26. 1950
Sketch for a Portrait of Ellen
Emerging liquid from subliming sleep,
light as her mind, quick as sharp daybreak scent,
lost soft dreams heart-crystal throbbing pent
expand now subtly metaphored art deep.
Now from these frozen lines one pattered leap
reaches the hidden vein of warm content;
the glowing curve where ecstasies are blent
transforms the flowered memories two keep:
Fantastic whirls of patterned meaningness,
charming electrons, exquisite atomies,
abstractions beautiful as what we see.
Unfeeling vibrant molecules caress,
merge like our thoughts that melt and steam and freeze;
emergent life lights each necessity.
27. 1950
To Gloria R. Gerjuoy
generous love emerges in the flowered night
like women tumbling down a crystal stair
out of sky into ocean trailing long golden hair
reaching the warm-soft bottom out of sight
in the cool twilight glowing faintly white
among the fronds and starfish flesh too fair
reaches the sea-changed heart caught unaware
glorious yet secret in its quiet light
each moment means far more than any now
remembered selves from other nights discover
joys shimmering in presents past past dreams
unfolding now we tell each other how
out of the surface glitter to uncover
you and the ocean in its secret streams
28. 1950
Intellectuals
We each are words apart, yet one selfsame decision
joins us, word and thing surpassing, in mind's
intense syntactical embrace, which finds
in times, with brute or delicate elision
of naughts of metaphorical derision
we both evolve infinities of kinds;
each blends exclusive ecstasies and binds
two abstracts sans sin's tactual division.
Having the words, how graciously we swim
among the fronds beneath the mind's top face.
Having the words, how foolish and how dim
are our crude rumblings in that other place.
Having the words, how cool and soft and slim
here in the dusk each negative embrace.
29. 1951
Prayer
Give me strength, oh unknown God,
not to need Thy illusory aid.
Let me lean not on myself nor others
but lean not at all.
Standing erect in this dry season,
may I be the tree whose higher flame
catches the eye of the distant guardian.
30. 1951
Anti-Privacy*
I think lovers should shine,
Radiate special light,
From their foreheads perhaps,
So that late at night we could walk down a foggy street
And see in windows a pale flicker
Like lightning in a distant thunderhead just before dawn.
Like a child's nightmare-dispelling bed-lamp,
Love glows, shimmers, burns low all about us.
__________
*Published in The Best Poems and Poets of 2002, Owings Mills, MD;
International Library of Poetry
31. 1951
Since I forget so easily, I am continually surprised
when pleasing you is so easy and being with you so free from pain,
for, among the things I want, I want you so blindingly strongly
that it is hard to see that I may win you easily
without the fiercest tension and most despairing strain.
Often I think my words offered you should be just a few realized
drops of strongest concentration, painfully distilled
from hour of work when patiently and thoughtfully
I strained to touch the meaning of loving you for me,
as if such words could justify the peaks when I was thrilled
out of the humid air about us to an emptiness so agonized
the stars stabbed me, spears of icy light disdaining compromise
sharing the sky with a sun so fiercely, cruelly vain
that only my bones cast shadows down a wild and dazzling plain
where I felt no fear, only the caress of your infinitely distant eyes.
32. 1952
Hunt
Jenny missed me when she spat:
She only hit the chair I sat in.
You, who call me slow and fat,
Conceive how fast I had to flatten.
Say my width is as my height,
Say that she'd have never kissed me;
But add, my leap was swift, was light:
Jenny missed me.
33. 1953
Self-Created
Now, living, I remember being dead.
My simple purpose then was to be born.
But life is complexity: I am worn
By dark desires and a darker dread.
When I was sixteen I would lie in bed
And dream of raping fortune, of her torn
And bleeding loins. I poured my scorn
On aimless loveliness of heart or head.
Now I am twenty-four. I have a wife,
A job, perhaps a future, also skill
At dancing and joking, and in charming friends
But also know this is an empty life.
Pretending joy is costly: it can kill.
Drained of meaning, life itself soon ends.
34. 1954
My Dark Lady
How exquisitely dark my lady is
Her face is all tan as corn
Her dark hair falls like wind and storm
About her cheeks so golden warm
How delicately moist and sweet her lips
Against my lips and tongue
As I touch them her eyes are wide
And deep and free I fall inside
So softly brown her eyes unhurt
My wounds and tell me "Strong
Strong you are and young and wild
And I am your child your loving mild"
35. 1958
Early Waking
It was 5 a.m. in the dangerous spring.
The roads were flooded.
It was still raining and heard a bird
Fluttering against the window.
