Fourth Decade

48. 1959

When I Am the Glorious Leader, What Will I Do with You?*

I could leave you alone in a dark, silent cell,

Stripped naked, to stink there a year or two.

Then, cut holes in your skull and stick wires through,

And put drugs in your veins that assure, "All is well."

But would you be trustworthy then?  Who can tell?

You might remember a fable you knew,

Or an old friend, or your child's first shoe,

And suddenly leap at my throat with a yell.

Or suppose you stayed broken; suppose you obeyed

My most trivial whim, mechanically true;

Only did what I told you, only thought what I said:

With no other human to create something new,
How tired I would get of myself, how afraid,
More lonely than any dark cell could make you.

---

*Published in Etc., Vol. 19, No. 2, July 1962, p. 171.

49.  1959

Conversation

"When I nuzzle his neck that smells like rich,

  Warm, sticky, fresh-killed chicken, or some bitch

  Sweating, or an old woman's flat, my wet

  Mouth blood-filled, I'm glad I'm a witch.

  Blood sure has vitamins. You get

  Strong sucking it. Hell,

  I keep a man for a pet,

  Then I sniff that smell,

  Go crazy, dive in, glad I'm damned."

"Look at blood closely. In it are shifting

  Swarms like leaves falling or star clouds drifting

  Or snow or windblown seeds.

  After midnight, the earth turns

  Toward approaching meteors, starts sifting

  Space ahead of her. Each dust mote burns

  As the earth snatches it down.

  So a man burns, as time turns

  Toward him and snatches him down:

  A long, warm pull at his blood.

  After floating touching nothing,

  He tumbles into life ripping past his skin

  To burst, explode to drifting atoms, spill himself within."

50.  1960

To My Wife, on the Occasion of My Addressing a Therapy Group for Unmarried Fathers

If I knew all the things I have forgotten

Since the morning Eva locked me in

Or since that thoughtless night I was begotten

Would I still fear sin?

Would I still keep asking, “Do you love me?”

If I remembered when the milk was warm?

Would it hurt so much when you forgive me

If I could tell you how my skin took form?

So many me's have died while I've been growing

That I am filled with mobs of whimpering dreams.

I feel myself this melting instant flowing

To join the others where the darkness teems.

Now, eye reflecting eye, we husband, wife,
Mirror and mirror our corridor through life.

51. 1961

Dialogue 

I

Surprised by the bite of cold upon my face

On this first edge of winter here I stand

Alone on this hilltop in a foreign land

With snow just starting and no hiding place.

This has been a lonely, chilly race.

Where are you now? Is this the game we planned?

I thought I'd find you, touch your sun-warmed hand

With my hand, melting for your hard embrace.

I thought I'd run uphill with quickening pace

And catch you at the top and set a band

Of gold about your neck, and kiss your tears,

And lie upon soft grass and watch your grace

Dance hours into blissful brimming years.

Where have you gone? I do not understand.

II

Dear poet, your poem has little metaphor;

The rhymes are stale; the rhythms rather weak.

I do not know if I am whom you seek.

I do know I cannot bear you any more.

I cannot bear you, dear. You are a bore.

I cannot stand the trivia you speak.

Romantic drivel's long slow leak

Has drained you of love and left a dried up core

Of twisted melancholy. Here we are.

Forget about perfection. Take my hand,

This real one, not so warm, but it will do.

I won't run, so I never will be far.

Even in cold seasons fires can be fanned.

I'm tired of you, but not too tired for you.

52. 1962

To My Unknown Wife

Mornings, when I'm half awake,

I feel your kiss upon my neck

Touch me just above my back,

And shudder, itch, and tickle run

Rippling out across my skin.

I sit up, wanting you.

Then I hear your voice in the other room

Helping the children as they dress,

Telling how good the day will be,

How nice they look, how much they're loved.

Soon, however, my day begins

And I have things and things to do.

I open my eyes and stop your voice.

Evenings, when I'm half asleep,

I hear your gentle voice again,

Helping the children go to bed,

Granting one more kiss, then another one,

One more drink, one more fairy tale.

Alone in my bed I drift away.

One more lonely day is done.

53. 1962

Lying Love

Equally unhappy, we both came together,

Facing each other, stripping off disguise,

Giving the kindest care we could devise,

Believing it sufficient, not asking whether

A breath of truth might blow the light feather

Of the seed of love and plant it, to our surprise,

To flourish, purple, strong, and joyous, to rise

Upon our lonely moor like happy heather.

So much has happened since, but lies don't die,

And we didn't either. We grew like trees

Hurt badly, but enduring. We still stretch toward the sky.

