Where Robot Mice and Robot Men Run Round In Robot Towns Read online

  This fiery bliss and joy which tempts me to steal forth

  At two a.m. and lie upon the lawn,

  A boy alone with Universe

  With song and verse of God spelled overhead

  For me to read and know and sing;

  Not know all this, go blind?

  Why, God minds me to be so. He put the bright sparks in my blood

  Which spirit, lighten, flare and frighten me to love.

  Small sparks, large Sun—

  All one, it is the same.

  Large flame or small

  I know and keep it all in eye, in heart, in mind.

  The flavor of the night lies on my tongue. I speak it so

  That others, uninviting of themselves, abed, not brave, may know

  What this boy knows and will forever know:

  The Universe is thronged with fire and light,

  And we but smaller suns which, skinned, trapped and kept

  Enshrined in blood and precious bones,

  Hold back the night.

  The Beast Atop the Building, the Tiger on the Stairs

  remembrance of two loves that never were but are

  * * *

  I The Beast

  The great ape falls, and Beauty sees him go.

  He’s dead before he hits the street and does not know

  We greet his fall with tears.

  The years are long since first we saw him dead.

  With dread we called him Kong,

  With love, sweet Beast his other name.

  And Beauty, from the myth, his kith and kin.

  His sin was loving without thought,

  But he bought time by scaling up our dreams

  To rave in clouds and send the airships down in fire.

  We do desire to be like him and her

  The lover and the loved above the town, apart

  And then, if need be, down we go, all secret shot through heart.

  The sound of his concussion ran before,

  Oh, how he tore the sky and wounded souls

  And changed fair children’s minds in candy dark.

  And still we fall with him, love maddened ape

  [And boys who share the fall]

  From her who saw him go.

  We run our deaths and loves again, again

  With flickered flint and spark of film

  That starts us up anew where lizards wait

  And Kong still vast upon his isle

  And Beauty’s gift to him some untouched Fate.

  The bastions fall, and Brute stands at the gate

  And thunders chest with fists and shouts his love,

  There stop the film! Put off the final reel!

  I’d see him there forever frozen, free to feel himself

  The emperor of island, world, and me.

  Fillet the airplanes’ bones; discharge their men.

  I will not see great Beast fall down again.

  Thank Christ for films whose Resurrections, humming

  Call forth with light: Reel One. And Kong.

  And, look! … The Second Coming.

  II The Tiger

  Or at the bottom of the stair we light the scene

  And then look up at Norma Desmond dressed in madness

  Like a gown, a thing of diamonds and dreams,

  A seamless fit without a stitch that turns and spins

  Like ballroom lights, mad sins that catch the stars and fire them back.

  “Ready,” we whisper, “for,” we call, “your,” we murmur,

  “Closeup, Norma.” So we finish out the phrase.

  And Norma, lost in other days, yet hears the summons

  To be mad-but-with-a-purpose for a while.

  Her smile is broken, then is fixed.

  Her gaze is fractured

  But then swiftly mends itself and finds

  That he who calls from down below is lover lost

  Still blind with love, late on in time, and calling hence:

  “Commence. Start up. Act, be alive again.”

  And Norma-within-Norma-mazed-in-Norma rises firm

  And surfacing, remembers lines, and moves,

  Descends, and all the mute reporters like a court

  And she the lovely-lost and last of queens.

  All eyes are filled with tears. She takes and preens

  Them round her neck as rightful gift

  And coming down the stair the music towers;

  She mists and flowers the frame. She fills the room.

  She fills the soul and heart.

  All light and time now sleep.

  It says: THE END

  And credits we can’t read.

  Gone mad in final dark, we weep.

  Why Didn’t Someone Tell Me About Crying in the Shower?

  * * *

  Why didn’t someone tell me about crying in the shower?

  What a fair fine place to cry,

  What a rare place to let go

  And know that no one hears—

  Let fall your tears which, with the rain that falls,

  Appall nobody save yourself, and standing there

  You wear your sadness, properly assuaged,

  Your head and face massaged by storms of spring

  Or, if you think it, autumn rain.

  You drain yourself away to naught, then move to joy;

  But sadness must come first, it must be bought.

  A thirst for melancholy, then, must find a place

  To stand in corners and know grief;

  The last leaf on the tree may turn you there,

  Or just the way the wind, with cats,

  Prowls down the garden grass,

  Or some boy passing on a bike,

  Selling the end of summer with a shout,

  Or some toy left like doubt upon a walk,

  Or some girl’s smile that, heedless, cracks the heart,

  Or that cold moment when each part and place and room

  In all your house is empty, still,

  Your children gone, their warm rooms chill,

  Their summer-oven beds unyeasted, flat,

  Waiting for cats to visit some half-remembered ghost

  In the long fall.

