Authors: C. K. Williams
but we are suffering seven directions at once
the mouths in our mouths don’t tell us
the sorrowful faces in our tears not
touch us nothing holds us nothing reaps
us we are not lived we are not suffered
the dreams come for us but they fail
I AM THE BITTER NAME
[1972]
I Am the Bitter Name
And Abraham said to him, “And art thou, indeed, he that is called Death?”
He answered, and said, “I am the Bitter Name.”
the little children have been fighting
a long long time for their beloved country
their faces are hardening like meat
left out their bodies squashed flat
like flowers in lawbooks don’t fit
with the keys to eternal sorrow anymore
is the best toy always death? everyone
crying in the sleepy hair inexhaustible
agony in the dark cups of the skull
unquenchable agony your hands shriek
on my spine like locked brakes in
the torn nostrils tendrils in the mouth
vines the little soldiers play
wounding the little generals play hurt
forever they sharpen things they put
things in things they pull them out
will you make freedom for me? in
the cheekbone fire in the lips my
justice is to forget being here my liberty
wanting to hate them how they are shipped
home in ice-cream bags and being able to
Keep It
the lonely people are marching
on the capital everyone’s yelling not
to give them anything but just
buying dinner together was fun
wasn’t it? don’t give them a thing
the boss said the boss
is dreaming of beautiful nurses
the lonely people are taking
all their little dogs to washington
back home the channels change
by themselves the soap changes
to perfume perfume to cereal the boss
dreams of the moon landing on
spruce street nobody is lonely
on locust nobody is left
at all the sun comes by himself
the buses go along by themselves
and wonder have I told you about
my disease? the lonely people
hold tight at night
on the coast they are tucked
in under the twilight
together the boss walks
across them it was fun it was
so much fun wasn’t it?
The Spirit the Triumph
do you remember learning to tie your shoes?
astonishing! the loops you had to make the delicate
adjustments the pulling-through tightening impossible!
the things we learn!
putting a bridle on a horse when he’s head-shy
getting your hands under a girl’s sweater
no wonder we are the crown of all that exists
we can do anything how we climb chimneys
how we put one foot on the gas one on the clutch
and make the car go nothing too difficult nothing!
crutches artificial arms have you seen that?
how they pick their cups up and use razors? amazing!
and the wives shine it for them at night
they’re sleeping the wives take it out of the room
and polish it with its own special rag
it’s late they hold it against their bellies
the leather laces dangle into their laps
the mechanisms slip noiselessly
lowering the hook softly onto their breasts
we men! aren’t we something? I mean
we are worth thinking about aren’t we?
we are the end we are the living end
Madder
“People can screw dead bodies, but they never feed them.”
the nations have used up their desire
the cunts of the mothers the cunts
of the bad daughters stinking
of police stations of the sisters
and generations of men saying
look cunt what about me saying look
cunt how I’m bleeding saying cunt cunt
where is forgiveness? what bullshit
you can kiss me goodbye but first put
your hands up let me search you
first goodbye I’ll check your rectum
for poison and recite how we spoiled
from the inside like lettuce I’ll tell
about freedom vomited on our foreheads
I’ll say
LOOK WHAT YOU DID
and men
reading money aloud laughing aloud
I’m fed up with the sugars of raw
human flesh cursing I gallop over her
with my nicked tongue head to toe
I plow in with my notched cock cursing
the suffering of labels the
suffering of elegant canned goods of
mercy vengeance witness borne
for no end the governments are silent
or I’m dying of grief and loving both
ends of it or of solace and mixing
up whether we’re here at all and revenge
or peace and who did it first dear
husbands dear wives tighter they’re
washing my mouth out with soap I promise
not to accuse you but this time you
be the secret this time you comfort me
Poor Hope
which is worse the lieutenant raising his rifle
toward the astonished women and children jammed
into the bomb crater raising it not even aiming just carelessly
beginning to do it the way you’d rake a lawn you start
anywhere that or when I saw a boy in a department store
with his mother he was skipping along going toot toot toot
when the mother saw me I could see her flinch about something
and when I passed them she cracked him him! not me
across the mouth stunning him terribly hissing
don’t you know where you are? which is worse
to be in the world with that or with that? or is it
that there’s god and you think they’ve killed him?
then the dread god did you really say hit them! kill them!
then to the children then the mothers forgive me then myself then
nothing no sacrament for the people forgotten
in mid-sentence gone except in fuck you! where they cry god
I have thought two ways up the first
is when I felt the boy’s spirit become pain because of me
I should have apologized not to him or even the mother
but to
YOU
! I’m sorry and the other is for the others
in the ditch in their torn clothes just as the bullets go into them
I would go mad and have you seen how men in toilets
at stadiums or the movies stare into the wall
so we won’t covet each other’s cocks? I would stare
into you like that and never move again never let you die
again never let you be anywhere else staring watching
you boil helplessly back and forth on the ceiling
don’t move! trying to electrocute yourself on the wires
stay where you are! trying to slice your body
to pieces on the fluttering cobwebs don’t die on me!
