Your Name Here: Poems (6 page)

Word gets out. He makes a U-turn

and is soon speeding along a numbered highway

out in the country somewhere. “How did it get so itchy?

So late?” They bind him to the trash

and escort him up the ramp, to the sacrificial slab.

Oh? Well, if that’s the way things work out,

more power to ’em. Being is only a way of being.

When in doubt, fast forward, I always say.

Now that it’s Christmas and Mother

there must be an explanation for the shadows,

the gaps in the grass of the downs

over there. “Ssh. Don’t think.”

And I was all for a descent into a churn

in my diving helmet. Funny the way things work out.

I said, it’s funny the way things work out.

Where is that tricycle, man?

You know I set much store by it

since there is nothing else in the world right now.

Here is the church and here is the steeple

and the vast hill that recedes under them

down to the squirrel’s nest. He has to have one,

you know. She wrote letters and crushed them

under her pillow. Years later they turned up

in the mill race floating quietly, secretively,

near the shore. I’ll

get up and get one. No,

you won’t. This is strictly the governor’s business,

who held hands with Miles Standish, or Priscilla—

a tectonic unrest made less awkward

by the distribution of the braille mail and disposing

of table scraps. Sometimes one gets caught in a pail,

“in pailed.” And the doily scissors scallop your tootsies

as though primitive man had lived this way all along,

just waiting for you to show up and be astonished.

In truth sir you are a jaybird.

But just come with us and everything will work out fine,

I’m sure. Oh no you don’t, that’s the way you got me the last time,

you bastard and I let them punish me for it. Gentlemen,

we’ve a problem here. On the one hand I don’t want to appear too harsh,

but his lackadaisicalness is truly unconscionable—I—I

just don’t have a word for it.

Now I want the flower girls to appear stage left.

The peacocks and our mother will take care of everything else.

I am unperched, dispossessed, and this is the helpful truth of it,

the holy harp I keep harping on.

If they had wanted it another way they would have arranged it

that way. It would be cruel to dwell much longer in their collective memory

and I’m ready for a shower. Oh, just one thing—

did that guy ever tell you where my tricycle is, or the light switch?

It was all a drawing on canvas, you see. This way no one gets hurt,

and a few of us learn something.

Some of these houses are startlingly old.

Other, newer ones seem old too.

Only when a line of trees ends in something

Does it resemble the model of progress glimpsed once

in a bottle as a boy. Our references have all aged a little

as we were looking at them, not noticing.

Now there’s something perverse in every yellow leaf,

every cat loafing, even the stick leaning against the door.

I’d like to get out of these clothes ...“Later.”

And a full moon of oxymorons swings up over the ridgepoles

with their chimneys. It’s light enough to read by.

But nobody feels like reading now.

A talent for self-realization

will get you only as far as the vacant lot

next to the lumber yard, where they have rollcall.

My name begins with an A,

so is one of the first to be read off.

I am wondering where to stand—could that group of three

or four others be the beginning of the line?

Before I have the chance to find out, a rodent-like

man pushes at my shoulders. “It’s
that
way,” he hisses.

“Didn’t they teach you
anything
at school? That a photograph

of
anything
can be real, or maybe not? The corner of the stove,

a cloud of midges at dusk-time.”

I know I’ll have a chance to learn more

later on. Waiting is what’s called for, meanwhile.

It’s true that life can be anything, but certain things

definitely aren’t it. This gloved hand,

for instance, that glides

so securely into mine, as though it intends to stay.

Instant insufficiency edged eerily over our oasis.

Under us, awed angry Airedales adjusted.

The octet closes with a signing-on in shipyards.

Through naked fingers of the rain

Easter week, and during the winter the valleys

are like yeast. This much I divined, walking,

then turned my back on the mighty fragment of yesterday.

Everything was at peace with everybody. A dark stone glistened.

It’s wind, it’s sleeting.

It’s real adventure. It hasn’t happened yet.

It’s time to break for lunch—

half a bean sandwich. Yours isn’t here yet,

you asked for black bread on bacon.

The perp is becoming abusive,

and I would like a chiller, wind

in my pants, my long taffeta gown,

to take me anywhere from any place

before this insane excursion is finished. Please—

the seamstress is inside down below.

The president of Slavonia is on the wire:

We’ll have to go ahead with the order for flatbed trucks

now stretching far into the offended distance.

Stop! Some other way may be found—

That’s what you think, sister.

The day extracts, in a loosely confining way,

what these pills signified,

and what they were supposed to absorb before your seconds arrived

and now it’s too late to include the meeting.

It would only baffle the establishment.

Yes but what I am hearing is from plazas of wailing

tilting back into the bland exposure of it,

the idle secret. It was again a lunch of sandwiches,

but truth will perforate. As sadly as I’m

in your line of vision, Venice is closed,

another browser sidles in

through a snow of ecstatic fleas,

what my alma mater is all about I think I once said.

Photographs of members enjoin us through the back seat

on a spring day once; green grass and toilets

spooled on a little anticipation.

“Nelly”—that’s all I needed and we’re off again, down foul alleys

ending in meticulous squares, and none of us knew the outcome yet.

We could see the blue ice-slick clear through the Turkish uniform,

and the bowling alleys ended out in the garden as is right

and proper.

