I am, as you know, Walter Llywarch,
Born in Wales of approved parents,
Well goitred, round in the bum,
Sure prey of the slow virus
Bred in quarries of grey rain.
Born in autumn at the right time
For hearing stories from the cracked lips
Of old folk dreaming of summer,
I piled them on to the bare hearth
Of my own fancy to make a blaze
To warm myself, but achieved only
The smoke’ s acid that brings the smart
Of false tears into the eyes.
The wooden scent of wagons,
the sweat of animals — these places
keep everything — breath of the cotton gin,
black damp floors of the icehouse.
Ink on a 5.5 by 9 inch substrate of 60-pound offset matte white paper. Composed of: varnish (soy bean oil [C57H98O6], used as a plasticizer: 52%. Phenolic modified rosin resin [Tall oil rosin: 66.2%. Nonylphenol [C15H24O]: 16.6%. Formaldehyde [CH2O]: 4.8%. Maleic anhydride [C4H2O3]: 2.6%. Glycerol [C3H8O3]: 9.6%. Traces of alkali catalyst:.2%]: 47%): 53.7%. 100S Type Alkyd used as a binder (Reaction product of linseed oil: 50.7%. Isophthalic acid [C8H6O4]: 9.5%. Trimethylolpropane [CH3CH2C(CH2OH)3]: 4.7%. Reaction product of tall oil rosin: 12.5%. Maleic anhydride [C4H2O3]: 2.5%.
Bewildered Saint of the curse, bulbous
& profane, I invoke you against this Nest
Of Lice & Vipers: O volcanic Captain, I implore you, pour
Your scorn upon these Borgias; before these Braggarts
Unfurl your thick invective, show your bullet head
Whiskey-pickled, weathered & pupilless, sweating
In a bantam rage, your sad-fish face a fist;
Ostrogothic versus the matrons
Voluble against the Vampire’ s slander
Because I would never say Vivisectionist to her face
While you old Captain Fatstock, Hopscotch, Havoc
The deer racing across a field
of the same clay and tallow
color they are — if they are:
or are they tricks of the light? —
must feel themselves being poured
and pouring through life. We’ re not built
but become: trembling columns
of apprehension that ripple
and pass those ripples to and fro
with the world that shakes around us —
it too is something poured
and ceaselessly pouring itself.
February shakes the fields
and trembles in each yellow willow.
Mama said
it only existed in storybooks
with its soft surface
of bluebells
but there it was
spinning so close to the earth
that it bent
every weather vane in Omaha
it was prom night
and I thought I’ d pluck a few
trumpets
to bring your Grandma
so I pulled our red ladder out
of the garage
and climbed to the roof
I stood up
and imagined I was balancing
the moon on my head
the narrow windows of Union
Station
gleamed like ice chips
Words torn, unseen, unseemly, scene
some far suburb’ s mall lot
Summer’ s theme: this year’ s humid
— to sweat is to know —
pen squeezed too tight yields
ink as blood or pus
so the phrase scraped, removed
offending thine eye: “Outsource Bush”
Against which, insource what? Who
will do it? Most terrible
predicate — high above mountains snow-capped
even in August in-flight motion
picture Eternal Sunshine of the
Spotless Mind infuriates many No
action, no funny, plot too
I couldn't have waited. By the time you return
it would have rotted on the vine.
So I cut the first tomato into eighths,
salted the pieces in the dusk
and found the flesh not mealy (like last year's)
or bitter,
even when I swallowed the green crown of the stem
that made my throat feel dusty and warm.
Maybe my soul is straight and good,
but she’ s got to lug my heart, my blood,
which all hurts because it’ s crooked;
its weight sends her staggering.
She has no bed, she has no home,
she merely hangs on my sharp bones,
flapping her terrible wings.
And my hands are completely shot,
shriveled, worn: here, take a look
at how they clammily, clumsily hop
like rain-crazed toads.
As for all the other stuff,
it’ s all used up and sad and old —
why doesn’ t God haul me out to the muck
and let me drop.
The father died and then the mother died.
And you were so addicted
to not feeling them, you told no one about the clamp
inside —
around the vena cava. Dam against the blood's
trash —
But I've got you now. Trussed at the waist
in a wooden chair,