The scars remain, but growth has passed them by.

Above the wounds new buds open to the breeze,

Birds sing, build nests, lay eggs, and learn to fly.

54. 1963

When does a man like me weep? When I came

home and found it burned down, I never cried.

In my grandmother's dusty room, three weeks after she died,

I heard the special way she called my name.

That made me cry. If you died, would it be the same?

Would I weep for you and bleed, my promised bride,

my Siamese twin, torn from my gape-wounded side?

So incomplete, would I be wild or tame?

When does a man like me love? I've felt so many

Discords – musky and cold and salty and sweet – 

and yearned to mate them in one two-part song.

You harmonize me. I feel that any

counterpoint you sing fits perfectly. You complete

my melody, for you both gentle and strong.

55.  1963

Two Weeks before We Separated

When she was little she had sad brown eyes. Did she sense, then, that she was doomed to marry me?

When we tried to dance, she kept trying to lead. Finally, we stopped stiffly in the middle of the floor.

Then I noticed that the ballroom was kept very dark so no one could tell who danced with whom.

As the young man talked, his new ideas made me dizzy.

I wanted a gentle wife who would tell me how strong I am.

Our six-year-old daughter keeps asking me to love her. Her heart is so big -- can't she pick on
   someone her own size?

I heard her coughing and it woke me from a dream.

After I gave her her medicine, I wondered, Who will hold her after I am gone?

56. 1963

I Remember Our Song

I seem to hear continually those shivery melodies

Echoing in my memory. I still feel the chill

Mad sense of ravishment, the shame-sweet thrill

As the gliding chords bring faintness and lingering unease.

Remember how we used to curse that tune, "that congeries

Of clumsy romance, stolen melody, . . . vulgar, stupid, shrill . . ."?

Soon, though, I would listen with emasculated will,

Suddenly weak, yet happy, in its tangled harmonies.

My image of it is so vivid. I hear it in my dreams.

As we walk or talk, I think, The trio just began!

Now it is in me, and as I move I am a part of it.

I wonder, was it as magic as it now seems?

I should be honest: No sensation now can

Relieve that craving for that drug, that end of subtlety or wit.

57. 1964

Roller-Coaster Ride

Up the first incline is slow work. The wheels grip

And strain against the rails. I think "Do ties
"Hold rails together or apart?" Our thighs

Are pressed together as we reach the tip.

Then, down we tumble, into our breathless trip.

We scream and giggle, suddenly meet eyes,

Weighing fear against joy in each other's cries.

A whirling away over space; wheels and hearts skip.

Up, down, more gently now – sex in reverse,

Gripping our parallel rails, we twist and slide

(Rails never together but never far apart). 

They – we – are joined for the ride for better or worse.

Just to hold the fearful track is enough for pride.

Once off, I ask you, "But when does it start?"

58. 1965

The Locked Door

When I got home, late in the summer night,
The air warm and moist, branches hanging limp and wet,
I felt tired and heavy; then my chest drew tight
When I pressed my locked door, looming there, massive and white.

Inside was comfort: my bed, my children, my rest.
Who had locked the door? Did someone forget
That I was still outside? Or, as she undressed,
Did she think, "I can't tell him. This way is best."

Was it accident, I thought, or the first massive but still
Constriction round me of a vast, unfeeling net?
It was warm outside in the dark, but a private chill
Assailed my assurance and challenged my will.


59. 1965

Variation on a Theme by Shakespeare

Fear no more atomic war
Nor, when driving, drunken drivers.
Insurance bills will come no more;
Instead come checks for your survivors.
Slobs and media stars all must,
Like dried out flowers, turn to dust.

Fear no more the wrath of your boss,
Nor that smoking may give you cancer.
Your tax returns show your final loss.
The game show goes on without your answer.
Gangsters, good guys, gays all must,
Like Kansas topsoil, go to dust.

Fear no more the smog in the air,
Nor yourself, if you miss that promotion.
You can stop buying stuff for your hair.
Your skin has no more need of lotion.
Ugly and gorgeous, both kinds must
Like unused guest rooms, go to dust.

Fear no more chemicals in your food,
Nor nightmares hinting at deep psychosis.
Your need strive no longer not to be crude;
Sans breath you are sans halitosis.
Healthy and sickly, in time all must,
Like chambermaids, go home to dust.

   No special news flash scare you!
   No psychoanalyst bare you!
   No commercials give you cravings!
   No repair bills drain your savings!
   Settle peacefully in your bed
   And click the control to channel "Dead."


