I back the car over a soft, large object;
hair appears on my chest in dreams.
The paperboy comes to collect
with a pit bull. Call Grandmother
and she says, Well you know
death is death and none other.
In the mornings we’ re in the dark;
even at the end of June
the zucchini keep on the sill.
Ring Grandmother for advice
and she says, O you know
I used to grow so many things.
She said the cornflake cake made her day,
she said a man cannot be blamed for being
unfaithful: his heart is not in tune with his
extremities and it’ s just the way his body
chemistry is. She said all sorts of things.
We saw a duck pond and a man with a tub
of maggots and a tub of sweet corn, we saw
the walled garden and the old-fashioned library
in the park, stopped for a cup of tea in a cafe
where we had the cornflake cake cut into halves
His superpower was that his testicles manufactured sperm
with exclusively X chromosomes & that was ironic because
not only was he a beast to women but his 40 baby girls grew
up seeking men like the father they barely saw unless they went
to his studio to be painted which wasn’ t OK with their mothers
who were not only jealous but guilty of giving birth to girls
who were products of an X-chromosome-making monster
& would soon suffer at the hands of other monsters with X-
type sperm thereby assuring the continuation of suffering
Soldiers never do die well;
Crosses mark the places —
Wooden crosses where they fell,
Stuck above their faces.
Soldiers pitch and cough and twitch —
All the world roars red and black;
Soldiers smother in a ditch,
Choking through the whole attack.
For we have thought the longer thoughts
And gone the shorter way.
And we have danced to devils’ tunes,
Shivering home to pray;
To serve one master in the night,
Another in the day.
The age demanded that we sing
And cut away our tongue.
The age demanded that we flow
And hammered in the bung.
The age demanded that we dance
And jammed us into iron pants.
And in the end the age was handed
The sort of shit that it demanded.
In the rain in the rain in the rain in the rain in Spain.
Does it rain in Spain?
Oh yes my dear on the contrary and there are no bull fights.
The dancers dance in long white pants
It isn’ t right to yence your aunts
Come Uncle, let’ s go home.
Home is where the heart is, home is where the fart is.
Come let us fart in the home.
There is no art in a fart.
Still a fart may not be artless.
Let us fart an artless fart in the home.
Democracy.
Democracy.
Bill says democracy must go.
Go democracy.
Go
Your mother’ s in the kitchen and out
and in again. It’ s all about them.
They’ ve taken over like the dark cloud
hanging low over the back yard,
a fat aunt coming in for a hug.
Enough’ s enough. The door opens:
new guests flow in as the old
back you up like mangroves.
Why get dressed up to stay in?
Pretend to befriend other children
because they have been dumped next to you?
Resistance, then fire, then to your room
without toys. Later, it’ ll be the boys
to whom your friends will cater,
We are descending again in parallel —
I cannot say together — as in another dream
you rushed through the first door
without me. It was late. Your name
was an elevator door resisting its rail,
its screech my only attempt to reach you.
Was it the hurt that filled the elevator
I entered with gurneys and gowned girls,
incubated hearts pumping for a home?
Floors flicker as they fall.
The girls’ chatter flaps shrill at light,
tangles in my hair and away
Various stars. Various kings.
Various sunsets, signs, cursory insights.
Many minute attentions, many knowledgeable watchers,
Much cold, much overbearing darkness.
Various long midwinter Glooms.
Various Solitary and Terrible Stars.
Many Frosty Nights, many previously Unseen Sky-flowers.
Many people setting out (some of them kings) all clutching at stars.
