American Papyrus: 25 Poems Part 4

From feeling stiff and pushed under-- Numb to the point of a corpse-- With insecurity enough not to remember, Even, her ABC's, Rita runs into the night Where outside of a window She blesses the workers making Colonial bread.

An old man in a cowboy hat, Herb, Is saddled on the wooden railing of a porch To an apartment complex: seated there beside a remembrance Of a young woman like Rita.

And in the spitting fumes; bad-m.u.f.fler sounds; The rocking phallicism in radio music of pa.s.sing cars,

He feels he has to move or die And gets down To his pickup.

And Rita, upon dawn and upon the end of rain, Walks the streets again after tiring, Ready to go back and confront the curfew-conscious Group home, and the "zero" on her record full of Zeros. She worries about carrying in her womb A mini-Herb with scabs of grey hair And little pot-holes in his tiny face, Though she is still a virgin.

Estivation

Weekends in Tranquility Park-- With the downtown buildings, hallways of giants cl.u.s.tered, Exhaling the coolness echoed From the rectangular mouths of doors Opened and closed by cityers-- A coolness came over my thoughts The way lack of wind contains The hastening of Yosemite's flames.

There, diurnal and punctual, she crossed That small area of gra.s.s, fountains, and cement Which were generally buffeted more fully by sun and adjacent Sounds, moving the park more than Bush and Dukakis'

Presence. "WALK" was always lit when la chica Approached the street, carrying her library books.

When would she, artificial and pneumatic, Who like Houston's miniature stop-lights While going to work, veer my movements To slide off a plane ticket and be led Through and from burning Amazons And green-house climactic changes-- Through wasted ozone and my own depleted life-- The breath of her mouth my only nourishment.

Masking tape From hurricane threats Remains at the edges of windowpanes; Palm trees, below, are hybrid to cement; Thuc Nguyen's business report figures Blend and bury themselves as distant sounds; The staff meeting and this cigarette industry are gone.

Slid off a plane ticket caught in life's winds Restless No friends for real All wanting something from me The outside world has nothing Except life-ending amus.e.m.e.nts of s.e.x to escape void The dead have some solidity of truth About what happens after life Even if they are not aware of it, And the rest breathe in fables Everything is surely unchanged in Springfield, Mo., where I was raised, But none of it is mine Nothing is ours--humanity drifts along And intersects briefly in alliances My friends Are co-workers whom I must expire My life with civilly As we light cigarettes And b.i.t.c.h of no new raises

When would she pull on my arm Tugging me thoroughly into breaking gla.s.s Of the 12th floor conference room To fall, putting me out violently, When I can no longer dream

Mid-West Hymn of Aten

Aten, where it is throned on the television beneath the window, Sees above and below and says nothing: It enjoys the woman secretary and the road constructor

Who from opposite s.h.i.+fts of the sun Come to it, the cat; Follow the roaming in its mansion; Pensively laugh as it clings to hundred dollar drapes;

Feed it holiday popcorn on the throne; And close the drapes that the cat, Aten Had opened by its tugging, And will open again: Opening below Where the woman, statue of her liberty Wedged in a mud layered hill of snow Ankle-thrusts The tilt of her body after a moment of standing still: Face looking in the trash receptacle that her flabby b.r.e.a.s.t.s rest on the rim of and point toward; head bowed To the tin; And mind distinguis.h.i.+ng between good and Bad trash. Her hands raise from the snow-blended

Mixture to push back the hair that was intimate with trash.

She raises her head and glances up at the sky that She had noticed a few seconds earlier; and wonders Of the person who would throw away a nightgown And wilted plants, dented but unopened cat food, And scattered baby pictures-- But the cold wind pushes further into her rashed cheeks; And she drops the gown before she can mentally conceptualize The woman's possible image She digs further and...

And opening Above where Two crossing jet Had each made an element Of a cross in the skies--- A third, now, and the Heavens appear to play Tick-tack-toe with their bad arts, Or do not know how to push out caulk neatly When hoping to seal out the heavens.

McConico

Through the hazy waters Of his hot bath, looking, he thought That his woman's pubic hairs Should naturally have come out More permed like his, Regardless of her color.

The door being shut and locked With a rifle in front--still he heard From the living room a forum of senators'

Televised voices discussing laws of limits In openness and freedoms And ramifications. He did not understand-- As the mirrors steamed, dripped Down from the air conditioning's touch, and resteamed When it shut off; And when he wondered what home owners Had used the bathtub before And what disease might be Dropping from the cracks around the faucet--that The f.a.gs would push down the American way of life.

