LAMMAS CONTINUED
ii
She gets her periods during the full moon, on this day everyone is slow and sluggish, we can hardly stay awake, wrapped in gray clouds, looking at stars through haze we can hardly keep away.
I keep forgetting to write these poems.
I made myself an egg sandwich but had to sleep
one half hour just to make it to the stove.
We make it through air like water boiling in a pot, and across the parking lot to the park where depressed grass and dried out fountains greet us, stare into the bottle green water and see beer bottles and old pipes,
old sinks and carburetors underneath the shallow wave,
a sad and ghetto lyonesse,
no mermaids left to save
iii
Now that you are home I can speak of the things
that once I could not say when faceless nameless
guards were reading every word,
when codes had to be used upon codes and
you thought I was candid,
didn’t know I cloaked everything in something else,
couldn’t speak of nights in dark rooms,
where I held your arms out, pinioned like a bird
upon a board
and the lines of our faces were like the traces
of mountains, fountains,
your mouth open in exclamation as I thought to kiss you,
but instead, in half darkness rode you out of the night,
brighter than day, hotter than heat,
the shaft of wheat that was your seed
exploding inside
And now we don’t have to hide what
those words mean
You inspire me
Though you don’t deserve to
You’ve been to hell
Well, how the fuck was the view?
I longed to touch you through bars and made keys from words
These ingenuities are the magic I have left to work
Nat King Cole sings:
“I fuck you for sentimental reasons”
I make up words to old songs
Commit these little treasons, to bring back life again.
I have not given up on making the new Jerusalem
Its just that now I know Jerusalem takes time
You are almost willing to give up
You’ve paid for your crimes and for the crimes of ten thousand others while barabbas walked away
pontius pilate grabbed white women’s pussies and they put him in the white house, and at least for now that’s where he’s going to stay
But I
Have no use for hopeless men
I don’t want to hear from none of them
I don’t want your grim predictions.
Defeat and despair don’t make us wise at all
And you my friend, aren’t witty just because you’ve lost your balls
It seems like only yesterday I was at the church of you, on my knees,
looking up while my mouth was full of cock.
You gave me more than I could bear, you really shocked me,
and I choked on all your crap,
mouth salty with your bullshit,
then went on to suck some more,
such foolishness is what we once called faith
When that sacrament passed, you fucked me in my ass,
and have not stopped fucking me since.