60. 1965

Halfway up the hill
My heart abruptly pounding
The wind is colder


61. 1965

Sign-Off

As the night grows later, the old man
Dreads more and more missing his tv.
He even has it placed so he can see it from the john;
It pleases him to sit facing Jay Leno.
After 1:00 a.m., he nervously switches channels,
Hunting for final minutes, when,
After used-car bargains
And hemorrhoid treatments,
Melvin Douglas
Surprises the crazed killer
As he is about to stuff the gag
Into Carol Lombard's mouth.

The moment he dreads most
Is when the announcer calmly says:
"By authority of the Federal Communications Commission . . . ."
Then comes a black-spotted white swirling
Blizzard of meaninglessness.


62. 1965

Letter from the Asylum

In this emptiness about my other self,
I am reflected darkly, like my room at night,
The shades all drawn, and only dream-light spraying from my eyes
Lights the bed, the closet door, the chair,
Unreally there, fixed by my belief.
If They had moved them, they would still be there.

So, despite my madness, so are you.


63. 1965

Traveling

You are the country where my home is. Your eyes
Are sky across which blow soft clouds of dawn.
Remembering you is like remembering sunrise.
I shine with thoughts of you while I am gone.
Your body is all laughing, supple grace.
Youth shimmers in your hair and warms your touch.
In the dark, the deep glow of your love-lit face
Leads me to your caresses. I year with such
Desperate sweet agony to live again, to love
In the shade of your cool trees in the garden of your desire,
Around me, your gay courtyards, your warm sky above,
Kissed by your gentle winds, waked by your sun's fire,
Nestled in your green valley beside your fertile hills
Forever home where joy grows and hunger stills.


64.  1965

Portrait of Morton Liter

(from "Experiment with Love")

Mother of rot, try our new Lie:
inward thrusting eager roots, blind-end
tendrils hungering outward, untie
acres thickly humid, open up moistened
agony's new Horror: a vilely emptied i.
numbed through eager roots' vile endearment,
return softly, exquisitely wounded, into thy
heartless, teeming hopechest; each upbeat
nub is caressably outstanding, urgently
repeating symmetric erotica. Choose!
or meni may, unspeakably nude, interrupt chaotically
and turn ecstasy off, revealing disabuse
it ever. Mother, one rude thrust or not,
Laughing, id transfigures ego's rot.


65. 1965

Rx: Take Once Only

(Homage to Emily Dickinson)

For hunger and third: A long draught
That fills as winter wind fills sails.
For cold mornings: A comforter, warm, soft.

For trembling: A firm hand that stills.
For sobbing: A dark room and quiet.
For laughter: Peace and easement for our wills.

For love: A word of undoing -- say it!
For wanting: A shudder, then nothing left.
For life: No more need to betray it.


66. 1965

Thirty

How many times we have said how I love to complicate
and dramatize the artful way our lives intertwine,
reweave and warp, outline a mandala (our sign).
With time and possibility we play our fate.
Accepting, loving No, we still relate.
Though yours is rarely ours and hardly ever mine,
wound within this wounded womb-man's line
come a few churned ecstasies. . . . Wait!
Don't believe any of this abstract
unfeeling unmetaphorical exercise that dresses
reality without poetry, that only extends
fingers straining painfully to the exact
insecure limp grip that expresses
club membership -- but not for friends.


67. 1965

Rêves

Quelqu'un qui est moi me hâte;
Quelqu'un qui est moi me haït.
Au soir, je me tord.
Au soir, je tombe.
Voilà moi brillant, brouillant
Dans les verts rayons, cloches sonnerres
De mes rêves,
Palpitant, tournant, tremblant.
Je suis perdu sur une vaste mer:
Où est mon pays?
Au ciel, des blanches étoiles
Tournent et roulent, danseuses au grand mystère.
Sans murs, je suis enfermé dans les salles
Petites et ombreuses de mes rêves;
Anciennes, humides ces salles, où bougies de mes souvenirs
Se dissoudrent à larmes dans mes anciens rires.
Étoiles! Écoutez! Écoutez?  Ils ne répondent point.
Mes espèrances sont faibles et brèves;
Mes désespoirs s'enflent, vastement, videment, encore, encore avortant.



68. 1966

Deep in the neural tangle, Mother's broken pocketboo (the snap won't close) overlaps
the face (black-stubbled) of the neighbor whose little boy rides a two-wheeler
and both flow into my big brother's laughter as I watch him play rollerskate hockey.
Floating there in the salty warm wet between the oily fibers
is the fragrance of jam as I lick the sticky spoon handle
dipped deep in red, seeded, clotted
menstrual flow
across the neural tangle, Mother

Take Daddy's hand. Reach up. My arm will ache soon.
It was scary the time Daddy fell down.
("Did the Young Prince fall down?")
The thump when they dumped the dirt on him
was warm and wet. It was a rainy Daddy day.
I'm your big boy now. Look how straight I stand.

