The Air

What is this dark and silent caravan
that being nowhere, neither comes nor goes;
that being never, has no hour or span;
of which we can say only that it flows?
How was it that this empty datastream,
this cache of dead light could so lose its way
it wandered back to feed on its own dream?
How did that dream grow to the waking day?
What is the sound that fades up from the hiss,
like a glass some random downdraught had set ringing,
now full of its only note, its lonely call,
drawing on its song to keep it singing?
When will the air stop breathing? Will it all
come to nothing, if nothing came to this?

Animal Graves

The mower flipped it belly up,

a baby garter less than a foot long,

dull green with a single sharp

stripe of pale manila down its back,

same color as the underside

which was cut in two places,

a loop of intestine poking out.

It wouldn't live,

so I ran the blades over it again,

and cut it again but didn’t kill it,

and again and then again,

a cloud of two-cycle fuel smoke

on me like a swarm of bees.

It took so long

my mind had time to spiral

back to the graveyard

I tended as a child

for the dead ones, wild and tame:

fish from the bubbling green aquarium,

squirrels from the road,

the bluejay stalked to a raucous death

by Cicero the patient, the tireless hunter,

who himself was laid to rest

one August afternoon

under a rock painted gray, his color,

with a white splash for his white splash.

Once in the woods I found the skeleton

of a deer laid out like a diagram,

long spine curved like a necklace of crude, ochre spools

with the string rotted away,

and the dull metal shaft of the arrow

lying where it must have pierced

not the heart, not the head,

but the underbelly, the soft part

where the sex once was.

I carried home the skull

with its nubs of not-yet-horns

which the mice had overlooked,

and set it on a rock

in my kingdom of the dead.

Before I chopped the little snake

to bits of raw mosaic,

it drew itself

into an upward-straining coil,

head weaving, mouth open,

hissing at the noise that hurt it.

The stripe was made

of tiny paper diamonds,

sharp-edged but insubstantial,

like an x-ray of the spine

or the ghost beginning to pull away.

What taught the snake to make itself

seem bigger than it was,

to spend those last few seconds

dancing in the roar

and shadow of its death?

Now I see, though none exists,

its grave:

harebells withered in a jar,

a yellow spiral

painted on a green-black stone,

a ring of upright pine cones for a fence.

That’s how the deer skull lay in state

until one of the neighborhood dogs

came to claim it,

and carried it off to bury

in the larger graveyard of the world.

Stereotypes

I’m a fullblooded

West Indian stereotype

See me straw hat?

Watch it good

I’m a fullblooded

West Indian stereotype

You ask

if I got riddum

in me blood

You going ask!

Man just beat de drum

and don’t forget

to pour di rum

I’m a fullblooded

West Indian stereotype

You say

I suppose you can show

us the limbo, can’t you?

How you know!

How you know!

You sure

you don’t want me

sing you a calypso too

How about that?

I’m a fullblooded

West Indian stereotype

You call me

happy-go-lucky

Yes that’s me

dressing fancy

and chasing women

if you think ah lie

bring yuh sister

I’m a fullblooded

West Indian stereotype

You wonder

where do you people get such riddum

could it be the sunshine

My goodness

Just listen to that steelband

Isn’t here one thing

you forgot to ask

go on man ask ask

This native will answer

anything

How about cricket?

I suppose you’re good at it?

Hear this man

good at it!

Put de willow

in me hand

and watch me stripe

de boundary

Yes I’m a fullblooded

West Indian stereotype

that’s why I

graduated from Oxford

University

with a degree

in anthropology

Migrant in London

Sand under we feet long time.

Sea divided for we, you know,

how we turned stragglers to Mecca.

An' in mi hangin' drape style

I cross worl' centre street, man.

An' busy traffic hoot horns.

I see Big Ben strike

the mark of my king town.

Pigeons come perch on mi shoulder,

roun' great Nelson feet.

I stan' in the roar, man,

in a dream of wheels

a-vibrate shadows.

I feel how wheels hurry in wheels.

I whisper, man you mek it.

You arrive.

Then sudden, like, quite loud I say,

'Then whey you goin' sleep tonight?'

My Arrival

Showing the creature I landed
I slipped from my mother’s womb
flesh connected, laced in a blood-spatter.

My father waited with a bottle of rum.

The moon floated somewhere.
The sea drummed and drummed our coastline.
Mullets darted in wooded steams. 

A good night to end our labour – Saturday.

The country-midwife held me up,
‘Look. Is yu third boy child!’
My mother asked, ‘Him all right?’

