"deathmask" poems
How far is it?
How far is it now?
The gigantic gorilla interior
Of the wheels move, they appall me ---
The terrible brains
Of Krupp, black muzzles
Revolving, the sound
Punching out Absence! Like cannon.
It is Russia I have to get across, it is some was or other.
I am dragging my body
Quietly through the straw of the boxcars.
Now is the time for bribery.
What do wheels eat, these wheels
Fixed to their arcs like gods,
The silver leash of the will ----
Inexorable. And their pride!
All the gods know destinations.
I am a letter in this slot!
I fly to a name, two eyes.
Will there be fire, will there be bread?
Here there is such mud.
It is a trainstop, the nurses
Undergoing the faucet water, its veils, veils in a nunnery,
Touching their wounded,
The men the blood still pumps forward,
Legs, arms piled outside
The tent of unending cries ----
A hospital of dolls.
And the men, what is left of the men
Pumped ahead by these pistons, this blood
Into the next mile,
The next hour ----
Dynasty of broken arrows!
How far is it?
There is mud on my feet,
Thick, red and slipping. It is Adam's side,
This earth I rise from, and I in agony.
I cannot undo myself, and the train is steaming.
Steaming and breathing, its teeth
Ready to roll, like a devil's.
There is a minute at the end of it
A minute, a dewdrop.
How far is it?
It is so small
The place I am getting to, why are there these obstacles ----
The body of this woman,
Charred skirts and deathmask
Mourned by religious figures, by garlanded children.
And now detonations ----
Thunder and guns.
The fire's between us.
Is there no place
Turning and turning in the middle air,
Untouchable and untouchable.
The train is dragging itself, it is screaming ----
An animal
Insane for the destination,
The bloodspot,
The face at the end of the flare.
I shall bury the wounded like pupas,
I shall count and bury the dead.
Let their souls writhe in like dew,
Incense in my track.
The carriages rock, they are cradles.
And I, stepping from this skin
Of old bandages, boredoms, old faces
Step up to you from the black car of Lethe,
Pure as a baby.
3.6k
Here we are again, in the deathmask of the city spinning.
The circumcised sea with its crocodiles and scars.
Never is the onrush of blood so violent the falsehoods
of the sky that drip neon on our heads
from desiccated clouds so true
This is the wild:
To the clusterfucked and cloistered swimming
in their bowls of soup and the scuttled
shells synchronous in their bass pulse beeping
to the blackhats who don’t believe
their messiah will ever come because they hear
the trump of doom every second of every day
yet they still stomp in their flatbeds for joy
and the prismatic dead who drag themselves from
their gurneys to march through the alleys
like tuskless elephants shoving their fingers
into the sun’s fumarole determined
to disintegrate into a mist of Krylon and copper
where we carry our concrete world slung
over our shoulders and the ravenous
moon in its ellipse above beached night heaving,
eyes curling in their sockets like gunsmoke smoldering
hearts humming like taut snares beheaded fish
in front of us, beheaded bodies behind us
I drag mine along by the hair.
To the children and the panhandlers who greet
the lion like hello kitty
and the skittish magnetic few in their
lightning-spaded furrows
on the ecliptic chained but leaping ever farther
and higher like the wrecking ***** pendulum
and all the naked lost milling among the mummified
tenements, waving Geiger counters before them
as they wander the sweaty street holding their heads
high as they grind flesh against flesh
pulverizing themselves into rubble
measuring the toll of time by destruction
drinking in mercury and hard water and
shrapnel and gamma and fire and gold
to them I say:
turn your hourglass on its side turn
your hourglasses on their sides
then acknowledge me so I can die in peace.
Dec 15, 2011
Dec 15, 2011 at 4:35 PM UTC
How far is it?
How far is it now?
The gigantic gorilla interior
Of the wheels move, they appall me --- The terrible brains
Of Krupp, black muzzles
Revolving, the sound
Punching out Absence! Like cannon.
It is Russia I have to get across, it is some was or other.
I am dragging my body
Quietly through the straw of the boxcars.
Now is the time for bribery.
What do wheels eat, these wheels
Fixed to their arcs like gods,
The silver leash of the will ----
Inexorable. And their pride!
All the gods know destinations.
I am a letter in this slot!
I fly to a name, two eyes.
Will there be fire, will there be bread?
Here there is such mud.
It is a trainstop, the nurses
Undergoing the faucet water, its veils, veils in a nunnery, Touching their wounded,
The men the blood still pumps forward,
Legs, arms piled outside
The tent of unending cries ----
A hospital of dolls.
And the men, what is left of the men
Pumped ahead by these pistons, this blood
Into the next mile,
The next hour ----
Dynasty of broken arrows!
How far is it?
There is mud on my feet,
Thick, red and slipping. It is Adam's side,
This earth I rise from, and I in agony.
I cannot undo myself, and the train is steaming.
Steaming and breathing, its teeth
Ready to roll, like a devil's.
There is a minute at the end of it
A minute, a dewdrop.
How far is it?
It is so small
The place I am getting to, why are there these obstacles ---- The body of this woman,
Charred skirts and deathmask
Mourned by religious figures, by garlanded children.
And now detonations ----
Thunder and guns.
The fire's between us.
Is there no place
Turning and turning in the middle air, Untouchable and untouchable.
The train is dragging itself, it is screaming ---- An animal
Insane for the destination,
The bloodspot,
The face at the end of the flare.
I shall bury the wounded like pupas,
I shall count and bury the dead.
Let their souls writhe in like dew,
Incense in my track.
The carriages rock, they are cradles.
And I, stepping from this skin
Of old bandages, boredoms, old faces
Step up to you from the black car of Lethe, Pure as a baby.
Aug 7, 2013
Aug 7, 2013 at 10:35 PM UTC
splayed
with a deathmask as gaunt
as in life
metacarpals and phalanges,
liberated (in vain) of rubbery
connective tissues
ribs and spine,
so surprisingly human,
sunbleached
bones that may as well have been mine
but weren’t for whatever reason
(or no reason at all)
what karmic debt
could this poor specimen have possibly incurred
to be pinned, naked and fleshless, in a glass-paned box for all to see for all foreseeable eternity?
mayhap beauty is, itself
criminal
when it goes without a price tag.
Mar 31, 2016
Mar 31, 2016 at 11:59 AM UTC
Keep your trees, keep them for your heaven of ashen dusk
And night like the pale-faced deathmask of emperors,
No reason that the commoner to oblivion is hushed,
These old-wise woods and leaves, peopled without us.
Keep Macedonian dust lightly conquered over the breeze,
So that it shoots its tail like the centuries-sole comet,
The scorched earth left by Alexander’s mapmaker eyes,
Swung wide like his Sarissophoroi over Persian might.
Remember the lesser grove of his teacher Aristotle’s tribe,
They have only slipped their sandals off, to bare themselves
Of sound and the concourse of the foot’s impulse,
Caught the lithesome wind, to flow outside our hearing,
And muse as empire of air and loss and forgotten walks.
Keep your trees and the darkening sky through them
That remind me of the passing into the past.
Never is the poem from tongue of ***** or plow.
Jan 21, 2020
Jan 21, 2020 at 10:14 AM UTC