Birds fly south across the barnyard:
an omen. pig thinks & wishes
he had a shotgun. Birds
flying in all directions
and everywhere. Ugh, says Pig--
so many ladders, black cats, strange smells, there
are omens and dreams . black wings and tusks
O when
and will the birds come down.
they will
from everywhere. and do
build a nest in the dead pig/s nostrils.
Bright ringed and beautiful
coral . dry
and death rattle in a pig/sty
and in the belly of a pig,
dead. Yet
you are beautiful . ringed
turn of the wrist
whole arm in the belly of a pig.
And snake does walk out, turns
winter to spring
in a pig/s
eye fixed upon nothing.
The power that snake has
that pig should love him.
I wake up back aching from soft bed Pat
gone to class Ron to work (I
never heard a sound) its my birthday. I put on
birthday pants birthday shirt go to ADAM'S buy a
pepsi for breakfast come home drink it take a
pill I'm high. I do three Greek lessons
to make up for cutting class. I read birthday book
(from Joe) on Juan Gris real name Jose Victoriano
Gonzales stop in the middle read all
my poems gloat a little over new ballad quickly skip old
sonnets imitations of Shakespeare. Back to books. I read
poems by Auden Spenser Pound Stevens and Frank O Hara. I hate
books.
I wonder if Jan or Helen or Babe
ever think about me. I wonder if Dave Bearden still
dislikes me. I wonder if people talk about me
when i read translation, i poke around the words,
not at them, guessing at a reality not hinted at
but encoded by some prisoner from another world—
nobody's perfect; but i relish the quest for the
peculiar nature of some original writer, un-
known to us but through his function: images
thoughts perhaps of trees cows judgings ravings—
oh i'm an impotent feeling self-important fool—
consume the country, become one with it, i say to myself!
and becoming one with it belch and forget it!
no more nervous city twisting and coiling of coffee
and smokes, no more routines, schedules or lack of them!
what the fuck!— i'm internally shaken by these
desperate thoughts, my hand sticks in my throat,
Shapes of times quaver and mutually reflect,
lightening the transcenium
with sparks of gay and minuscule emphasis.
The lone hitch-hiker stands out and plucks up a number
everyone knows, and collides in the atmosphere
about him. Unstaggered but still moving,
his generator throbs one, two more times.
He's a perfect replication of the primal source,
more potent and triangular than the campus
that betrayed him and on which he was based.
I try to indulge every passion, even that,
half-guilty and overwhelming, for a fat
hamburger, onions and a shake. Meanwhile
the restaurant gleams and dips out of view.
I ask you for it to go, please, and you look
like someone fearful of infection, as though
I swing up the highway towards Accotane,
where a new brand of gas is to be named today.
The birds singing outside my window can't keep up
with the sound of a cassette in the darkened hallway.
Stars crash down against my windshield
at the rate of one per minute; many I don't see.
The head is splitting but I'm amnesiac;
each morning finds me in a different bed,
the same room, sheets a little duller brown.
The compulsion to meet my fate by collision
with a silver screen drives me on, selective
and uncertain, judging the curvature of the earth each moment
for a clue to the incidence of grit in my cornea.
A companion, more sensitive to the guttering drain
No clear origin,
No obvious direction.
Thick-thighed, big-bellied,
Heavy buttocked, hairy,
Squat, a working man,
Head set directly into chest,
Upright. Upright looking
Skyward, looking earthward,
Averting eyes, looking deeply
Into eyes, burning to look
Deeply, to reach out to you
In the pride of his youth.
Upright. Arms uncomfortable
At his sides, gesturing,
Grunting out of a cave,
Ice-driven into shelter,
In the summer of 1968
I became a vegetarian.
Reasons: 1) To become plantlike.
2) To stop consuming.
3) To live like a member of the Third World.
4) To do it.
I did it
making friends among bushes and trees
frowning on porkchops in the supermarket
denying the environmental pressures
plunking down roots in the earthly sources
attaching myself to the ground
loving the rain
drawing toward the sun.
Enter, the merciless sponge of the System
the wilderness going down
It takes so long to look down,
the first time thinking it
would then and there either
shoot up or else drop off.
One hand on
the trigger one
hand on the hand.
BIGHEAD
it can war
with little pointed
cannibal teeth
it can make
hairs of people spring
it is frightening
close the door
it comes
screaming out of capture
it spys
smiling smiling lords
its fists
pound your furniture
parents
it is crazy
every scene set to be played,
the setting and the stage
put there by some old man
with dark widespread arms
who. swings me deeper and deeper within the earth.
After long delay I have entered
the room of the starving birds.
I bought a machine selling squirrels
and placed it in my room with
pigeons on porches
(their gentle, multicolored wings!),
little birds in cages asking to be fed,
a great black raven, and,
beyond my sight, another
Larger bird.
Then I chanced them;
journeyed, left the room,
but I worried,
and soon I came back to feed them.
A sense of urgency has driven me
to take my plate of omelet upstairs.