He did not argue that if they were isolated From the mainstream, their liquids might get off on any Products as they worked for the cost of their isolation In, for example, a barren region of Texas; And that the isolated would, by the testing of the Virus, be proven witches So there would not have to be witch hunts-- No, he just felt their destruction.

And he thought of his woman In the bedroom, waiting, and became Forgetful of anything But the desire to have her.

They had that freedom. The American const.i.tution Said so---freedom to live and breathe And f.u.c.k and f.u.c.k..

f.u.c.k so hard that the p.e.n.i.s would Knive through the condom And spray-paint the man's name On the dull walls of the v.a.g.i.n.a.

They had that freedom--those inalienable rights-- Her to be banged and to squeal To her friends that she was in love And him to white p.u.s.s.y And a gal that he could call his own...

His woman. And if the initial M got ready To graffito-crawl his way out-- A problem for the rest of their years--- She could erase it, not remembering it With any more significance than Having clipped a broken end Of a fingernail. She had that right.

Her man said so, and so said The American const.i.tution.

His s.h.i.+ft in Toastmaster Had for that day ended, And so now he could rest in waters; Focus on the bubbles that rose When he farted; and let the memories Of the entire day be released to rise and fall Like the steam.

He would have to scrub himself Good before going to his woman: She understood money With its charm of a cocaine high-- Although the need for dominance And the breaking of rules Made her love him Who still did not supply her with all of her needs-- But the composite smell of the factory and the drugs That he sold after each s.h.i.+ft Would lessen the good feelings that made That understanding.

Beauty Shop Motif

Taking the boat two hundred miles With her Ozark loving husband Not having the key And why I don't use The hair dye she prescribed-- The one I had bought from Her last time-- I say, "Yes, Honey"

And watch her lips through the mirror speed on.

My back aches in the chair stiff as a board.

Have I gotten as old as this?

Have I started saying, "Yes, Honey?"

Conscious of slight pains and discomforts-- Words as silent racing of lips.

Another shampoo is ground harder In the grey hair of my scalp.

The long gray weeds that grow out of it Will be chopped off another two inches more Than what I asked her to do.

In a room of old women, like me, Who let the buzz of dryers And loud beautician speakers Keep their minds active from remembering, My bored and wayward eyes See in the mirror (Now seated in a once empty chair next to mine) A young one: Her fidgeting body willfully captivated; Hair held high and hostage; Curlers stiffly tightened; Bulges diluvial by Cylenderic Bottle Held unG.o.dly above her head And squeezed by gentle but firm hands Of a male beautician-- And I remember that the noxious liquid Dribbles under Cotton Crowns Around one's head As the eyes water from the sting Of this thing called love.

Somehow I want to warn her Although she may not be a stranger To being whitewashed In a man's liquids And the click-of-the heels logic Of women, as if One's whole damaged life Can be bounced from a mirror In and to all women Like an SOS.

Sculpting of Winds

It was as if certain people came in. Those disliked were Disregarded and the rest kind of circled in and out But at the time in and a small period out were a.s.sociated with And considered part of that person's reality by himself The way a cat brushes against certain familiarities Agreeable enough as it goes for its meal, And so I befriended places.

Saltillo in Mexican mountains when the land s.h.i.+vers in shadow And the sun stretches through the air and beyond it With an intent to overpower what is closer to man-- The River-walk and the Alamo and between both where A Philipino in green shorts eats the gra.s.s Where sidewalk and road intersect. There is a city where I Thought I could find myself less lonely, And so I have returned home. Snow embraces Springfield's earth to its death.

Under the sounds of the rolling drips of water in the gutter I am frozen, though fingers tearing apart the wet leaves I pulled off from a tree, wis.h.i.+ng they had been Dry to grind and become the physical appearance of the wind.

Cracked and peeled back from a boot a portion Of the snow is removed but refreezes more heavily On one area of the dead. I stand as an outsider Imagining myself to allow a job section of today's newspaper To become the thoughts that crash along in the mind of the wind.

I need money but cannot find anything worth doing.

To change from a person to a commercial function to eat...this..

This day I shall sleep away As the night. In Springfield, Mo.

The Great G.o.d may also await for his eviction.

Two hundred Indians in Houston bow down to Krishna as the gates Men lock around him are opened and closed.

But in Springfield he probably awaits, His red-sock feet on his sofa As the furnace blows The Soviet flag on the wall before his feet.

His walls may have many flags, And his mind thoughts of glasnost and communism Intermixed.. impractical thoughts He must sacrifice so that He can exist together more easily With the community of the dead, Unalone.