 

‘Yes – all eyes, all ears.
Yes – all hands, all feet.’
My mother whispered, ‘Thank God.’
My granny said, ‘My Jim-Jim.
My husband! You come back?’ 

 

I slept.
Roosters crowed
all around the village. 

In the sun’s hot eye
my umbilical cord was dressed
with wood ash, castor oil and nutmeg
and buried under a banana-sucker.
There, a tree made fruits, all mine.

Autobiography

I am leading a quiet life   

in Mike’s Place every day   

watching the champs

of the Dante Billiard Parlor   

and the French pinball addicts.   

I am leading a quiet life   

on lower East Broadway.   

I am an American.

I was an American boy.

I read the American Boy Magazine   

and became a boy scout   

in the suburbs.

I thought I was Tom Sawyer   

catching crayfish in the Bronx River

and imagining the Mississippi.   

I had a baseball mit

and an American Flyer bike.

I delivered the Woman’s Home Companion   

at five in the afternoon

or the Herald Trib

at five in the morning.

I still can hear the paper thump   

on lost porches.

I had an unhappy childhood.   

I saw Lindbergh land.

I looked homeward

and saw no angel.

I got caught stealing pencils

from the Five and Ten Cent Store   

the same month I made Eagle Scout.

I chopped trees for the CCC   

and sat on them.

I landed in Normandy

in a rowboat that turned over.

I have seen the educated armies

on the beach at Dover.

I have seen Egyptian pilots in purple clouds   

shopkeepers rolling up their blinds   

at midday

potato salad and dandelions

at anarchist picnics.

I am reading ‘Lorna Doone’

and a life of John Most

terror of the industrialist

a bomb on his desk at all times.

I have seen the garbagemen parade   

in the Columbus Day Parade

behind the glib

farting trumpeters.

I have not been out to the Cloisters   

in a long time

nor to the Tuileries

but I still keep thinking

of going.

I have seen the garbagemen parade   

when it was snowing.

I have eaten hotdogs in ballparks.

I have heard the Gettysburg Address   

and the Ginsberg Address.

I like it here

and I won’t go back

where I came from.

I too have ridden boxcars boxcars boxcars.   

I have travelled among unknown men.   

I have been in Asia

with Noah in the Ark.

I was in India

when Rome was built.

I have been in the Manger

with an Ass.

I have seen the Eternal Distributor   

from a White Hill

in South San Francisco

and the Laughing Woman at Loona Park   

outside the Fun House

in a great rainstorm

still laughing.

I have heard the sound of revelry   

by night.

I have wandered lonely

as a crowd.

I am leading a quiet life

outside of Mike’s Place every day   

watching the world walk by

in its curious shoes.

I once started out

to walk around the world

but ended up in Brooklyn.

That Bridge was too much for me.   

I have engaged in silence

exile and cunning.

I flew too near the sun

and my wax wings fell off.

I am looking for my Old Man   

whom I never knew.

I am looking for the Lost Leader   

with whom I flew.

Young men should be explorers.   

Home is where one starts from.   

But Mother never told me

there’d be scenes like this.

Womb-weary

I rest

I have travelled.

I have seen goof city.

I have seen the mass mess.

I have heard Kid Ory cry.

I have heard a trombone preach.   

I have heard Debussy

strained thru a sheet.

I have slept in a hundred islands

where books were trees.   

I have heard the birds   

that sound like bells.

I have worn grey flannel trousers

and walked upon the beach of hell.

I have dwelt in a hundred cities

where trees were books.

What subways what taxis what cafes!

What women with blind breasts

limbs lost among skyscrapers!

I have seen the statues of heroes

at carrefours.

Danton weeping at a metro entrance

Columbus in Barcelona

pointing Westward up the Ramblas

toward the American Express   

Lincoln in his stony chair   

And a great Stone Face   

in North Dakota.

I know that Columbus   

did not invent America.

I have heard a hundred housebroken Ezra Pounds.   

They should all be freed.   

It is long since I was a herdsman.

I am leading a quiet life   

in Mike’s Place every day   

reading the Classified columns.

I have read the Reader’s Digest

from cover to cover

and noted the close identification

of the United States and the Promised Land

where every coin is marked   

In God We Trust

but the dollar bills do not have it

being gods unto themselves.   

I read the Want Ads daily   

looking for a stone a leaf   

an unfound door.

I hear America singing

in the Yellow Pages.

One could never tell

the soul has its rages.

