My Vocabulary Did This to Me Read online

  The third word is eros

  Who will cling to you every birthnight

  Bringing your heart substance.

  Whomever you touch will love you,

  Will feel the cling of His touch upon you

  Like sunlight scattered over an ancient mirror.

  The fourth word is thanatos, the black belly

  That eats birthdays.

  I do not give you thanatos. I bring you a word to call Him

  Thanatos, devourer of young men, heart-biter, bone-licker.

  Look, He slinks away when you name Him.

  Name Him! Thanatos.

  The last word is agape,

  The dancer that puts birthdays in motion.

  She is there to lead words.

  Counter to everything, She makes words

  Circle around Her. Words dance.

  See them. Anthropos ageless,

  Andros made virgin, Eros unmirrored,

  Thanatos devoured.

  Agape, Agape, ring-mistress,

  Love

  That comes from beyond birthdays,

  That makes poetry

  And moves stars.

  BIRDLAND, CALIFORNIA

  The stairs upstairs were stairs

  For the sake of ceremony

  If Gertrude Stein had tried them on tiptoe

  She would not have reached the 2nd floor.

  The 2nd floor was a floor

  For the sake of ceremony

  What I mean is

  This is a poem about Orpheus

  Orpheus, he had the weight of Eurydice upon his back

  He tried to carry her

  Up that imaginary stairway.

  Eurydice could be anyone. Is

  I suppose

  Anyone.

  That makes the poem harder.

  This night (Joe Dunn could give a date

  October 1st

  That’s Joe Dunn’s date)

  But I can’t.

  Butterflies transfigure and burn

  In the absences of postmen.

  But Joe Dunn will come home

  Past all those unreal stairs

  Will

  Make a noise when the door opens,

  Will turn on the light. Will turn on the light

  Madness lies there. Orpheus collapses

  Under the weight of the sentence, killing butterflies.

  It is already

  October 2nd.

  October 3rd. Will it ever be important again

  Whether it is October 2nd or October 3rd?

  Have you ever wondered

  What I mean is

  When will they take all of us back to Birdland?

  An embarrassed Orpheus

  Arises

  With a heavy Eurydice in his arms

  What I mean is can a poem ever

  Take accidentals for its ultimates?

  It is now October 5th (or 6th)

  English majors

  Can discover the correct date

  (The Yankees used seven pitchers

  That will tell you the day)

  I was lonelier than you are now (or will be)

  October something, 1956.

  “Imagine Lucifer . . .”

  Imagine Lucifer

  An angel without angelness

  An apple

  Plucked clear by will of taste, color,

  Strength, beauty, roundness, seed

  Absent of all God painted, present everything

  An apple is.

  Imagine Lucifer

  An angel without angelness

  A poem

  That has revised itself out of sound

  Imagine, rhyme, concordance

  Absent of all God spoke of, present everything

  A poem is.

  The law I say, the Law

  Is?

  What is Lucifer

  An emperor with no clothes

  No skin, no flesh, no heart

  An emperor!

  THE SONG OF THE BIRD IN THE LOINS

  A swallow whispers in my loins

  So I can neither lie or stand

  And I can never sleep again

  Unless I whisper you his song:

  “Deep in a well,” he whispers. “Deep

  As diamonds washed beneath the stone

  I wait and whisper endlessly

  Imprisoned in a well of flesh.

  “At night he sometimes sleeps and dreams.

  At night he sometimes does not hear my voice.

  How can I wound you with my well of sound

  If he can sleep and dream beneath its wounds?

  “I whisper to you through his lips.

  He is my cage, you are my source of song.

  I whisper to you through a well of stone.

  Listen at night and you will hear him sing:

  “‘A swallow whispers in my loins

  So I can neither lie or stand

  And I can never sleep again

  Unless I whisper you this song.’”

  BABEL 3

  It wasn’t the tower at all

  It was our words he hated.

  Once our words rose

  Into God’s willing mouth

  Like bells sing into houses.

  When someone loved

  The word said love,

  On the 38th floor,

  On the 94th floor,

  On the 1224th floor.

  Words were different then. God didn’t

  Divide us into different languages

  He divided

  Words and men.

  Men and words—He called the words angels.

  We called the words angels.

  Things were different then.

  THEY MURDERED YOU: AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF KENNETH REXROTH

  To be accompanied by five jazz flutes and a contrabassoon

  I will never again climb a mountain, read St. Augustine or go to bed with a woman

  Without wishing that you were there, Kenneth Rexroth

  Sharing my experience.

  I will find you now in the leaves and in the sunsets,

  Yes, and in the saxophones and peyote buttons

  Wherever God and Nature make it quietly together

  And the murderous squares don’t try to stop their experience.

