Authors: C. K. Williams
and flow out behind you and be wind be sunrise
the grandmas bagpipe out of their soft wombs like apples
and go up like autumn in long rows like pearls like pearls
goodbye grandmas goodbye again thanks
for my present I swallowed them they’re flapping
around inside me like uncle sol in the last chair
maybe someday they’ll lift me like you
by the top of my guts out of here goodbye
charlie! go to sleep! eat! you’re skin and bones! goodbye! goodbye!
The Matter
there’s no no like money’s
money makes big holes behind its eyes
when it says no and death
is the next teller
counting you money arches
and peeks down at the caseworker in the spirit drawer
money comes takes your picture without cameras
digs inside without shovels
smiles puts its head in the tube
like a robber
like the anchorite in the cave
like ten dollars
inside money is no candy but her
inside money no rate but just him
the prostitute without her vagina the brother
who wants you to money says no
and the last dollar
which is our friend dog
our history like a condom
lion
king
speaker
is dragged under and riveted
to the bone
like old age
Refuge, Serpent-Riders
a man decided once to go steal truth
all day he would tie himself to his bed
and not listen
at night the ropes would come off
he would go out and open his mouth
tasting what leaked through the moon from the next sky
rolling the stars around in his teeth
like little pits
finally darkness got tired of hanging there
it said how much will you give me? give me
something
the man started getting younger when he heard that
soon he was crawling the rocks
cut his knees he was really sorry
everybody else screamed
BEAST FIEND MURDERER
!
they pissed up into his maw
they named their lips death
so when they cried it would break in two pieces
then darkness went back
the stories still hid inside him it was morning
nobody had him
he still knew everything
Flat
the pillows are going insane
they are like shells the skulls have risen out of them like locusts
leaving faces in them but cold vacant immobile
heavy with tears
they are like clouds and are so sick of us
so furious with us they swear next time
when we come back if they can they will spring up and our faces will empty
next time they will soar like clouds and dissolve
and not touch us it is morning
our heads thrown back in agony
the pillows are going insane
from the grief of being laid down
and having to stare unquestioningly like flowers
and be in all places like flowers each man one in his house
one in his barracks in his jail cell
they swear if they weren’t going insane they would call to each other
like flowers and spring up and come closer
but they must stay quietly
they must have faces like men and wait like men
the dead casings the filling and emptying going insane
A Poem for the Governments
this poem is an onion
it’s the same one miguel hernandez’s
wife wrote him about in jail
before he died that there was nothing
else for her and the baby to eat
except onions so he wrote
a lullaby for the child about onions
“I awoke from being a child:
don’t you awake … don’t even know
what happens or what goes on”
this poem is an onion
for you mr old men because
I want tears from you now
and can’t see how else to get them
I want tears for miguel now
for the poor people and their children
and for the kids you hate going
around cunt-frontwards full of carrying on
and bad shit like mercy and despair
I offer this
because everything else with life
and tenderness in it you’ve eaten
everything good in the world eaten
everything in my heart eaten
the poor eaten the babies eaten miguel
eaten
now eat this: this is one onion
your history and legacy
it is all there is in our lives
this and tears: eat this
Another Dollar
I dreamed of an instrument of political torture
so that the person thinks he’s breathing into a great space
that flows like a river beyond men
into infinity the ethical disconnects like a phone
and what he says everything comes back to him
WE ARE NOT DOING THIS
angels skulls prisoners
WE ARE NOT DOING THIS
the children scouring themselves like genitals
NOT DOING THIS
mother am I the enemy or the little brother?
they threw ropes around me I ran I covered myself
but they touched me the invalids licked me the poor kissed me
afterwards there is a bed afterwards a woman is there
her breasts she is a cloud how she envelops you
the coils shimmer nobody talks anymore nobody dreams this
WE ARE NOT DOING THIS
The Beginning of April
I feel terribly strong today
it’s like the time I arm-wrestled a friend
and beat him so badly I sprained his wrist
or when I made a woman who was really beautiful
love me when she didn’t want to
it must be the warm weather
I think
I could smash bricks with my bare hands
or screw
until I was half out of my mind
the only trouble
jesus the only trouble
is I keep thinking about a kid I saw starving on television
last night from biafra he was unbearably fragile
his stomach puffed up arms and legs sticks eyes distorted
what if I touched somebody like that when I was this way?
I can feel him going stiff under my hands
I can feel his belly bulging ready to pop
his pale hair disengaging from its roots like something awful and alive
please
I won’t hurt you I want you in my arms
I want to make something for you to eat like warm soup
look I’ll chew the meat for you first
in case your teeth ache
I’ll keep everybody away if you’re sleeping
and hold you next to me like a little brother when we go out
I’m so cold now
what are we going to do with all this?