I read the papers every day   

and hear humanity amiss

in the sad plethora of print.

I see where Walden Pond has been drained   

to make an amusement park.   

I see they’re making Melville   

eat his whale.

I see another war is coming   

but I won’t be there to fight it.   

I have read the writing

on the outhouse wall.

I helped Kilroy write it.

I marched up Fifth Avenue

blowing on a bugle in a tight platoon   

but hurried back to the Casbah   

looking for my dog.

I see a similarity

between dogs and me.

Dogs are the true observers   

walking up and down the world   

thru the Molloy country.

I have walked down alleys   

too narrow for Chryslers.

I have seen a hundred horseless milkwagons   

in a vacant lot in Astoria.

Ben Shahn never painted them   

but they’re there

askew in Astoria.

I have heard the junkman’s obbligato.   

I have ridden superhighways   

and believed the billboard’s promises   

Crossed the Jersey Flats

and seen the Cities of the Plain

And wallowed in the wilds of Westchester

with its roving bands of natives

in stationwagons.

I have seen them.

I am the man.   

I was there.   

I suffered

somewhat.

I am an American.

I have a passport.

I did not suffer in public.

And I’m too young to die.

I am a selfmade man.

And I have plans for the future.

I am in line   

for a top job.

I may be moving on

to Detroit.

I am only temporarily

a tie salesman.

I am a good Joe.

I am an open book

to my boss.

I am a complete mystery

to my closest friends.

I am leading a quiet life

in Mike’s Place every day   

contemplating my navel.

I am a part

of the body’s long madness.

I have wandered in various nightwoods.   

I have leaned in drunken doorways.

I have written wild stories

without punctuation.

I am the man.

I was there.   

I suffered   

somewhat.

I have sat in an uneasy chair.

I am a tear of the sun.   

I am a hill

where poets run.

I invented the alphabet

after watching the flight of cranes   

who made letters with their legs.

I am a lake upon a plain.   

I am a word

in a tree.

I am a hill of poetry.   

I am a raid

on the inarticulate.

I have dreamt

that all my teeth fell out   

but my tongue lived   

to tell the tale.

For I am a still

of poetry.

I am a bank of song.   

I am a playerpiano

in an abandoned casino   

on a seaside esplanade   

in a dense fog

still playing.

I see a similarity

between the Laughing Woman

and myself.

I have heard the sound of summer   

in the rain.

I have seen girls on boardwalks   

have complicated sensations.   

I understand their hesitations.

I am a gatherer of fruit.   

I have seen how kisses   

cause euphoria.

I have risked enchantment.   

I have seen the Virgin   

in an appletree at Chartres

And Saint Joan burn

at the Bella Union.

I have seen giraffes in junglejims

their necks like love

wound around the iron circumstances   

of the world.

I have seen the Venus Aphrodite   

armless in her drafty corridor.   

I have heard a siren sing   

at One Fifth Avenue.

I have seen the White Goddess dancing   

in the Rue des Beaux Arts   

on the Fourteenth of July   

and the Beautiful Dame Without Mercy   

picking her nose in Chumley’s.   

She did not speak English.   

She had yellow hair

and a hoarse voice

I am leading a quiet life   

in Mike’s Place every day   

watching the pocket pool players   

making the minestrone scene   

wolfing the macaronis   

and I have read somewhere   

the Meaning of Existence   

yet have forgotten

just exactly where.

But I am the man

And I’ll be there.

And I may cause the lips   

of those who are asleep   

to speak.

And I may make my notebooks   

into sheaves of grass.   

And I may write my own   

eponymous epitaph

instructing the horsemen   

to pass.

Everybody's Doing It

In Hawaii they Hula
They Tango in Argentina
They Reggae in Jamaica
And they Rumba down in Cuba,
In Trinidad and Tobago
They do the Calypso
And in Spain the Spanish
They really do Flamenco.

In the Punjab they Bhangra
How they dance Kathak in India
Over in Guatemala
They dance the sweet Marimba,
Even foxes dance a lot
They invented the Fox Trot,
In Australia it's true
They dance to the Didgeridoo.

In Kenya they Benga
They Highlife in Ghana
They dance Ballet all over
And Rai dance in Algeria,
They Jali in Mali
In Brazil they Samba
And the girls do Belly Dancing
In the northern parts of Africa.

Everybody does the Disco
From Baghdad to San Francisco
Many folk with razzamataz
Cannot help dancing to Jazz,
They do the Jig in Ireland
And it is really true
They still Morris dance in England
When they can find time to.