  When you died last month at the age of 52 of stomach ulcers

  It was as if we young men had lost the last hope of a libertarian revolution

  A society where poetry, jazz, sex, politics, and religion could function together like a giant gong

  Each of whose tones perfectly overlays the other.

  A society where Bohemians wouldn’t starve and predatory men wouldn’t lynch Negros and kill Jews and Hungarians

  A society where wars would be abolished

  A society where men and women would be perfectly free to do, say, think, feel what they wanted

  Under your leadership.

  When Christopher Smart

  Went to bed in the meat market

  You were there Kenneth Rexroth

  Giving encouragement to the best minds of his generation

  When Jakob Boehme

  Was busted by ten Christ-hating policemen

  You were there Kenneth Rexroth

  Breathing comfort.

  Sacco and Vanzetti will never forget

  The sound of your rough voice

  Or Rosa Luxemburg

  Or Allen Ginsberg.

  Yes, you have taught the youth of our generation to write political poetry

  That does not really offend the F.B.I.

  And yet is unsquare, mystical

  Firmly in favor

  Of God, physical exercise, and companionate marriage.

  A POEM TO THE READER OF THE POEM

  I throw a naked eagle in your throat.

  I dreamed last night

  That I was wrestling with you on the mountainside.

  An eagle had a dream over our heads.

  We threw rocks at him.
<
br />   I dreamed last night—

  This is false in any poem

  Last night never happened

  Couldn’t

  Make you feel the meaning so quickly

  That I could tell you what I dreamed last night

  That I could tell you that I dreamed I was wrestling

  With the reader of this poem.

  Dreamed—

  Was it a wet dream?

  Or dry

  Like a dream is

  When boys in a dream throw rocks at it?

  I heard myself sobbing in a wet dream

  Don’t worry I will tell you everything.

  I had a dream last night

  That I was wrestling with you on the mountainside.

  Was it a wet dream?

  No I would tell you if it was a wet dream.

  It was this poem

  Us

  I wrestled with you in this poem

  And it was not a wet dream.

  Then define

  If you don’t want to scare him out of the poem

  Define

  The dream

  The wrestling

  The lie

  And in

  What sweet Christ’s name the eagle we were throwing rocks at was,

  And why I love you so much

  And why it was not a wet dream.

  I can’t deny

  The lie.

  The eagle was

  God or Charles Olson

  The eagle was men wrestling naked

  Without the hope of men wrestling naked.

  The eagle was a wet dream.

  But the eagle in my throat says, “Jack,

  How can you write a poem to the reader of a poem?

  Even in a dream you must love somebody.”

  This is another lie.

  I did not wrestle with anybody

  I wrestled with the reader of this poem.

  Men kiss men

  Not like anybody

  Kisses a girl

  Kiss each other like the map of Africa

  Or a picture of a desert

  Or a scale-map of the entire universe.

  But this is not a wet dream.

  We did not kiss each other.

  My darling, if you flew

  A naked eagle in my throat

  I’d shout, “Exactly!

  When I said this was a poem to the reader

  I wanted to dig a pitfall

  Only you could fall into.

  You

  Know who you are

  Know how terribly far

  From last night you are.

  If I am old when you read this,

  If I am dead when you read this,

  Darling, darling, darling,

  It was last night

  When I wrestled with you.

  I am wrestling with you.

  It was not a wet dream or you would be wrestling

  With a naked gravestone.”

  Take it simply

  Suppose we had been exploring

  The hills and canyons of hell

  And wrestled

  And fucked

  And—Hell,

  Nothing but a spoiled camping trip.

  Wrestling! It was as if we were in a room full

  Of faceless comedians.

  That wasn’t what I wanted to say. I wanted to tell you

  That there is innocence too

  And the blind grandeur

  Of the face of a mountain

  In all we would have surveyed

  If it had been a wet dream

  If we had traveled

  Mapless, past what either of us knew

  Past the dead eagle,

  Past the faceless comedians

  Who bug us,

  Past the past that has misplaced us,

  Past all the dead lines in a poem that after all

  Are only dead lines in a poem,

  To the mountains

  Where our hearts are

  Where the heart is.

  A wet dream—

  I’ll tell God

  It was a wet dream.

  SONG FOR BIRD AND MYSELF

  I am dissatisfied with my poetry.

  I am dissatisfied with my sex life.

  I am dissatisfied with the angels I believe in.

  Neo-classical like Bird,

  Distrusting the reality

  Of every note.

  Half-real

  We blow the sentence pure and real

  Like chewing angels.

  “Listen, Bird, why do we have to sit here dying

  In a half-furnished room?

  The rest of the combo

  Is safe in houses

  Blowing bird-brained Dixieland,

  How warm and free they are. What right

  Music.”

