Authors: C. K. Williams
like the blood
over the skull then
the veil and before that in your arms
in all of you
They Warned Him Then They Threw Him Away
there’s somebody who’s dying
to eat god
when the name happens
the juices leap from the bottom of his mouth like waves
he almost falls over with lightheadedness
nobody has ever been this hungry before
you might know people who’ve never had anything
but teaspoons of rice or shreds
from the shin of an ape well that’s nothing
you should know what this person would do
he’d pull handfuls of hair out of his children
and shove them down
he’d squeeze the docile bud in his wife
until it screamed
if you told him god lived in his own penis
he’d bite into it
and tear like a carnivore
this is how men renounce
this is how we obliterate
one morning near the end he’ll climb into the fire
and look back at himself
what was dark will be light
what was song will be roaring
and the worst thing is you’ll still want this
beyond measure you’ll still want this
believe me
you should know this
Ribbons
the goddamned animals might know more than we do about some things
like looking away when somebody they know is hurting them
and the other has to let go and not tear his throat out like us
but we’re still more than them about love
a girl so shy she couldn’t look at me without crying
so I turned the other way too and you could feel how close we were
as though we’d circled the whole world
and met and fallen in love her legs smoothed
I was stronger there were mists we walked in them
now when does that happen with pigs or horses?
the stallion all he’s after is tearing the fence down
the mare gets her tail going like a pump handle
and in the paddock the gelding old sergeant
buries his face in the creaky feed bin and keeps it there
remembering iwo jima remembering the bulge seoul my lai
his wound his two thighs like medals his two thighs
rising into the dark like searchlights only animals would keep quiet then
grind their broad teeth on the grain and shut up not us
The Rampage
a baby got here once who before
he was all the way out and could already feel the hindu
pain inside him and the hebrew and the iliad
decided he was never going to stop crying no matter what
until they did something he wasn’t going
to turn the horror
off in their fat sentences
and in the light bulb how much murder to get light
and in the walls agony agony for the bricks for the glaze
he was going to keep screaming
until they made death little like he was
and loved him too and sent
him back to undo all this
and it happened
he kept screaming he scared them he saw them
filling with womblight again like stadiums
he saw the tears sucked back into the story the smiles
opening like sandwiches
so he stopped
and looked up and said all right
it’s better now
I’m hungry now I want just to sleep
and they let him
The Nut
a man hammers viciously
viciously like fucking
a bad whore who won’t get
undressed even remember?
like trying to crush
the life from the corpse who
sprays blood who won’t
die or stop screaming
until the mouth is gone
utterly the last thread
crawling tenderly down
the backbone tenderly
to the tail the legs men
what are we thinking
hammering? the poor whore
smashing her fists on
the wall the carpenter his
sensitive tools suffering
men the terrible claws
men the hammering not
sleeping the hammering
going on to eternity
what is this so much
like pulse like murdering?
the corpse screams the
woman screams men what
is this?
Yours
I’d like every girl in the world to have a poem of her own
I’ve written for her I don’t even want to make love to them all anymore
just write things your body makes me delirious your face enchants me
you are a wonder of soul spirit intelligence one for every one
and then the men I don’t care whether I can still beat them all
them too a poem for them how many?
seeing you go through woods like part of the woods seeing you play piano
seeing you hold your child in your tender devastating hands
and of course the children too little poems they could sing or dance to
this is our jumping game this our seeing game our holding each other
even the presidents with all their death the congressmen and judges
I’d give them something
they would hold awed to their chests as their proudest life thing
somebody walking along a road where there’s no city would look up
and see his poem coming down like a feather out of nowhere
or on the assembly line new instructions a voice sweet as lunch-time
or she would turn over a stone by the fire and if she couldn’t read
it would sing to her in her body
listen! everyone! you have your own poem now
it’s yours as much as your heart as much as your own life is
you can do things to it shine it up iron it dress it in doll clothes
o men! o people! please stop how it’s happening now please
I’m working as fast as I can I can’t stop to use periods
sometimes I draw straight lines on the page because the words
are too slow
I can only do one at a time don’t die first please
don’t give up and start crying or hating each other they’re coming
I’m hurrying be patient there’s still time isn’t there? isn’t there?
