The Lesser Brutes
Listen carefully. You can hear the harsh calliope
fate prepares from the Barbary States.
She dances serving only herself,
and we are left to recall large lizards
climbing over dishonor
and curse the order that promises"
To specify the Romans is a kind of sophistry
like profiting from a future price change.
It merely enlarges the opening.
Green leaves are loosely joined to even the grapes
on murals.
Still we grumble and go on sipping.
These sketches in black and white are a deception.
like Goths who brandishes swords through Europe.
Moles and mollusks have small eyes and hard shells.
To kill your own brother or sister is to separate
into threads.
It takes a cool mind, composure.
You cannot change the color of skin without breaking it.
Once more the night is under soviet control
And latium wears an attar of rose petals.
This is not a firm guide to death
where the accused are inexcusably numb.
You choose the avenue and your own ferocious last note.
We still have time to breed tender and responsible.
After all we push ourselves about like infants,
sleepwalkers. We are hopeful,like streamers,
bands of light in the southern sky.
and not yet extinct.
.
Homage to the Drum
Somewhere by the sea is a relentless old beat
Sending the strollers to look for themselves
among the broken toys along the shore.
We are out of a race of little people,
In seaweeds there is conversation,.
Even before speech my mind was working,
remembering aunts and uncles,
Now I have to concentrate to keep breathing.
Absolute acrobat. I was born in mystery.
Relatives swallowed my identity.
I was born in a year of postponements.
The Grand Prix, The Kentucky Derby. Me,
I was born in a gleaming white room, while
the sky was hung with dirty children, waiting.
My house was never promised to keep me in touch
with history. Every day I boiled an egg
for exactly three minutes,
I wanted to leap from the kitchen and break
all the dishes. But I remained distant,
even from myself. Except for what I did
in alleyways and the backseats of cars.
Then the wind adopted me and I forgot restlessness.
The lion foams. The sea swivels.
Quicksilver abacus my tongue.
These dance steps are our laurels.
These granules our spirit.
We are captives of society's norms,
hiding in the homey homile.
Though lost, we grab onto the ages,
With their split lips and spikey leaves.
Angry and with agility we capture stars
and sorrow. Scavengers on your shore.
Beings as much in love as browsers.
We belong to a lost tribe whose God
is not of a festive lineage.
In the family photo we are all seated together
on the sofa. Aunt Fay, Uncle Irving,
Gert and Bunny.
I am seated beside estranged Aunt Janet,
A girl in the shape of a drum that has no tact.
.
Seaside at Biarritz
(After collages by John Ashbery)
Clost in which a dress stands up by itself, high necked,
holds her in place, hands on either side of head.
Shipwrecked the man sits on the pebbled shore while the woman,
corseted, holds two hands to her temples.
"Mon dieu", she says. Off in the distance are the choppy seas
that say "Don't be suspicious. Cool off with a bottle of Chateau L'affit"
Why not ogle the old-fashioned girl in white crumpled taffeta
who stands in a giant Jello box beside a waterfall?
Behind her moss on the rocks like strands of an old man's hair
and from inside her head spring cattle and gargoyles.
This year then we call child, a ten year old, and on either side,
elegantly dressed in a blue velvet suit, an elephant,
holding flowers by the roots. These then are the woods in which
a fish covers its head with flowers, the flowers pink at the roots
where the fish bleeds.