newaddresses

TO STAMMERING
Where did you come from, lamentable quality?
Before I had a life you were about to ruin my life.
The mystery of this stays with me.
"Dont brood about things," my elders said.
I hadn't any other experience of enemies from inside.
They were all from outside--big boys
Who cursed me and hit me; motorists; falling trees.
All these you were as bad as, yet inside. When I spoke, you were there.
I could avoid you by singing or by acting.
I acted in school plays but was no good at singing.
Immediately after the play you were there again.
You ruined the cast party.
You were not a sign of confidence.
You were not a sign of manliness.
You were stronger than good luck and bad; you survived them both.
You were slowly edged out of my throat by psychoanalysis
You who had been brought in, it seems, like a hired thug
To beat up both sides and distract them
From the main issue: oedipal love. You were horrible!
Tell them, now that you're back in your thug country,
That you don't have to be so rough next time you're called in
But can be milder and have the same effect--unhappiness and pain.

TO CARELESSNESS
You led me to sling my rifle
Over my shoulder when its bayonet was fixed
On Leyte, in the jungle. It hit a hornet's nest
And I fell down
Screaming. The hornets attacked me, and Lonnie,
The corporal, said "Soldier get off you ass!"
Later the same day, I stepped on a booby trap
That was badly wired. You
Had been there too.
Thank you. It didn't explode.

TO KNOWLEDGE, MY SKELETON, AND AN AESTHETIC CONCEPT
We're sitting around, as usual
Hotcha-nothing-to-do sort of summer
Afternoon-evening and you, Skeleton, aching a little
Ask for a song
From An Aesthetic Concept. You, Concept, explain
That no songs today but, rather, discussion
Of you and then say
What do you think, Knowledge? You
Lounging in a corner, pull up your knees
To your robust chest and say Listen
To both parts and make a conclusion.
A few friends are dropping over
As lazy as we. I say Knowledge your answer didn't
Make very much sense and you say
(To Skeleton) Have some tortelloni. It's
Good for you. And Aesthetic Concept
You're humming a tune that in some way bears yourself out.
I go out to get some coffee and Skeleton
You with me. You say, you know, Knowledge
Is knowledge but all the same
It would be good to hear a song don't you agree
It would help get some of these cricks out of me.
Skeleton, Concept, and Knowledge, all on a summer's day
Turned evening thirty-five years ago
When gin drinks were still popular, the acanthus was blossoming
And each of you said what you felt you had to say
No matter the consequences either to head or to heart.

TO SOME ABSTRACT PAINTINGS
I was learning from you how to develop
A certain kind of elation in regard to non-objects,
And then you went away.
I laughed at and with you.
Painters collapsed in you and they smacked you
Out and around in gobs of red and blue. Now anyone who tries to trap you
Finds something else.
You promised there was a meaing inside the meaning
That surpassed the meaning or would even come up with a new one
That everyone would see.
That didn't happen. But there's the longing
Created in those you leave behind you
The sense of which remains on the canvas
On canvas after canvas after canvas.
Thanks for showing them to me.
Those who created you grew old. Most died.
You survive, you live on as a sort of aside
To our age, to which you say,
"Beauty is abstract, abstract beauty. That is what
We paintings know and what you may never know." We collect you.
We may not know what we're seeing when we see you--
But it is something--
In your red and green parade. A practitioner says,
"I hate those colors!" He uses white and blue.
Then it isn't the flag of Greece he makes, but you.