My Vocabulary Did This to Me Read online

Gout-ridden angel, slayer of oceans

  Gout-ridden common-angel, keeper of virtue

  Deliver my natural body.

  For it was I who died

  With every tide.

  I am the land.

  I was the sea.

  Each grain of sand

  With us will be

  If we are dead.

  AN APOCALYPSE FOR THREE VOICES

  Lactantius writing on the Apocalypse says:

  “Qui autem ab inferis suscitabantur praeerunt

  viventibus velut judices—They, moreover, shall

  be raised from the depths that they shall stand

  above the living as judges.”

  I dreamt the ocean died, gave up its dead.

  The last spasmatic tides, the final waves

  Were crowded with escaping ghosts; the tides

  Were choked and strangled with the weight of flesh

  And falling bone. And soon the homeward floating ceased.

  The dead awoke. Once they had mouths and said,

  “When all we dead awaken,” they awoke.

  When all we dead—

  (but I have talked to the king of the rats

  and I have walked with the king of the rats

  and I have bowed to the king of the rats

  and the king of the rats has said to me—

  When all we dead—

  (but I have talked to the king of the swans

  and I have walked with the king of the swans

  and I have bowed to the king of the swans

  and the king of the swans has said to me—

  Awaken.

  The Sunday Chronicle presents the dream

  In slightly different order; Angel-Face

  Is chased through eight cartoons by Nemesis,

  By Demon Richard Tracy; each disgrace

  Each new escape, is hinted out and found

  And Angel-Face is cornered, caught, and drowned.

  He will arise in every Sunday Chronicle

  Refaced, pursued, reburied in the lake

  Till Tracy roots his ever drowning heart

  Into the crossroads with a phallic stake.

  Or say I turn the records in a great

  Electric station, our reception famed

  As far as May or Babylon and back again.

  My great turntable is inevitable; it whirls

  Around, around, a convoluting day

  A night of static sleeplessness; it plays

  Requested favorites, universal things,

  And millions listen, hear some tenor sing,

  It’s a long, long way

  From Babylon in May

  To this November.

  But listen to the chorus

  When we dead—

  Those flat and tuneless voices

  When we dead—

  The aching chord is broken

  When we dead awaken

  We will do the singing.

  We will do the singing.

  Their flat electric voices

  Fill the sky

  And Angel-Face has floated from his grave

  Again to die.

  Angel-Face hires lawyers from the firm

  Of Ratface, Swanface, and Beelzebub.

  Mr. Ratface, well-known Persian lawyer, takes the case

  Faces the court, asks manslaughter on Tracy,

  Slander on my station,

  Death on me for treason.

  Judge Swanface tries the case without a word

  And orders Juryman Beelzebub

  To give me death. The juror says,

  “I sentence you to drown three times

  When we dead

  (The king of rats has bowed to me)

  When we dead

  (The king of the swans has bowed to me)

  When we dead

  (The king of the world has bowed to me)

  Awaken and the living die.

  ONE NIGHT STAND

  Listen, you silk-hearted bastard,

  I said in the bar last night,

  You wear those dream clothes

  Like a swan out of water.

  Listen, you wool-feathered bastard,

  My name, just for the record, is Leda.

  I can remember pretending

  That your red silk tie is a real heart

  That your raw wool suit is real flesh

  That you could float beside me with a swan’s touch

  Of casual satisfaction.

  But not the swan’s blood.

  Waking tomorrow, I remember only

  Somebody’s feathers and his wrinkled heart

  Draped loosely in my bed.

  AN ANSWER TO JAIME DE ANGULO

  If asked whether I am goyim,

  Whether I am an enemy to your people,

  I would reply that I am of a somewhat older people.

  My people (the gay, who are neither Jew nor goyim)

  Were caught in your Lord God Jehovah’s first pogrom

  Out at Sodom.

  No one was very indignant about it.

  Looking backwards at us is hard on neutrals (ask Mrs. Lot someday)

  You may say it was all inhospitality to angels.

  You may say we’re all guilty; well, show us

  An angel pacing down Hollywood, wings folded,

  And try us.

  A LECTURE IN PRACTICAL AESTHETICS

  Entering the room

  Mr. Stevens on an early Sunday morning

  Wore sailor-whites and helmet.

  He had brought a couple with him and they danced like bears

  He had brought a bottle with him and the vapors rose

  From helmet, naked bottle, couple

  Haloed him and wakened us.

  But Mr. Stevens, listen, sight and sense are dull

  And heavier than vapor and they cling

  And weigh with meaning.

  To floors and bottoms of the sea, horizon them

  You are an island of our sea, Mr. Stevens, perhaps rare

  Certainly covered with upgrowing vegetation.