  “Man,

  We

  Can’t stay away from the sounds.

  We’re crazy, Jack

  We gotta stay here ’til

  They come and get us.”

  Neo-classical like Bird.

  Once two birds got into the Rare Book Room.

  Miss Swift said,

  “Don’t

  Call a custodian

  Put crumbs on the outside of the window

  Let them

  Come outside.”

  Neo-classical

  The soft line strains

  Not to be neo-classical.

  But Miss Swift went to lunch. They

  Called a custodian.

  Four came.

  Armed like Myrmidons, they

  Killed the birds.

  Miss Munsterberg

  Who was the first

  American translator of Rilke

  Said

  “Suppose one of them

  Had been the Holy Ghost.”

  Miss Swift,

  Who was back from lunch,

  Said

  “Which.”

  But the poem isn’t over.

  It keeps going

  Long after everybody

  Has settled down comfortably into laughter.

  The bastards

  On the other side of the paper

  Keep laughing.

  LISTEN.

  STOP LAUGHING.

  THE POEM ISN’T OVER. Butterflies.

  I knew there would be butterflies

  For butterflies represent the lost soul

  Represent the way the wind wanders

  Represent the bodies

  We only clasp in the middle of a poem.

  See, the stars have faded.

  There are only butterflies.

  Listen to

  The terrible sound of their wings moving.

  Listen,

  The poem isn’t over.

  Have you ever wrestled with a bird,

  You idiotic reader?

  Jacob wrestled with an angel.

  (I remind you of the image)

  Or a butterfly

  Have you ever wrestled with a single butterfly?

  Sex is no longer important.

  Colors take the form of wings. Words

  Have got to be said.

  A butterfly,

  A bird,

  Planted at the heart of being afraid of dying.

  Blow,

  Bird,

  Blow,

  Be,

  Neo-classical.

  Let the wings say

  What the wings mean

  Terrible and pure.

  The horse

  In Cocteau

  Is as neo-classical an idea as one can manage.

  Writes all our poetry for us

  Is Gertrude Stein

  Is God

  Is the needle for which

  God help us

  There is no substitute

  Or the Ace of Swords

  When you are telling a fortune

  Who tells death.

  Or the Jack of Hearts

  Whose gypsy fortune we clasp

  In the middle of
a poem.

  “And are we angels, Bird?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to tell ’em, Jack

  There aren’t any angels except when

  You and me blow ’em.”

  So Bird and I sing

  Outside your window

  So Bird and I die

  Outside your window.

  This is the wonderful world of Dixieland

  Deny

  The bloody motherfucking Holy Ghost.

  This is the end of the poem.

  You can start laughing, you bastards. This is

  The end of the poem.

  A POEM WITHOUT A SINGLE BIRD IN IT

  What can I say to you, darling,

  When you ask me for help?

  I do not even know the future

  Or even what poetry

  We are going to write.

  Commit suicide. Go mad. Better people

  Than either of us have tried it.

  I loved you once but

  I do not know the future.

  I only know that I love strength in my friends

  And greatness

  And hate the way their bodies crack when they die

  And are eaten by images.

  The fun’s over. The picnic’s over.

  Go mad. Commit suicide. There will be nothing left

  After you die or go mad,

  But the calmness of poetry.

  THE UNVERT MANIFESTO AND OTHER PAPERS FOUND IN THE RARE BOOK ROOM OF THE BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY IN THE HANDWRITING OF OLIVER CHARMING. BY S.

  THE UNVERT MANIFESTO

  1) An unvert is neither an invert or an outvert, a pervert or a convert, an introvert or a retrovert. An unvert chooses to have no place to turn.

  2) One should always masturbate on street corners.

  3) Unversion is the attempt to make the sexual act as rare as a rosepetal. It consists of linking the sexual with the greatest cosmic force in the universe—Nonsense, or as we prefer to call it, MERTZ.

  4) Sex should be a frightening experience like a dirty joke or an angel.

  5) Dirty jokes and angels should be frightening experiences.

  6) An unvert must not be homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, or autosexual. He must be metasexual. He must enjoy going to bed with his own tears.

  7) Mertz!

  8) All the universe is laughing at you.

  9) Poetry, painting, and cocksucking are all attempts of the unvert to make God laugh.

  10) The larger the Dada, the bigger the hole.

  11) Sidney Mertz was the only man ever arrested for drunken-driving of a steam locomotive. He is now the bartender of the American Legion bar in Jackson, Wyoming.

  12) Jews and Negros are not allowed to be unverts. The Jew will never understand unversion and the Negro understands it too well.

  13) An unvert only loves other unverts. He will, however, consent to perform an act of unversion with almost anything else except lovers and mountain lions.