I promise I won’t feel myself like this ever again
it’s just the spring it doesn’t mean anything please
This Is a Sin
right off we started inflicting history
on each other day after day first thing this
is historical and we gave dollars for it
and this and we gave movies and sad poems
and obviously newspapers and a little less
valentines and sometimes it got right
up against us and into us we would squeeze
it out like a worm it would come back
by itself through the pancreas through
the eye or womb and with great tenderness
on the faces of wives and babies we
would reinflict it until there was
such beauty it was unbearable because
it was too much history too much suffering
and also birds suffering their leaps
from branches dogs
lifting their dark mouths the paths
of mantises cows plopping were we afraid
of what would be left of us? sometimes
a person was erased entirely
and children dead of shame stuck
upright in the snow like pipes the wind
screaming over them or I would forget
you darling your breasts the wind
over them our lips
moving darling the child the wind breasts
our lips over them
The Undead
the only way it makes sense
is that we have terrible wounds inside us like mouths hard
metallic made in america
they swing fatly open like wallets and gorge
in strict vaginal contractions what touches us
what comes to us living wants us
how many times the one we kiss with affirms
LIFE
!
LIFE
!
but the other when the saints said
they heard thunder it was just it closing and
this time when it opens corpses soar in it officers
at attention shells
this time not enough pain in all asia for it
I want you not comforting me
the soles of our feet beaten until worms of flesh erupt from them
our genitals dialed like wrong numbers don’t
put your tongue in me don’t give me anything heart
soul laughter anything children turning the light on and off
on and off
MA
! don’t feed me! don’t feed me!
Then the Brother of the Wind
there’s no such thing as death everybody
knows that also
nothing in the world that can batter you
and hang you on a fencepost like a towel
and no such thing as love that stays inside
getting thicker and heavier falling
into the middle one seed
that weighs more than the universe
and no angels either
and even if there were even if we hadn’t laughed
the second heart out and made the second brain
have whole wars happening inside it like bacteria
and if they were made out of tin cans like shacks
in rio and rubber tires like crete sandals
and were all the same place rags in ratholes
in harlem rags sticking to burned faces in bengal
we’d still break like motors
and slip out of them anyway like penises
onto the damp thigh
and have to begin over
The Next to the Last Poem about God
when jessie’s fever went up god got farther away so he could see better
he wanted to know everything that happened
when I hit tex my brother in the face with a cap gun
when I ran away from my mother and had a bad fight
with my sister lynn about being different
when I dreamed of being a fighter pilot and shooting my father down
god was there in my dream too think how big he had to be
to get in where I was sailing around in my flying tiger
and the deaf kid he was in his ears somebody told me so it was all right
and jimmy moss when he died it was autumn there were leaves
outside the window just hardening I thought
he must be in the leaves too how big he is how far away
he must be to cover everything like a blanket
you crawl in with a fever and hide and wake up
during the night all better and crawl out again
but maybe when he has to get that far he thins out a little
you know? like rubber? maybe sometimes people punch
their fingers through him by accident or maybe on purpose
the bad people because they wanted to see everything too
because seeing everything would be like owning everything
so they go through and there they were bouncing around
saying everything’s good everything figures it all works
you could see them walking across the sky
at night rippling the cover making the stars bend
they said come up here look you can see
EVERYTHING
!
EVERYTHING
!
tex I’m sorry I hit you in the face
mom I didn’t mean to grow up you should have told me lynn
dad forgive me for getting stronger
sally you for so much and jessie
when you were playing on the bed last night
letting yourself fall backwards onto me with such happy trust
thinking “stand up” meant “let yourself fall any way you want to
I’ll catch you” jessie you were almost well your fever
was almost gone and I thought there must be something important
for you like that I still can’t think of it but god must know it
because god doesn’t forget anything ever
and someday I’ll get that far too and find out
and drop messages about what it was and it’ll be all right
god told me he said tell jessie I said it’ll be all right
Acids
for Jeff Marks
something to dip myself into
like sheep when they’re driven through
and the ticks and fleas float off in the trough
the animals struggling to keep their heads out of it
the men dunking them for their own good they get fatter the wool thicker
I would come up
crying
but pure again fingerprints kissmarks the places
I crossed my arms and dug into my back invisible
scales imperceptible bony emotional excrescences
gone a caul
gleaming flushing the surfaces innocence
I would make rivers of it
that would flood at their mouths
and the swimmers
would be done too
and in the city in the tap water
enough scum left to get into us all
we would fall into great laughing heaps of ourselves
can you imagine laughter
shining
and the sounds of lovemaking
etched like printing plates
so you would pull pictures of being young and knowing
what you know now
the first sky the first clouds
like young angels
bumping each other seeing your mother coming shrieking
joyfully so she’ll hear you
and come running arms open face open baby!
baby!
and you
flowing being flowed through