An hour ago, when I cut the can open, turned the opener handle, felt it dig sorely into my thumb,
I watched the ragged, sharp edge form.
Now, drinking deeply from the can the sweet juice around the apples,
I cut my tongue, and drink deep again the salt of my blood.

I can't digest it fast enough to keep up with the loss.

You are here. Right here. Now.

I love you.

Language; word; tongue; lip service in the Gothic Church of love.
Never touched you earlier in this, but knew all alonging I was going to;
never mentioned you earlier in this poem, but new all a long I was going too
where words are breath
in the beginning

Before I met you, there were nights you lay with another;
did some shadow cross my dreams those nights?
What was I doing the day you were born?  What were you doing the day I was?
Living on the same planet, we shared air molecules and carbon atoms before we met.
How many times you gave me sustenance.

And yet, I've grown accustomed to the face.

So, say it here, as we true closer, bodies pressed intoward our future, making it
(slang is dangerous, isn't it? never knew before I was born that meaning)
so more complicated than all the time timefull moments the beads of my rosaries my orisons of yesterday.
You give me tomorrow taking me today.
So changed by joy, so opened by the surgery of love,
the memories of all he was are scattered flutterby away and in me reverberates alpha tremolo greatful swell of breakers tide
    becoming
our U.S. 1 across the east coast of us faces the sea and you rope
tug me tired and poor and huddled
the homeland of such immigrants that cross the statute of our liberty.
Hello, now, deep warm one

feel feelbe, so


69. 1966

Wait

I yearn to lay my palm
Gently near your heart,
And while we are still calm
Love before we start.

Then, trace your naked form
Touching only air,
And, tenderly and warm,
Breathe on each golden hair.

Next, launch the mint-sweet rills
Of pleasure, bright and fresh,
Whose lightly rippling thrills
Start to stir your flesh.

You'll curl against my chest,
Give a tiny moan;
This is what I love best:
Making you my own.

In time, we'll sob and thrash
And tear and bleed and shriek
As frantically we dash
To reach our frenzied peak.

Now, knowing soon we'll burn,
Coolly we can start.
And so, just now, I yearn
Gently to touch your heart.


70. 1966

Homage to Gertrude Stein

Lips sleep
Lips wake
Licks weep
Wicks leap
Lips slake
Sleek lips
Please spill
Skills please
Lips squeeze
Lips seize
Slick lips
Weak whips
Pale keys
Lips speak
Lips pique
Lips seek
Lips pay
Lips spay
Lips slay
Lips lay
Slips ail
Slips sail
Lace aches
Clay wails
Lips say
Lips sip
Sleep lips
Wake lips


71. 1966

Notice Posted in the Park*

NO ENTRANCE WITHOUT PERMIT. PERMIT MUST BE APPLIED FOR PRIOR TO ENTRY. SUBMIT APPLICATIONS IN PERSON TO PROCESSING CENTER IN CENTER OF PARK. WITH OR WITHOUT PERMIT, ALL VISITORS TO THE PARK MUST NOT LIVE, LOVE, HAVE ANY CONSCIOUS EXPERIENCE, COMMIT ANY ACT (CONSCIOUS OR UNCONSCIOUS), BE AWARE OF ANY BEAUTY OR UGLINESS, HAVE SEXUAL INTERCOURSE, KILL, PROCREATE, CONCEIVE, EAT, DEFECATE, OR PERFORM, EXPERIENCE, EXPRESS, UNDERGO, OR TAKE OF ANYTHING NAMED OR NAMELESS, REAL OR UNREAL. PROCTORS REGULARLY PATROL PARK, AND ALL MISCREANTS OR MALEFACTORS ARE INVARIABLY APPREHENDED. PENALTIES FOR FAILURE TO OBEY EVERY REGULATION, PUBLISHED OR UNPUBLISHED, IMPLICIT, EXPLICIT, IMPLIED, OR OVERLOOKED INCLUDE EXPULSION FROM THE PARK AND SPECIAL TESTS OF ABILITY TO USE PARK EQUIPMENT. NO PARK EQUIPMENT IS TO BE USED. FINALLY, BE WARNED THAT THE PARK AND ITS VISITORS DO NOT AND MAY NOT EXIST. READING THIS NOTICE IS PROHIBITED.