Poor Beverly—they never gave her (him?) a chance

to prove herself in the journals of the East End

before being summoned to that rocky principality

from which no bulletins ever issue—only brickbats

and the occasional red herring press release: “Collapsed

felt underdrawers are invading the season, counsels

Léopoldine from Phalsbourg, but don’t

dare disguise those shoulder pads yet. Instead, why not

think rotting horseflesh this year? Some beaux even prefer it

to the spritzed violets so common underfoot

these days of walking back to the starting gate

where everything began, inconceivably it seems, in light—”

a fiery bazaar no one needs to talk too much about anymore

till the next in the round of visits happens.

It’s incredible though how few latent oblivions have been canceled—

we’re back on track at least as far as

late returns are concerned. Most of them are in.

A few hotel ghosts wander stiffly, wondering if catarrh

can ever be cathartic, and if there’s any afterlife, and if so,

whether it’s near as the next room, or the closet even,

which might just be preferable to daytime’s sloping agendas,

the roof at night, the rent, and the violet pallor flooding us now always.

And he would say, “You ought to write him and thank him for it,” and I’d

say, “Yes, I’m going to when I have the time.” Of course I had intended

to, but the project aged. It was slightly too dry. I’ll begin again, I’ll

thank him. And so I did, in my own way. I forgot him and his seven journeys

to success. We became as one—a stilt. A single stilt isn’t of much use,

and that’s how I thanked him—by reminding him from time to time,

as the salt ball rolled toward the glacier.

It melted and did not. Wait, you can’t get up. There’s A.1. sauce

on her slipcover. Informality be damned, he said. Whenever I come here I

like to take two lumps instead of three. Unfortunately you can’t have either,

we’re out of everything I said. The sun smiled wanly on the Cimmerian landscape,

which stirred. It seemed as if it was at last about to take an interest

in rubber goods,

piles of filth,

gossamer undies,

potted hyacinths,

stumps no tree would own up to,

casinos rattling till three in the morning.

I’m sorry, Mrs. Swan-toe,

we meant not to disturb and then this waterfall

rushed over the island, as I’m sure you noticed. By the time it had passed

fully, except for the occasional unavoidable runnel,

no one could remember how to count.

It was a Royal Accident.

You can’t rely on those,

they always win.

In Scandinavia, where snow falls frequently

in winter, then lies around for quite some time,

lucky cousins were living in a time-vault of sorts.

No purchase on the ground floor, but through a funnel-shaped drain

one could catch glimpses, every so often, of the peach-colored

firmament. It’s so terrific! It’s purer than you think,

too, not that that need unduly concern us.

Father sat in his living room

off the main parlor, working at his table. We never knew

exactly what he did. We kids would amuse ourselves

with games like Authors and Old Maid, until Mamma abruptly

withdrew the lamp, and we all sat shivering in the dark for a while.

Soon it was time to go to bed. We groped our way up

non-existent flights of stairs to the attic funnel.

Everything is so peaceful in here I can dream of more kinds

of things at once. But what if the dreams were prophetic?

Stumbling down an alley, screaming, forehead bathed in blood

or ossified like an old tree root that can barely speak, and when it can,

says things like: “Do you know your horse is on fire?”

Many winters were passed in this way.

I cannot say I feel any wiser for it.

Instead my brain feels like a face freshly shaved

by the barber. I rub it with satisfaction,

giving him a good tip on the way out.

More fanciful patterns await us further along

in our destiny, I tell him, and he agrees; anything

to be rid of me and on to the next customer.

Outside, in the street, a length of silk unspools beautifully,

rejoicing in its doom.

Father, I can go no farther, the lamp blinds me

and the man behind me keeps whispering things in my ear

I’d prefer not to be able to understand ...

Yet you must, my child, for the sake of the cousins

and the rabbit who await us in the dooryard.

Although I have known you for a long time

it seems as though we hardly know each other at all.

It was as a rehearsal for coming to be in time

that leaves are aslant. Take another look

for the cookie hoarded in armpits up till now,

the pointed stare.

When the satchel came undone I was running around

the corner please, sure as a clock’s breath

in the allées, digging. Heaven sent this pinprick.

It was another time to be riding around in.

Alright I said I can take care of myself.

Then depth spun its wheels. I was sliding on gravel somewhere.

Take a look around you for your personal belongings

before getting on this bus. Not one but three old ladies came along.

The flustered caddy spoke for the local cesspool contractor when he said

man the trailer I thought I belonged here but what

the hey, said in wartime the beets were too much spinach.

Now I can unclog you be patient.

A girl in the apse wondered why the cymbals

were drained of vowels in these perplexing times.

Have you ever read Rimbaud’s Les Voyelles No I haven’t I said.

It’s too much like the class room in here. Now if we replaced the air

with cobwebs wouldn’t they all march in correctly

to the triangle’s tune? Sure, the major is bound to be pissed off

but all that counts is our air conditioner. In a jiffy

the dock was rehabbed. The colonel grabbed Mavis and Iris.

It’s dumb overhead. I know this but please,

let’s resolve our differences in gentlemanly fashion. What’ll it

be, swords or soldier beetles. My is there a difference?

Mayhap only in dreams where you bottle it and sell it.

And the can fell off the radiator.

Althea’s glazed look came true. It was deep blue in the palaces

of revolt. Something extraordinary was happening

all the time. The due date kept flashing past