Authors: C. K. Williams
this is even sweeter than mickey schwerner or fred hampton right?
even more tender than the cherokee nation or guatemala or greece
having their asses straightened for them isn’t it?
this is none of your oriental imitation
this is iowa corn grown
this is jersey tomato grown
washington salmon maryland crab
this is from children
who’d barely begun ingesting corruption
the bodies floating belly up like polluted fish in cambodia
barely tainting them
the black kids blown up in their churches
hardly souring them
their torments were so meager
they still thought about life
still struggled with urgency
and compassion
so
tender
2.
I’m sorry
I don’t want to hear anymore that the innocent farmer in ohio on guard duty means well but is fucked up by his politicians and raises his rifle out of some primal fear for his own life and his family’s and that he hates niggers hates them hates them because he is warped and deceived by events
and pulls the trigger
I’m sorry I don’t want to forgive him anymore
I don’t want to say he didn’t know what he was doing
because he knew what he was doing
because he didn’t pull the trigger once and run away screaming
they kept shooting the kids said
we thought they were blanks but they kept shooting and shooting
we were so scared
I don’t want to forgive the bricklayer from akron who might or might not hate his mother I don’t care or the lawyer or gas station attendant from cleveland who may or may not have had a bad childhood
I don’t care
I don’t want to know
I don’t want to hear anything about it
another kid said the rocks weren’t even reaching them!
I don’t want to understand why they did it
how could you?
just that
everything else is pure shit
3.
on the front page of the times a girl is screaming
she will be screaming forever
and her friend will lie there forever you wouldn’t know she wasn’t just sleeping in the sun except for the other screaming
and on the editorial page
“the tragic nature of the division of the country … the provocation undoubtedly was great and was also unpardonable…”
o my god
my god
if there was a way to purify the world who would be left?
there is a list
and it says
this person for doing this
and that person for doing nothing
and this person for not howling in rage
and that for desperately hanging on to the reasons the reasons
and
there is an avenger
who would be left?
who is there now who isn’t completely insane from all this?
who didn’t dream with me last night
of burning everything destroying everyone
of tearing pieces of your own body off
of coughing your language up and spitting it away like vomit
of wanting to start at the bottom of your house
breaking everything floor by floor
burning the pictures
tearing the mattresses up
smashing windows and chairs until nothing is left
and then the cars with a sledgehammer
the markets
the stores that sell things
the buses
the bridges into the city
the airports
the international harbors
the tall buildings crumpling like corpses
the theaters torn down to the bare stage
the galleries naked the bookstores like mouths open
there should be funerals in front of the white house
bones in the capitol
where do you stop?
how can we be like this?
4.
I remember what it was to come downstairs
and my daughter would be there crawling toward me as fast as she could
crying
HI DADDA HI DADDA
and what it was to bury my face in my wife’s breasts and forget
to touch a friend’s shoulder
to laugh
to take walks
5.
I don’t want to call anyone pig
meeting people who tell you they want war they hate communists
or somebody who’ll say they hate niggers spics kikes
and you still don’t believe they’re beyond knowing
because you feel comfortable with them even drawn to them
and know somehow that they have salvageable hearts
you try to keep hope
for a community that could contain both of you
so that you’d both be generous and loving
and find ways that didn’t need hatred and killing
to burn off the inarticulate human rage at having to die
I thought if I could take somebody like that in my arms
I could convince them that everyone was alone before death
but love saved us from living our lives reflexively with death
that it could happen
we would be naked now
we’d change now little by little
we’d be better
we would just be here
in this life
but it could be a delusion couldn’t it?
it could be like thinking those soldiers were shooting blanks
up until the last second standing there scared shitless
but inside
thinking americans don’t shoot innocent people!
I know it!
I learned it in school in the movies!
it doesn’t happen like this
and hearing a bullet slam into the ground next to you and the flesh
and every voice in your body saying o no no
and seeing your friend go down
half her head blown away
and the image of kennedy in back of the car
and of king
and the other kennedy
and wanting to explode o no no no no no
6.
not to be loaded up under the flopping bladewash the tubes sucking to be thrown out turning to flame burning on trees on grass on skin burning lips away breasts away genitals arms legs buttocks
not to be torn out of the pack jammed in the chamber belched out laid over the ground like a live fence of despair
not to fog down into the river where the fish die into the rice where the frogs die into the trees where the fruit dies the grain dies the leaves into the genes
into the generations
more black children
more red children
and yellow
not to be screaming
THE LARK. THE THRUSH.
THE STARLING.
(POEMS FROM ISSA)
[1983]
In the next life,
butterfly,
a thousand years from now,
we’ll sit like this
again
under the tree
in the dust,
hearing it, this
great thing.