The Nickname of Hell
the president of my country his face flushed
horribly like a penis is walking through
the schoolyard toward my daughter I tell him
mr president I will make it all right but
under his hand his penis is lined with many
buttons I tell him the orders are changing
but commanders deep in his penis prime it
I tell him about love I tell him there
is a new god who believes anything I
cringe alongside him I dance like a daughter
it is the schoolyard the daughters play
on the dangerous fences I tell him I love
him I tell him the daughters aren’t here
even he is holding me now his arms hold
me his lips you are my bliss he tells me
these are my arms these my lips you
are my penis he tells me his face stings
into mine like a penis you are my joy you
my daughter hold me my daughter my daughter
Bad Mouth
for W. S. Merwin
not bad mouth
in bad mouth
you know how to beat women so they love you afterwards
and come crawling
how to torture whole races and next time they fight
on the same side as you the lamb out of you
bad mouth lives in three houses with scabbards
bad mouth has hurt since the dinosaurs
even his sperm hurts
like napalm
bad mouth thinking
who do I kill?
who lock up in my arms for the last moment? pity
me pity me
good mouth I want to be vile enough for us both
so we’ll love more
I want scorpion ladies I want beautiful pain ladies
and wolf brothers to lick their clear breasts with
good mouth worshipping
good mouth wreathing his genes like fuses
good mouth
I want being able to say help me
help me good mouth
the ones down to the raisin like my tongue
are my tongue the last ones before peace
are inside me
good mouth whoever I let live murdered me whoever I pitied burned
please stop me
This Day
probably death fits all right in the world
but every time somebody dies his mother
botches it suddenly she thinks there’s not
enough room in her breasts the nipples
are clogged she says the ducts jammed rifles even
so old they sag like laundry she grabs
them and hangs on she doesn’t understand she
says she can’t understand it mother what
I’m doing is truth mother understand
me at least freedom but o god she can’t find
space for an atom her glands burst her
pores swell like bad fruit mother when
we were wolves remember? she doesn’t
understand the inside of bodies the voids
wasted the patient holes used up
like planets when I count three she says
everything was a dream everything before
now was really dead was I really dead?
The Rabbit Fights for His Life
The Leopard Eats Lunch
for Harvey Finkle
what if the revolution comes and I’m in it and my job
is to murder a child accidentally
or afterwards to get rid of the policemen?
I had a milkshake last week with a policeman
we talked about his pay raise it eats shit
he told me what if I have that one?
SAVAGE
the baby was easy
the baby went up in thin air
I remembered in dostoevsky where they talked
about whether it would all be worth the death of one child
and you decided yes or no according to your character
my character
is how he got back in his car
like a tired businessman and listened to the radio
for a few minutes
and waved
is having to lug him everywhere
I go because I can’t take him to his wife crying like this
the children have learned to throw their arms around you
without meaning it to kiss you without feeling it
to know there is something marvelous
and not pay attention
in order to say any of this at all to you
I have made myself up like somebody
in a novel
in order not
to go out of my mind I make it I can only do two things
hold you
bury you
Cellophane
if only we weren’t so small next to the stars
we could refuse absolutely to be alive in this eon
to be alive now you can’t understand one thing without pain
you can’t feel your own face in the morning
without wanting to blow up
if we were bigger
we wouldn’t keep happening over and over
like truth that hurts worse than anything
with
NO
big as the mint
and
DO IT
filling the air like soot from the incinerator
we’d be as easy as the game war
the wingspan from one death to another
and the centuries the unending centuries
taken away from us in cattle cars
would wail harmlessly
like ghosts
Inches
it would be wonderful to be quiet now
to creak down through the fossils making my last speech
into the blind rocks
or to hang from the bars by my belt
and not speak of us our bellows of helplessness our disgust
to be as silent as planets
even the wind has been burned out
hospitals jails the places learning to be hard like men
something where we would be taken and dispirited
of all things like god to godhead love
in peace
not to have “of” to our deaths anymore
the political would go into the back
it would bury itself in itself
and cry for us
I remember you you were my friend I loved you
very much of it was not for words
The Sting
the not want
jesus
I didn’t know this the not want
for woman country daughter the man
hit rocked back crying holding him
the not want
for wounding myself for your mouth
for what my hand is opening getting sleepy
the not want
to ride hooked in you like a thistle
for long grass the earth broken to take breaths
in you
jesus
not want
for dreaming
to be president
to take the whole nation and kiss it
awake being born being desired
not new minds not even not
this grown into the big
and fuller
not want
for being able to not want
for trees taking me underneath clouds
taking me fury
exaltation
why? why baby? why dog? why wife?
why
not want president?
why not want friend with no anguish?
why
angel I love you god I love you why
not want heart in my body in each hand
picture guitar
holy
leave this
let this be here
let me
not want this not
The Last
when I was sleeping this morning one of my feet
fell out of the covers and my daughter
came in and covered it up with her little dolly blanket
I was dreaming right then that flames were shooting out of my cock
and when I woke up with her patting the soft cloth down on me
I believed I understood the end of eternity for the first time
don’t ever make me explain this
In the Heart of the Beast
May 1970: Cambodia, Kent State, Jackson State
1.
this is fresh meat right mr nixon?