Its head was bloody,
But the persistent wings kept beating out of the fog.
Stubbornly bashing itself,
Its pain-racked eyes were glassy black,
Like fish eyes, like button eyes on teddy-bears.
Its beak was yellow.
Its mouth was blood red and oozy.
Its feathers were black -- it was a blackbird,
A red-winged blackbird.
It kept up a steady screaming whistling,
Windy, rasping, and shrill, mostly wind without pitch,
Like a flute blown by a beginner.
The fog was alive to my sleepy eyes,
Swirling with bodies: winged women,
Skulls grinning and nodding.
Little dancing lights and snake shadows curled around the bird.
As the light cleared it grew weaker.
I grew dizzy.
Perhaps I fainted.
When I opened my eyes,
My chin hurt.
I had bit my tongue. It was bleeding and it burned.
Sunlight was pouring through fluttering tree leaves
Like water filtered by my bathroom shower head.
My arms, the windowsill, the dark floor where I lay
Were mottled and speckled by wavy light.
The bird was gone.
36. 1958
Becoming Flesh*
Before I was conceived, the stuffy air about my parents' bed
was full of echoes.
As, beyond time's curve, galaxies erupted, I felt their inmost atoms shudder.
As silver snowfishbirds molted far beyond Andromeda,
I watched each metal feather's languid drift.
I was each atom of driven snow finding its place
in the sweet tip of a snowflake's horn, balancing the symmetry,
filling the yearning hole, the gap, the crack, the torn edge of the snowflake tip,
telling myself, "This is the place! Now the design is perfect!
"It was waiting for me. Now it is beautiful, with me in it.
"I feel the far side of my snowflake matching me, repeating my loveliness.
"Brother, over on the other side, I'm here also completing you!"
And I was each snowflake, riding the wind, saying to myself,
"I whirl my world, whirl
"round and unwound, winding unwounded windy wonder."
I heard your voices all at once and knew you all --
carnal knowledge -- deep in all of you in me.
Knowing all, I grew my eyes and ears and skin to shut you out.
35. 1958
Early Waking
It was 5 a.m. in the dangerous spring.
The roads were flooded.
It was still raining and heard a bird
Fluttering against the window.
Its head was bloody,
But the persistent wings kept beating out of the fog.
Stubbornly bashing itself,
Its pain-racked eyes were glassy black,
Like fish eyes, like button eyes on teddy-bears.
Its beak was yellow.
Its mouth was blood red and oozy.
Its feathers were black -- it was a blackbird,
A red-winged blackbird.
It kept up a steady screaming whistling,
Windy, rasping, and shrill, mostly wind without pitch,
Like a flute blown by a beginner.
The fog was alive to my sleepy eyes,
Swirling with bodies: winged women,
Skulls grinning and nodding.
Little dancing lights and snake shadows curled around the bird.
As the light cleared it grew weaker.
I grew dizzy.
Perhaps I fainted.
When I opened my eyes,
My chin hurt.
I had bit my tongue. It was bleeding and it burned.
Sunlight was pouring through fluttering tree leaves
Like water filtered by my bathroom shower head.
My arms, the windowsill, the dark floor where I lay
Were mottled and speckled by wavy light.
The bird was gone.
36. 1958
Becoming Flesh*
Before I was conceived, the stuffy air about my parents' bed
was full of echoes.
As, beyond time's curve, galaxies erupted, I felt their inmost atoms shudder.
As silver snowfishbirds molted far beyond Andromeda,
I watched each metal feather's languid drift.
I was each atom of driven snow finding its place
in the sweet tip of a snowflake's horn, balancing the symmetry,
filling the yearning hole, the gap, the crack, the torn edge of the snowflake tip,
telling myself, "This is the place! Now the design is perfect!
"It was waiting for me. Now it is beautiful, with me in it.
"I feel the far side of my snowflake matching me, repeating my loveliness.
"Brother, over on the other side, I'm here also completing you!"
And I was each snowflake, riding the wind, saying to myself,
"I whirl my world, whirl
"round and unwound, winding unwounded windy wonder."
I heard your voices all at once and knew you all --
carnal knowledge -- deep in all of you in me.
Knowing all, I grew my eyes and ears and skin to shut you out.
*Published in The Best Poems and Poets of 2002, Owings Mills, MD:
International Library of Poetry
International Library of Poetry
37. 1958
Aviate or Deviate
Two gams or knot here comes Alexander
Not piece a phallic cymbal clashes
The cold wind rushes past our cheeks throats
Surges uplifting against us as we dip soar
Lizard dragon fire one and tu Brute
Beware the idols of the king
How clear the minted air as now below
The landing lights are gold and kind
38. 1958
Under Cover
(from "Experiment with Love")
We meet in silence. No honest word dare be said:
Behind the walls, keen microphones may listen.
