A young girl rowing and her anxious fatherScavenging for corpses. Funeral meats. The cleverAbandoned orphan. The great athletic killerSulking in his tent. As though all stories beganWith someone dying.When her mother died,My mother refused to attend the funeral–In fact, she sulked in her tent all through the yearOf the old lady’s dying. I don’t know…
Charactersrobot leaderrobot tworobot threerobot foursimon powersmirandaSimon’s daughter from a previous marriage.evvySimon’s third, ‘final’ wife.nicholasSimon’s protégé and adopted son. Prosthetic limbs.the united waythe united nationsthe administrationthe world’s miseries* * *[The robots roll and lurch and glide onstage as a single mass of parts, an animated scaffold of struts and gears. The elements of this jumble devolve…
Love out of our own passionsWith no precedents,Without songs and poetry–Or have invented poetry and musicAs a comb of cells for the honey.Shaped by ignorance,A succession of new worlds,Congruities improvised byImmigrants or children.I once thought most people were Italian,Jewish or Colored.To be white and calledSomething like Ed FordSeemed aristocratic,A rare distinction.Possibly I believed only gentilesAnd…
Sitting upright in the transit system, the widowlike womenWait, hands folded in their laps, as monumental as bread.In the shopping center lots, lights mounted on cold standardsTower and stir, condensing the blue vapourOf the stars; between the rows of cars people in coats walkBundling packages in their arms or holding the hands of children.Across the…
Here under the pines a little off the roadIn 1927 the Chief of PoliceAnd Mrs. W. killed themselves together,Sitting in a roadster. Ancient unshaken pilingsAnd underwater chunks of still-mortared brickIn shapes like bits of puzzle strew the bottomWhere the landing was for Price’s Hotel and Theater.And here’s where boats blew two blasts for the keeperTo…
She rises daily in the EastAnd yearly in spring for the greatPaschal candle of the sun.Her name lingers like a spotOf gravy in the figured vestmentOf the language of the Britains.Her totem the randy bunny.Our very Thursdays and WednesdaysAre stained by syllables of thunderAnd Woden’s frenzy.O my fellow-patriots loyal to thisOur modern world of high…
In an old allegory you would carryA chained alphabet of tokens:Ankh Badge Cross.Dragon,Engraved figure guarding a hallowed intaglio,Jasper kinema of legendary Mind,Naked omphalos piercedBy quills of rhyme or sense, torah-like: unbornVein of will, xenophileYearning out of Zero.Untrusting I court you. WaveringI seek your face, I readThat Crusoe’s knifeReeked of you, that to defile youThe soldier…
Or more, one afternoon—the shaggy peltOf grasses, for the first time in that child’s life,Flowing for miles. Imagine the moving shadowOf a cloud far off across that shadeless ocean,The obliterating strangeness like a tideThat pulls or empties the bubble of the child’sImaginary heart. No hills, no trees.The child’s heart lightens, tending like a bubbleTowards the…
A box a tubeTerrarium of dreams and wonders.Coffer of shades, ordainedCotillion of phosphorsOr liquid crystalHomey miracle, tubOf acquiescence, vein of defiance.Your patron in the pantheon would be HermesRaster dance,Quick one, little thief, escortOf the dying and comfort of the sick,In a blue glow my father and little sister satSnuggled in one chair watching youTheir wife…
Insomniac monkey-mind ponders the Dove,Symbol not only of Peace but sexualLove, the couple nestled and brooding.After coupling, the human animal needsThe woman safe for nine months and more.But the man after his turbulent minute or twoIs expendable. Usefully rash, recklessFor defense, in his void of redundancyWilling to death and destruction.Monkey-mind envies the male DoveWho equally…