  So, for absolutely no good reason at all

  Old oceans rise

  One’s eyes are filled with salt;

  Something unknown then dies and must be mourned.

  Then standing beneath the shower at noon or night

  Is right and proper and good—

  What was not understood now comes to hand …

  One’s interior land is wonderfully nourished by tears:

  The years that you brought to harvest

  Are properly scythed down and laid,

  The games of love you played are ribboned and filed,

  A whole life locked in your blood is thus let free, unbound.

  So freely found then, know it, let it go

  From out your eyes and with the sweet rains flow.

  But now, good boys, strong gentlemen, take heed;

  This stuff is not for women, lost, alone;

  The need is yours as well as theirs.

  Take women’s wisdom for your own.

  Take sorrow’s loan and let your own cares free.

  Christ, give it a try!

  Not to learn how to weep is, lost fool,

  But to learn how to die.

  Stand weeping there from midnight until morn,

  Then from impacted wisdom shorn, set free,

  Leap forth to laugh in freshborn Children’s Hour and shout:

  Oh, damn you, maids, that’s what it’s all about?!

  Sweet widows with your wisdom, blast you all to hell!

  Why?

  Why, why, God, oh why,

  Why wouldn’t someone tell me about crying in the shower?

  Somewhere a Band Is Playing

  * * *

  Somewhere a band is playing,

  Playing the strangest tunes,

  Of sunflower seeds and
sailors

  Who tide with the strangest moons.

  Somewhere a drummer simmers

  And trembles with times forlorn

  Remembering days of summer

  In Futures yet unborn.

  Futures so far they are ancient

  And filled with Egyptian dust,

  That smell of the tomb and the lilac,

  And seed that is spent from lust,

  And peach that is hung on a tree-branch

  Far out in the sky from one’s reach,

  There mummies as lovely as lobsters

  Remember old Futures and teach.

  And children sit by on the stone floor

  And draw out their lives in the sands,

  Remembering deaths that won’t happen

  In Futures unseen in far lands.

  Somewhere a band is playing

  Where the moon never sets in the sky

  And nobody sleeps in the summer

  And nobody puts down to die;

  And Time then just goes on forever

  And hearts then continue to beat

  To the sound of the old moon-drum drumming

  And the glide of Eternity’s feet;

  Where beauty is beauty eternal

  And life is warm blood under skin

  And fresh is the rose with life vernal

  Which never knows darkness and sin.

  Somewhere the memory lingers,

  Somewhere the gods know death,

  But birth themselves new with sweet hungers

  To slake in the brook-morning’s breath.

  Somewhere the old people wander

  And linger themselves into noon

  And sleep in the wheatfields yonder

  To rise as fresh children with moon.

  Somewhere the children, old, maunder

  And know what it is to be dead

  And turn in their weeping to ponder

  Oblivions filed ’neath their bed.

  Somewhere the in-between people

  Walk center-lines down summer street

  And gaze in the crazed-mirror faces

  Of opposite people they meet.

  Two races pass roundabout now

  With the in-between people trapped there,

  To houses of faith or of doubt now

  Turned weathers both stormy and fair,

  And sit at the long dining table

  Where Life makes a banquet of flesh,

  Where dis-able makes itself able

  And spoiled puts on new masks of fresh.

  Somewhere a band is playing

  Oh listen, oh listen, that tune!

  If you learn it you’ll dance on forever

  In June …

  and yet June …

  and more … June …

  And Death will be dumb and not clever

  And Death will lie silent forever

  In June and yet June and more June.

  The Nefertiti – Tut Express

  Poem written on learning that trans-Egyptian railroad firemen sometimes used mummies for locomotive cordwood

  * * *

  Did they do that?

  Stoke furnaces with shrouds,

  With clouds of mummy-dust and old kings, too?

  Across Egyptian sands on railroad paths

  Long, long ago when trains were new?

  Amidst the oldness of raw dunes, worn pyramids

  DDid trans-Egyptian stokers, running low on fuel,

  Turn roundabout and summon Tut or Hotep’s sons

  And feed them in the fire, make pyre and burn a royalty?

  They did.

  Or so I’ve heard.

  Absurd.

  They stopped along the way and snitched a tomb, six tombs.

  At ten times twenty stations (named for Styx) called

  All Aboards! to plenty of ripe lords and ladies there

  Strewn forth by death four thousand years before.

  All folk were mummified, of course, and not just kings and queens;

  The common sheep whose sleeps were common as the dust that gleans

  Were there in harvest windrows scythed by lusty death;

  Like kindling all about they hid in millioned graves.

  So when the train puffed up and ocean-tidal-smoked

  While waiting to be fed—the dead, sand-drowned,

  Were handy stokings and wry faggots for the fire.