  You may consist of dancing animals. The bear,

  Mr. Stevens, may be your emblem,

  Rampant on a white field or panting in plurals above the floor and the ocean,

  And you a bearish Demiurge, Mr. Stevens, licking vapor

  Into the shape of your island. Fiercely insular.

  Out of sense and sight, Mr. Stevens, you may unambiguously dance

  Buoying the helmet and the couple,

  The bottle and the dance itself—

  But consider, Mr. Stevens, though imperceptible,

  We are also alive. It is not right that you should merely touch us.

  Besides, Mr. Stevens, any island in our sea

  Needs a geographer.

  A geographer, Mr. Stevens, tastes islands

  Finds in this macro-cannibalism his own microcosm.

  To form a conceit, Mr. Stevens, in finding you

  He chews upon his flesh. Chews it, Mr. Stevens,

  Like Donne down to the very bone.

  An island, Mr. Stevens, should be above such discoveries,

  Available but slightly mythological.

  Our resulting map will be misleading.

  Though it be drawn, Mr. Stevens,

  With the blood and flesh of both superimposed

  As ink on paper, it will be no picture, no tourist postcard

  Of the best of your contours reflected on water.

  It will be a map, Mr. Stevens, a county stiffened into symbols

  And that’s poetry too, Mr. Stevens, and I’m a geographer.

  DIALOGUE BETWEEN INTELLECT AND PASSION

  “Passion is alien to intellect

  As hot black doves are alien to trees

  On which they do not rest—

  All are alone.

  Of passion and of intellect

  Suspect

  Neither bird nor tree

  Of vicious privacy—

  Nothing is intimate.<
br />
  Doves without rest

  Must blackly test

  Each branch with every claw they lack

  And trees alone

  Are tough as thrones

  With too much sovereignty.”

  “Above your branches every hot black dove

  Protests his love

  And gathers in great swarms

  As darkness comes.

  They wait

  Until the darkness make

  Them dream-birds black

  As needles and as ultimate.

  As you branch blanketed in royalty

  Each lacking claw, bird-real,

  Will find its rest

  Throughout your naked branches,

  Make you feel

  Birds in the bed

  Locking their claws against

  Your privacy.”

  A NIGHT IN FOUR PARTS (Second Version)

  Part I: Going to Sleep

  While the heart twists

  On a cold bed

  Without sleep,

  Under the hot light

  Of an angry moon

  A cat leaps.

  The cat prowls

  Into cold places,

  But the heart stays

  Where the blood is.

  Part II: Light Sleeping

  Down in the world

  Where the cat prowls,

  Heart’s manikin,

  His climbing doll

  Prepares for love:

  Spawns eye, spawns mouth,

  Spawns throat, spawns genitals.

  Heart is so monstrous naked that the world recoils,

  Shakes like a ladder,

  Spits like a cat,

  Disappears.

  Part III: Wet Dream

  Downward it plunges through the walls of flesh,

  Heart falls

  Through lake and cavern under sleep

  Deep like an Orpheus

  A beating mandolin

  Plucking the plectrum of the moon upon its strings,

  It sings, it sings, it sings.

  It sings, “Restore, restore, Eurydice to life.

  Oh, take the husband and return the wife.”

  It sings still deeper, conjures by its spell

  Eurydice, the alley cat of Hell.

  “Meow, meow, Eurydice’s not dead.

  Oh, find a cross-eyed tomcat for my bed.”

  Too late, it was too late he fell.

  The sounds of singing and the sounds of Hell

  Become a swarm of angry orange flies

  And naked Orpheus, moon-shriveled, dies

  And rises leaving lost Eurydice.

  His heart falling upward towards humanity

  Howling and half-awake.

  Part IV: Waking

  Heart wakes

  Twists like a cat on hot bricks

  Beating off sunlight.

  Now the heart slinks back to the blood

  And the day starts.

  Then the blood asks,

  “Who was that lover

  That thrashed you around last night?”

  And the heart can’t answer.

  ORPHEUS IN HELL

  When he first brought his music into hell

  He was absurdly confident. Even over the noise of the shapeless fires

  And the jukebox groaning of the damned

  Some of them would hear him. In the upper world

  He had forced the stones to listen.

  It wasn’t quite the same. And the people he remembered

  Weren’t quite the same either. He began looking at faces

  Wondering if all of hell were without music.

  He tried an old song but pain

  Was screaming on the jukebox and the bright fire

  Was pelting away the faces and he heard a voice saying,

  “Orpheus!”

  He was at the entrance again

  And a little three-headed dog was barking at him.

  Later he would remember all those dead voices

  And call them Eurydice.

  ORPHEUS AFTER EURYDICE

  Then I, a singer and hunter, fished

  In streams too deep for love.

  A god grew there, a god grew there,

  A wet and weblike god grew there.

  Mella, mella peto

  In medio flumine.

  His flesh is honey and his bones are made

  Of brown, brown sugar and he is a god.