In the dark, our animal warmths glow infrared:
Cameras may watch our bodies' movements glisten.
Some who learned of what we plan or do
Would shudder or vomit. So. year by lonely year
We mask our acts. We free, intimate few
Meet in dread of others' loathing and fear.
We'd be flayed, tortured for our war to end repression,
Break open the jails, expose the hidden shame,
Set each prisoner free to share possession.
We plot, but dare not give our dream a name.
Come together, with voiceless tongues we speak,
With probing fingers sign for what we seek.
39. 1957
Earliest Memory
Under the largest root of the nearest tree
I turned up a stone. White. The worm was white.
He squirmed soft and sticky. I felt sick.
If I touched him I might crush him.
A small cut on my palm throbbed and burned.
There was soft dirt on my hands.
The earth was moist.
I felt soft and sticky. He felt sick.
He was big -- looming blurred over me, a shadow in the sudden brightness.
I rubbed deeper into soft Mother.
Sticky. Mother was warmer below.
Soon I had oozed back down inside her streaming darkness.
Reddish shadows tumbled and swelled in it.
Somewhere near in Mother I smelled a spot that lived.
The spot -- the germ -- smelled warm white vastness nearby.
Good food, but alive,
Seething with dangerously clever chemistry.
We bathed hungrily in thin milk seep from Mother.
* * * *
Somewhere, deep or high, Mother spread her vast calm thought.
Slowly, through a space of eons
She drew us apart.
40. 1958
(from "Experiment with Love")
You can do all sorts of taboo things if you know how.
For instance, did you know you can piss all over a perfect stranger, and he'll
tell you it's O.K.?
Simple: just go into a public john with a pal.
Keep up a serious intellectual discussion while standing one urinal apart.
While the patsy is at the urinal between the two of you,
turn toward him as you talk, still squirting.
I've done it twenty times and not gotten punched once.
Just apologize like made and pull out a roll of bills.
They never take the money if you're careful to pick them right.
Incidentally, always insist on giving them a name and address,
and tell them to send you the cleaning bill.
It's a nice touch to offer to drive the creep home.
You meet more sweet people that way.
The best place to pull this is in a good bar in a college town.
The worst place is an airport.
Salesmen are hard as nails about being pissed one; they know about conning.
Bonus tip: Always carry phony ID.
You never know when you'll want to tell someone you're a chiropractor from
Shaker Heights.
41. 1958
Two Meditations on Hiroshima
(from "Experiment with Love")
I
The cloud that boiled up over Hiroshima
had many atoms in it
moments earlier part of living flesh.
So many died so suddenly.
What were they doing those last moments?
Did an orgasm snap off, incomplete?
Did an infant's head pop out of a vagina and blink at brilliance
so much brighter than expected?
Did she draw in a first breath of fire and dissolution,
gasp at the sudden pain?
Just as he died of old age,
instead of slow loosening crumbling,
did he flare suddenly into naked atoms
swirling out to join eternity's St. Vitus' dance?
"I don't want to die!" her will shrieks
as the heat bulges the windows in.
She presses her hip against the counter,
clutching the knife that a moment ago was cutting carrot.
That morning, as usual, she was proud of how she did her hair.
Though forty-seven, she sees herself still (always) seventeen,
still deciding which one to marry (spread for).
The good hair shape is part of the pattern she now tries to hold frozen,
fighting the corrosives of time and heat.
Love her, you selfish, self-absorbed pig!
Add your will to hers,
fight the fierce brilliance.
Love the blue stone and the white stone in the garden where she walked.
Now they crack in the heat.
-- The great roar -- the great scream --
if we all willed enough, could we undo the horror, the shame?
Does it stay real because we do not care enough?
II
When one of us dies, a gush of emptiness sprays out
to vibrate shudderingly through each of us.
When a city dies, the great black wave of emptiness roars outward
across the curve of time and space,
surging forever.
The riptides and whitecaps of Hiroshima's agony
still foam hissing through our dreams.
So we live, floating on a sea of suffering;
we are bubbles of awareness, momentary scum, frail films
stretched across the seething chaos,
the swirling, frothing stew
of birth pangs, cramps, death shrieks, orgasms.
42. 1958
A Dialog on Gamete Politics
(from "Experiment with Love")
I:
the sperm cell that carried half your inheritance
lashed itself in frantic spasms toward your egg:
Bursts of desperate, agonized activity,
then slow, impatient recovery.
snug and smug and warm
in her infrared-glimmering humid, pulsing tube.