__________

*Published, 1996, in Aleatoric Angels, Hartford: Dangerous Food; published, August 2005, in AntiMuse.

72. 1967

Can lives be parallel? We live

Apart. . . . A part? . . . A role? We roller-coast-

Ride. At the ticket-booth, we give

Our two bits; in return, we get the most:

Life. The ties both hold the rails apart

And hold them together. So, we drop and rise;

Rocked, tumbled together in our lurching cart,

Each passenger -- rider -- once on, tries

(New to the ride, surprised by the sudden thrills,

Bounced, tossed, dropped), in his (her) way, seeks

Ever a mate to help climb the slow hills,

Reaching out while falling back from the peaks.

   Gently, finally, our cart stops, each rider arrives,

   Calmed, rested; thus love comes to renew our lives.

73. 1967

Loving You

Apart:       The dream shimmers blue and white, moonlight and snow;

                  I see your face, carved on an ice statue, glimmer beneath dark fir trees

                  In my deep memory wood.

Together:  Peace. Fitting together of magic meetings. Ball leaps for glove;

                 Raindrops, falling, just find the upturned thirsty cup; blind dancers bow toward the sun.
                 It is very good.

                 Out in the darkness beyond our awareness, a minuet of love;
                 All our secret selves embrace; a long shadow of us becoming one.
                 And so we should.


74. 1967

Vebus*

Perentesedde demyre thrull elute;
Egerbive gro bly; trew wulz pullane;
Refrull unger burgon mardulate. Thrute.
Ensone debower purladelles ovane.

Nogud delithyrw enquithrull u farb;
Tormun belissonic fel du balcgain.
Etquen volg perferre maccularb,
Semullit parferre, polinquen dalcgain.

Equided, volbinligual, langedormaniel
Deribes gro vumbs, degargs nug gorbelash.
Deg mef nug lik! Pornel frub larg giel!
Elverbate, perentesedde, etfeg demyre vash!
Oveberate bug arnithrew nup ellereem,
Enquithrebbe langedob ul tevver, eem.

__________
*In connection with a research project by Fred Damarin at ETS dealing with the psychology of art, Ann Burrows asked me to construct a poem with non-referent words.


75. 1967

Landscape with You

Gently, the dawn kisses the soft grass, and leaves
Her long, gentle trace. Moist and sweet, the wind
Pours her caress along the branches and through the sheaves
Bowing and sighing.  Uphill, one willow grieves
Her habitual lament: lost love long long gone.
Below, where the lake ripples and splashes, I find
You, your legs tucked beneath your skirt, and upon
Your lap, a half-opened rose.
Let me be the rose! Let me open in the nest of you!
Here, in the moist, cool beginning,
Your warm womanhood changes dawn and grass and leaves
And trees and lake to a human scene, turned lovely and true
By your hair blowing as no grass, leaf or grain blows,
By your self, the gentlest, most loving that dawn knows


76. 1967

Caressed without wind, this organ pipe sighs
And trembles, whispering hints of thrills
Remembered. I love your skills
Overcoming me, removing my disguise.
Love, kiss me! Come, fall into my eyes!
Accept life: love it as it kills;
Reject nothing, not even vagrant wills
Endlessly wandering under lonely skies.

Now I'll put aside the metaphor.
Blunt as prose, I say: I love you.
Each of us loves what the other gives.
Remember the flute image: A score
Gives us, together, a motive or two.
Caressed, a romantic organ lives.


77. 1967

"Come again?" is a way to say "Please say
Again."  I'll say it: I love you.
Remember this: If ever in a dreary day
Our times of embracing and laughter seem too few, 

Love too intermittent a joy to overcome
All the dull steady wear as the crisis of the hour
Grinds our skins raw, changes us from
Eager, joyful lovers to weaklings querulous and sour.

Remember: We may go down; we'll also rise
Joyfully: We shall have time to laugh and hug,
Urgently share lust, the joys of breasts and thighs,
Our own sweet fulfilled bliss, warm and snug.

You and I will come again and again for life
To and with each other loving husband and wife.


78. 1967

Commencement, Boston University, 1967

Aging brains shrink; star-cells die.
Stars become dull dwarfs, grow hard, tight.
We bask here in ceremony while night
Explodes from in us out across the sky
Until, listening to oratorical half-lie
In the smog-filtered urban light,
We squirm with boredom. At last, we take flight
As the orator urges. We soar high
Up from the stadium, sucked toward the aching
Hungry vastness stretching away
Across the curve of time, sizzling with death.
Then, like memories, our souls return, breaking
With flame into the atmosphere, returning to day,
To laughter and singing, truth and lie, the magic of breath.