Bringing It Home
a room all the way across america
and a girl in the room and the plastic fattening her breasts
starting to sag o god
she thinks they’re going o god o god
I would do anything to help her
I would take all of her secret pain onto myself if she’d let me
my best darling
it is your soul melting it
it is the fire in you
I remember fire
everywhere in the world
boys scratching two sticks together so proud of themselves
houses going up in spontaneous combustion or somebody using his lighter
and the girl locked in in back still touching her fearful body
(you too my best darling)
and furnaces men with sweat stung out of them
faces cooked broiled smoked while they make things for us
and in america
in her breasts the two fires
like gods the two fires without flame
and her voice this flame rising out of my throat
it says
FUCK YOU I DON’T CARE
it says
UP YOUR ASS TOO YOU WEIRD FAGGOTS
my best darling my best darling
The Little Shirt
what we need is one of those gods
who comes howling down streets
like a police car into the houses into
the television sets the refrigerators
comes oozing through everything and eats
everything everything the whole box
the darkness the dust
under the stairs the roaches and then us
and then makes us up again
out of her wonderful mouth earth
so that we look into our friends suddenly understanding
flesh how it tightens and lets go
to have this pass through
to be able to blink so that it goes through
to be able to get back from this
so mother death will be happy
so we won’t hurt her she
keeps her big hand on us her thighs over our heads
she jumps we fall out like apples
and having to own her
and having to have war for her and fucking
and thankfulness so she won’t stink in her people
we believe her
cloudlife airlife scent the
flavors to lick off
going up firing back at ourselves
make me sergeant! get me a hard-on!
to kill
never to go from this
Clay out of Silence
chances are we will sink quietly back
into oblivion without a ripple
we will go back into the face
down through the mortars as though it hadn’t happened
earth: I’ll remember you
you were the mother you made pain
I’ll grind my thorax against you for the last time
and put my hand on you again to comfort you
sky: could we forget?
we were the same as you were
we couldn’t wait to get back sleeping
we’d have done anything to be sleeping
and trees angels for being thrust up here
and stones for cracking in my bare hands
because you foreknew
there was no vengeance for being here
when we were flesh we were eaten
when we were metal we were burned back
there was no death anywhere but now
when we were men when we became it
Innings
somebody keeps track of how many times
I make love don’t you god don’t you?
and how good it is telling me
it’s marked down where I can’t see
right underneath me so the next time
something unreal happens in the papers
I don’t understand it it doesn’t touch
me I start thinking
everyone’s heart might be pure
after all because what the hell
they don’t kill me just each other
they don’t actually try making me sad
just do things make things happen
suffer things I erupt
into the feminine like a lion don’t
I god? among doves? so even being with me
is like beauty? I move under this god
like a whore I gurgle I roll
like a toy boat what’s the score
now god? am I winning?
Becoming Somebody Else
your lists of victims dear
god like rows of sharp little teeth
have made me crazy look
I have crushed my poor balls
for you I have kissed the blank
pages drunk the pissy chalice
water and thrown up dear god your
rabbits dear god your big
whistle do you know how awful
it is trying to plug the holy wound
in my bowels with wrong addresses?
listen let us have death back
when we need him the lost mother
of bliss will sing in the back
seat for you let us come back
with our SS and our own banks
this time and for the corpses
compilers to start out dear concerned
chosen esteemed sufferer warm
gloves god our bodies ladders
lovely look we smile too this
way look our blood too touch us is
it horrible? touch us
Hounding Mercy
our poor angel how sick
he must be of burying his face
in our hot mouths breathing
in maggots and fruity lung tissue
puffing us up when all we do
is empty again the prayers
to the forbidden father stinking
on us like exhaust fumes the candles
stuck guttering in our backsides
suppose though we took your gun in one
hand your excellent scalpel behind
it and kept saying kiss kiss kiss kiss
and before they screamed we’d cut
them before they begged us blast
them and cannibalize them all legs
from one ethics from another somebody’s
skull we’d suture until there was
one whole one and who’d need war
or politics would the mothers kill
their beautiful children from sheer
boredom the fathers fight
over the fucked carcasses like sharks?
here is my magic briefcase
which roars here the branch
of my life to beat it with my
handcuffs what will I want now? give
me love give me snow oceans don’t speak
What Did the Man Do with the Clouds?
the grandmas are all coming down like f-101’s like gulls
screaming
HAPPIER
!
HAPPIER
! the grandmas
loom along the parapets like old wars their
grooved bellies grenades the lines kissed
into their faces like barbed wire
grandmas I’ve got the wings you brought me but they won’t work
for me they don’t fit anywhere on me
except in my mouth I keep sticking them
onto me like matchbooks but brother adam moses the pope
I don’t see anyone the grandmas are all laughing
on the back fence like cold soup grandmas
if I could I’d wind myself onto you like a ribbon