* * *
I sit in my room.
Outside, haze.
The whole world
is haze
and I can’t figure out
one room.
* * *
So
mucked up with
kneading
dough she is
she has to use
her wrist to
push her hair back
from her eyes.
* * *
That the world
is going
to end someday
does not concern
the wren:
it’s time to
build your nest,
you build
your nest.
* * *
Spring: another
joke.
This run-down
house: me.
Go ahead, ask,
how’s
spring?
Average, just
average.
* * *
You’re two, that’s great.
Go ahead, laugh, crawl
around.
You’ll find
out,
you’ll see.
* * *
Winter,
damn,
again.
Same
frost, same
fire.
* * *
Listen carefully.
I’m meditating.
The only thing in my mind
right now
is the wind.
No, wait … the autumn
wind, that’s right,
the
autumn
wind!
* * *
The hail goes
dancing
into the fire.
The coal flares.
I watch the embers
going out, one
by
one.
* * *
What a sound his
shell made, that
big cockroach!
Crack!
like a church bell:
Crack!
Crack!
Crack!
* * *
They wash you
when
you’re born, then,
when you’re finished,
if you’re very lucky,
you get washed
again.
* * *
A holiday:
every
yard or
two, in
the grass,
among
the flowers,
along
the rushing
stream,
picnickers
sprawled.
* * *
What we are
given:
resignation.
What is
taken from us:
resignation.
It is ours that
we can see, do
see, must see
our own bones
bleaching
under the warm moon.
* * *
Baby, I don’t want
to tell you
again: you can’t go out
in weather like this.
Can’t you teach
yourself to play
checkers or
something?
* * *
The most excruciating
thing
I could imagine: to see,
the way
I am now,
the place I
was born
with all its
mist
blown away.
* * *
In the middle
of a bite of
grass,
the turtle stops
to listen for,
oh, an
hour, two
hours,
three hours …
* * *
When
you were small, I
put you
in
a swing, you
held
a flower.
Next thing
I
knew …
* * *
This is what,
at last, it is
to be
a human being.
Leaving nothing
out, not
one star, one
wren, one tear
out.
* * *
I’d forgotten and
how could I ever
have
my mother, peeling
the apple, giving me
the heart-
flesh.
* * *
That night,
winter,
rain,
the mountains.
No guilt. No
not-guilt.
Winter,
rain,
mountains.
* * *
I know
nothing anymore
of roads.
Winter
is a road,
I know,
but the body,
the beloved
body,
is it, too,
only a kind
of road?
* * *
The fleas, too,
have fled
my burned-down
house. Oh,
there you are,
old friend, and
oh, you, too,
old,
old friend.
* * *
It’s over now. I watch
the fire. I watch the firelight
wash
the wall. I watch
the shadow on
it of the woman.
I don’t
understand it, but
I watch, I
watch.
* * *
Did I write this
as I was
dying?
Did I really
write
this?
That I wanted to thank
the snow
fallen on my blanket?
Could I
have written
this?
WITH IGNORANCE
[1977]
The Sanctity
for Nick and Arlene de Credico
The men working on the building going up here have got these great,
little motorized wheelbarrows that’re supposed to be for lugging bricks and mortar
but that they seem to spend most of their time barrel-assing up the street in,
racing each other or trying to con the local secretaries into taking rides in the bucket.
I used to work on jobs like that and now when I pass by the skeleton of the girders
and the tangled heaps of translucent brick wrappings, I remember the guys I was with then
and how hard they were to know. Some of them would be so good to be with at work,
slamming things around, playing practical jokes, laughing all the time, but they could be miserable,
touchy and sullen, always ready to imagine an insult or get into a fight anywhere else.
If something went wrong, if a compressor blew or a truck backed over somebody,
they’d be the first ones to risk their lives dragging you out
but later you’d see them and they’d be drunk, looking for trouble, almost murderous,
and it would be frightening trying to figure out which person they really were.
Once I went home to dinner with a carpenter who’d taken me under his wing
and was keeping everyone off my back while he helped me. He was beautiful but at his house, he sulked.
After dinner, he and the kids and I were watching television while his wife washed the dishes
and his mother, who lived with them, sat at the table holding a big cantaloupe in her lap,
fondling it and staring at it with the kind of intensity people usually only look into fires with.
The wife kept trying to take it away from her but the old lady squawked
and my friend said, “Leave her alone, will you?” “But she’s doing it on purpose,” the wife said.
I was watching. The mother put both her hands on it then, with her thumbs spread,
as though the melon were a head and her thumbs were covering the eyes and she was aiming it like a gun or a camera.
Suddenly the wife muttered, “You bitch!” ran over to the bookshelf, took a book down —