  He is a god.

  I know he is a god.

  Mella, mella peto

  In medio flumine.

  Drink wine, I sang, drink cold red wine.

  Grow liquid, spread yourself.

  O bruise yourself, intoxicate yourself,

  Dilute yourself.

  You want to web the rivers of the world.

  You want to glue the tides together with yourself.

  You look so innocent—

  Water wouldn’t melt in your mouth.

  I looked and saw him weep a honey tear.

  I, Orpheus, had raised a water god

  That wept a honey tear.

  Mella, mella peto

  In medio flumine.

  ORPHEUS’ SONG TO APOLLO

  You, Apollo, have yoked your horse

  To the wrong sun.

  You have picked the wrong flower.

  Breaking a branch of impossible

  Green-stemmed hyacinth

  You have found thorns and postulated a rose.

  Sometimes we were almost like lovers

  (As the sun almost touches the earth at sunset)

  But,

  At touch,

  The horse leapt like an ox

  Into another orbit of roses, roses.

  Perhaps,

  If the moon were made of cold green cheese,

  I could call you Diana.

  Perhaps,

  If a knife could peel that rosy rind,

  It would find you virgin as a star.

  Too hot to move.

  Nevertheless,

  This is almost goodbye.

  You,

  Fool Apollo,

  Stick

  Your extra roses somewhere where they’ll keep.

  I like your aspiration

  But the sky’s too deep

  For fornication.

  TROY POEM

  We,

  Occasioned by the eye,

  To look

  And looking down

  Saw that your city was not Troy.

  Oh,

  Merry Greeks,

  We bear our fathers on our backs

  And burdened thus

  We kiss your city.

  Neither

  At foot or eye

  Do we taste

  Ruined Troy

  Which was our mother.

  Oh,

  Merry Greeks,

  When you embrace us

  We, bending, thus

  Pray against you:

  “Rise

  From our absent city

  Tough as smoke—

  Oh,

  Flesh of Hector,

  Rescue us.”

  “We find the body difficult to speak . . .”

  We find the body difficult to speak,

  The face too hard to hear through,

  We find that eyes in kissing stammer

  And that heaving groins

  Babble like idiots.

  Sex is an ache of mouth. The

  Squeak our bodies make

  When they rub mouths against each other

  Trying to talk.

  Like silent little children we embrace,

  Aching together.

  And love is emptiness of ear. As cure

  We put a face against our ear

  And listen to it as we would a shell,

  Soothed by its roar.

  We find the body difficult, and speak

  Across its wall like strangers.

  “ They are selling the midnight papers . . .”

  Every
street has alleys and within the alleys

  There are criminals and policemen.

  I said, “Tonight

  The moon is like a dead gangster.”

  I heard him giggle like a hound. “The moon,”

  He said, “is spooky. We should lie upon our backs

  And howl.”

  And so we walked, uneasy, wondering

  If there were justice anywhere

  Within this midnight city,

  Or how, without a hat, one could distinguish

  A vice-squad member from a glass of beer,

  Or whether if one met them walking hand in hand

  One could tell Bugsy Siegel from Virginia Woolf.

  They are selling the midnight papers,

  The moon is wearing brass knuckles.

  “Any fool can get into an ocean . . .”

  Any fool can get into an ocean

  But it takes a Goddess

  To get out of one.

  What’s true of oceans is true, of course,

  Of labyrinths and poems. When you start swimming

  Through riptide of rhythms and the metaphor’s seaweed

  You need to be a good swimmer or a born Goddess

  To get back out of them

  Look at the sea otters bobbing wildly

  Out in the middle of the poem

  They look so eager and peaceful playing out there where the water hardly moves

  You might get out through all the waves and rocks

  Into the middle of the poem to touch them

  But when you’ve tried the blessed water long

  Enough to want to start backward

  That’s when the fun starts

  Unless you’re a poet or an otter or something supernatural

  You’ll drown, dear. You’ll drown

  Any Greek can get you into a labyrinth

  But it takes a hero to get out of one

  What’s true of labyrinths is true of course

  Of love and memory. When you start remembering.

  THE SCROLLWORK ON THE CASKET

  To walk down the streets with a dead man or to hold conversation with him over coffee in a public restaurant would be hopelessly eccentric. To entertain a corpse in private, to worry him in the privacy of one’s room or in the cramped and more frightening privacy of a short story is an eccentricity more easily forgivable.

  A short story is narrower than a room in a cheap hotel; it is narrower than the wombs through which we descended. It does violence to any large dead man to force him within it. To fit him (even his body) into the casket of a few paragraphs, he must be twisted and contorted; his stiff arms, his extended legs must be hacked or broken. A rigor mortis operates within the memory; his image stiffens and resists in every inch. One must maim him to fit him in.