U.S.

Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of his audience
the poet like an acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making

I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting
for the discovery
of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waiting
for the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting
for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead

The dove-white gulls
on the wet lawn in Washington Square
in the early morning fog
each a little ghost in the gloaming
Souls transmigrated maybe
from Hudson’ s shrouded shores
across all the silent years —
Which one’ s my maybe mafioso father
in his so white suit and black shoes
in his real estate office Forty-second Street
or at the front table wherever he went —
Which my dear lost mother with faded smile

London

crossfigured
creeping with trams

and the artists on sundays
in the summer
all ‘tracking Nature’
in the suburbs

People getting divorced
riding around with their clothes in the car
and wondering what happened
to everyone and everything
including their other
pair of shoes
And if you spy one
then who knows what happened

Sometime during eternity
some guys show up
and one of them
who shows up real late
is a kind of carpenter
from some square-type place
like Galilee
and he starts wailing

to wake to winter in the coming out of the time of year

when they release

the masterpieces,

but to be still in the other night.

some drown in movies.

some prefer the unfinished

ungovernable recital,

a mystical ecology

where one dies in a camp,

or rolls out with the dice

on the sidewalk among boys with

cardboard shields

and plays dead in white crinoline.

what if paradise was only lifting the veil to flirt.

no one perfect, but perfection inserts

us so, Pascal

the archive dance of

frank gehry crumples

to the sky its finger
and walking bridge.
the mummers disappear
my city sounds.
dance crumples to

the archive sky of fela.

the breaking public crush
a lot and pilgrimage from

greenville (to farmville) to ruleville up the road.
let me place Mrs. Hamer, who

crush like an architect outside, like

broke composition, in parchman.
lula and helena strayed
to the dock, founded the hiding

republic of the westside trucks to come

I didn’ t fall in love. I fell through it:

Came out the other side moments later, hands full of matter, waking up from the dream of a bullet tearing through the middle of my body.

I no longer understand anything for longer than a long moment, or the time it takes to receive the shot.

This kind of gravity is like falling through a cloud, forgetting it all, and then being told about it later. On the day you fell through a cloud...

It must be true. If it were not, then when did these strands of silver netting attach to my hair?

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’ t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.