When the one she preferred approached,
out came her sucking
eager grasp to grab and swallow.
the universe's will was probated –
when millions and millions lost the race,
when she chose one winner,
made one sperm Father Abraham.
Races and nations she rejected,
never conceived, did not even get the grace of death.
What wisdom could that ovum have had?
Geniuses died, supermen died,
regardless how exquisite the tight poetry of their DNA.
Like sweet Jesus, they died that you might live.
You think you fear death, crave life?
Unlike you, with your limp hankering, half in love with death,
sperm, flogged by evolution, are ravenous for life.
No instinct commands them, Step aside for the next generation!
Hear the rain-on-the-roof unending din of despairing sobs
as moment by moment round the world billions find the ovum closed, fulfilled,
made by a quicker rival –
sperm lost in eggless wombs, butting hopelessly against diaphragms,
fainting in condoms, anuses, hands, toilet bowls.
What can we do about this?
Campaigner for Right to Life, will you join a Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Sperm?
Cruelty to Sperm?
Slogan: Every sperm deserves a loving ovum?
Liberal lover of Mr. Rogers, TeleTubbies, you who think television is too
violent,
violent,
will you teach sperm to lovingly help each other?
Socialism is reaction formation to our survivor guilt; capitalism denial.
II:
Regardless whether our egg and sperm cells are
frantic or agonized, impatient or smug, voracious or despairing, we ar
are.
Regardless whether our morality applies to them, it applies to us.
Decisions in the lower court of single cells are no precedents for us.
That our lives began with ruthless competition did not print our
photos on a ruthlessness license.
Regardless whether killing sperm cells is murder, regardless how
lovelessly sperm compete,
we all have more than a right to life: we have a right to love.
43. 1958
Many in One
hours tick and we brake
our penance we knead
we wring and we are wrapped
summon the roomy peak
oh qui of my missed ache
to tale our paired role
we'll sleigh on ice now whole
to you i'll only tether
by rumors of berth i seek
to end your island cruise
to you i'll only tether
by rumors of berth i seek
to end your island cruise
mountain ram to ewes
to please d'you not cede
you are my rein my weather
so gamble on my climb
to please d'you not cede
you are my rein my weather
so gamble on my climb
44. 1958
The Passionate Liar to His Love
I swear to you I love you truly,
And you, of course, believe me duly.
But if I'd swear the earth were flat
You would surely laugh at that.
I swear that I'll love you forever.
Do you doubt it? No, not ever.
I swear I'll love you till I die.
do you doubt me? Try, please try!
45. 1958
Bonjour Jeunesse*
Comme exquises
Les jeunes bêtises
Dansent sur
Les doigts de Pan.
Quelle extase!
Sous ivrants rais
D'un plein soleil
Ils ont bu
Le salé vin
Des damnés.
Hubris et rire
Et bon désir
Sont perdus
Sur le chemin.
___________
*Published in The Red Fox Review, Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 1993, p. 26.
46. 1958
Son on Water
Touch the sun's halo and
suck your finger tingly on the edge of goldenest
quick sharp burning, or deep burgundy slow throbbed ache.
dawn's wave peaks breathless, overhanging back-arched muscles.
Apollo! Thrust of saber, sword of gold;
curved blade meets straight blade,
clangs, then dark whirlwinds when the blades
stop the hearts, which tighten round them hungry, sea soft, cuttlefish
leather and muscle and hate, and crumbly flesh-buried shell.
small convict fish at home in your thoughts.
You, melted, uncoiled viscousness,
ripple upward past memories
to blue waves, white splashing:
Good morning, Mr. Miracle.
47. 1958
One Evening in the Past
One evening in the past, when begonias were withering,
I heard the tinkle of ice cubes in a glass,
A thin sound. It set me shivering.
The ground was moist.
I floated, half merged with the breasty ground.
My feet wore rubber soles
that sank and yielded with my steps.
The air was moist, the temperature about sixty.
I had a hand to hold onto,
my father’s. His hat and darkness covered him.
His coat was tweedy and huge: gray with black threads.
His hand was rougher and harder than his coat.
I loved him.
He was going to drink whiskey and play cards on the porch.
I would watch legs under the table, pretend the chairs were caves.
The floor was dirty: dead cigarettes, dark fluffy dirt.
My father loved me. I felt his love gush warmly over me,
a long, slow, reddish shower.
I crouched in the hollow under the spurt of his love.
The ice cube sound made me shiver.
My neck tingled, then my back.
My father laughed.
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