone except in fuck you! where they cry god

I have thought two ways up the first

is when I felt the boy’s spirit become pain because of me

I should have apologized not to him or even the mother

but to
YOU
! I’m sorry and the other is for the others

in the ditch in their torn clothes just as the bullets go into them

I would go mad and have you seen how men in toilets

at stadiums or the movies stare into the wall

so we won’t covet each other’s cocks? I would stare

into you like that and never move again never let you die

again never let you be anywhere else staring watching

you boil helplessly back and forth on the ceiling

don’t move! trying to electrocute yourself on the wires

stay where you are! trying to slice your body

to pieces on the fluttering cobwebs don’t die on me!

Bringing It Home

a room all the way across america

and a girl in the room and the plastic fattening her breasts

starting to sag o god

she thinks they’re going o god o god

I would do anything to help her

I would take all of her secret pain onto myself if she’d let me

my best darling

it is your soul melting it

it is the fire in you

I remember fire

everywhere in the world

boys scratching two sticks together so proud of themselves

houses going up in spontaneous combustion or somebody using his lighter

and the girl locked in in back still touching her fearful body

(you too my best darling)

and furnaces men with sweat stung out of them

faces cooked broiled smoked while they make things for us

and in america

in her breasts the two fires

like gods the two fires without flame

and her voice this flame rising out of my throat

it says
FUCK YOU I DON’T CARE

it says
UP YOUR ASS TOO YOU WEIRD FAGGOTS

my best darling my best darling

The Little Shirt

what we need is one of those gods

who comes howling down streets

like a police car into the houses into

the television sets the refrigerators

comes oozing through everything and eats

everything everything the whole box

the darkness the dust

under the stairs the roaches and then us

and then makes us up again

out of her wonderful mouth earth

so that we look into our friends suddenly understanding

flesh how it tightens and lets go

to have this pass through

to be able to blink so that it goes through

to be able to get back from this

so mother death will be happy

so we won’t hurt her she

keeps her big hand on us her thighs over our heads

she jumps we fall out like apples

and having to own her

and having to have war for her and fucking

and thankfulness so she won’t stink in her people

we believe her

cloudlife airlife scent the

flavors to lick off

going up firing back at ourselves

make me sergeant! get me a hard-on!

to kill

never to go from this

Clay out of Silence

chances are we will sink quietly back

into oblivion without a ripple

we will go back into the face

down through the mortars as though it hadn’t happened

earth: I’ll remember you

you were the mother you made pain

I’ll grind my thorax against you for the last time

and put my hand on you again to comfort you

sky: could we forget?

we were the same as you were

we couldn’t wait to get back sleeping

we’d have done anything to be sleeping

and trees angels for being thrust up here

and stones for cracking in my bare hands

because you foreknew

there was no vengeance for being here

when we were flesh we were eaten

when we were metal we were burned back

there was no death anywhere but now

when we were men when we became it

Innings

somebody keeps track of how many times

I make love don’t you god don’t you?

and how good it is telling me

it’s marked down where I can’t see

right underneath me so the next time

something unreal happens in the papers

I don’t understand it it doesn’t touch

me I start thinking

everyone’s heart might be pure

after all because what the hell

they don’t kill me just each other

they don’t actually try making me sad

just do things make things happen

suffer things I erupt

into the feminine like a lion don’t

I god? among doves? so even being with me

is like beauty? I move under this god

like a whore I gurgle I roll

like a toy boat what’s the score

now god? am I winning?

Becoming Somebody Else

your lists of victims dear

god like rows of sharp little teeth

have made me crazy look

I have crushed my poor balls

for you I have kissed the blank

pages drunk the pissy chalice

water and thrown up dear god your

rabbits dear god your big

whistle do you know how awful

it is trying to plug the holy wound

in my bowels with wrong addresses?

listen let us have death back

when we need him the lost mother

of bliss will sing in the back

seat for you let us come back

with our SS and our own banks

this time and for the corpses

compilers to start out dear concerned

chosen esteemed sufferer warm

gloves god our bodies ladders

lovely look we smile too this

way look our blood too touch us is

it horrible? touch us

Hounding Mercy

our poor angel how sick

he must be of burying his face

in our hot mouths breathing

in maggots and fruity lung tissue

puffing us up when all we do

is empty again the prayers

to the forbidden father stinking

on us like exhaust fumes the candles

stuck guttering in our backsides

suppose though we took your gun in one

hand your excellent scalpel behind

it and kept saying kiss kiss kiss kiss

and before they screamed we’d cut

them before they begged us blast

them and cannibalize them all legs

from one ethics from another somebody’s

skull we’d suture until there was

one whole one and who’d need war

or politics would the mothers kill

their beautiful children from sheer

boredom the fathers fight

over the fucked carcasses like sharks?

here is my magic briefcase

which roars here the branch

of my life to beat it with my

handcuffs what will I want now? give

me love give me snow oceans don’t speak

What Did the Man Do with the Clouds?

the grandmas are all coming down like f-101’s like gulls

screaming
HAPPIER
!
HAPPIER
! the grandmas

loom along the parapets like old wars their

grooved bellies grenades the lines kissed

into their faces like barbed wire

grandmas I’ve got the wings you brought me but they won’t work

for me they don’t fit anywhere on me

except in my mouth I keep sticking them

onto me like matchbooks but brother adam moses the pope

I don’t see anyone the grandmas are all laughing

on the back fence like cold soup grandmas

if I could I’d wind myself onto you like a ribbon