  Their rictus smiles did naught for them;

  The mummies, grinning with their grins

  Were flung in locomotive bins;

  Ten mummies at a time popped in

  To make St. Elmo’s iron firewheels spin.

  Like holy loaves they baked in steams

  Or flew in winged papyrus dreams tossed up

  Like midnight ravens, charcoal rooks,

  Old Alexandria’s finest books set fire by fools,

  Those graduates of Caesar’s dumb Praetorian schools.

  A pageantry of raped sheaves breathed self-consume.

  From locomotive Hades, swift Hell’s flume.

  From Cairo south the mummy-fields were bled

  And to the gorge of rushing Baal the linens fed

  And scarabs wrapped in tar were from the porch

  Of ancient tombs seized forth to bandage torch,

  Light hierarchies of Time and, one by one,

  With mighty Ra, fall in that final Sun,

  That Sun which in the bosom of steam-beast

  Of Tyre and Ptolemy makes equal feast,

  To churn forth funeral plumes along the shore

  Of salt-plowed Carthage, then turn back for more.

  Fair Nefertiti (Yes? Perhaps!) then knew the flame;

  One-eyed or two, all burned to chars her fame;

  Her profile, infamous, her beauty bright

  A thousand tigers’ eyes fireworked the night.

  And Cleopatra, Caesar’s cat, her ticket, too,

  Was taken, torn, ignited, spread like smoking dew

  On lip of Sphinx which asks and answers: What

  Burns faster, finer: Bubastis? Thoth? Anubis? Set? or Tut?

  Above remote Baghdad their farblown charsoots sail

  Where old soothsayers spy them, spin a tale

  Of mummy-dragon breaths across the stars

  And Cleopatra’s heart fixed fiery bright as Mars

  As off the engines of destruction smote and strode

  And in proud chariot fires the ancient pharaohs rode.

  In fine incense and smoke they draughted, shimmered, blew

  And all the bright Egyptian winds of time bestrew

  To flag downwind through Alexandrian East

  Until mid-feast some New Year later on

  A Faisal in his palace, cool, Arabian-kept at dawn

  Unslept and suddenly panicked and cold

  For no good reason at all, sat up and wept,

  Called out to the wind, afraid to die.

  Then raised one trembling hand to find and pluck

  The last offending soot of Nefertiti’s flesh

  From out his weeping eye.

  Telephone Friends, in Far Places

  * * *

  Those people are not real, they’re ghosts

  Along the coasts of places, near or far.

  They live, mere spirits at my beck and call;

  I know in my Ouija heart they do not live at all.

  Oh, I may beckon them—I reckon they have voices;

  When my choices are to let them live, they live;

  I give them sustenance by simply dialing through—

  They answer from dim midnight places

  But lack faces, are mere utterance, pulsed sound.

  I give them territorial ground on starspun wire,

  I hire them for the night and pay the fee;

  They give their thoughts to me from bloodless flesh.

  I summon them from Cork or Marrakesh or York or Bath,

  They sound their joy or wrath to me, but what of that?

  They a
re the dead that distance buries ’round the earth.

  And yet—they live! For traveling will give them birth!

  If I arrive, by God, these ghosts then rear themselves alive,

  To take on garmentings of blood and flesh and skin,

  Confetti-celebrate my coming there,

  Arrive all Puritan, depart all sin.

  For if I so desire to take my ghosts to bed,

  The haunts I heard on phones now leave the dead

  To put on faces, mouths, good listening ears, bright eyes.

  As long as I stay on, none of them dies.

  But, let me turn my back, begone, depart,

  Then every loving one gives up his beating heart.

  I wander off to phone from distant coasts.

  My friends left there?

  Go back to being …

  … ghosts.

  Death for Dinner, Doom for Lunch

  * * *

  They speak beneath their breath;

  They talk in tongues which wither souls,

  They linger long on tombs and graveyards,

  Earth and politics-by-night and moles which dig the dark;

  Their park is marbled with old names,

  Old times, old dooms,

  They have no rooms to let to Life,

  Nor any blood nor heat.

  The street they shamble on is empty, long and lone,

  They moan when they exhale

  And with each inhalation cry;

  When I say “Live,” they look astonished and repeat:

  Never to have been born is best,

  Put down and die.

  I will not hear them, cannot bear them, will not try

  To even understand

  How living up above

  They would prefer to sleep beneath the land.

  So these cold ones that fail at being warm

  Would harm the world with swords of ice and doubt.

  While I in Eden stand and wonder, shake my head,

  And wait for God to throw them out!

  Out of Dickinson by Poe,

  or The Only Begotten Son of Emily and Edgar

  * * *

  Strange tryst was that from which stillborn

  I still knew life midsummer morn,

  And son of Emily/Edgar both

  Did suck dry teat and swill sour broth,

  And midnight know when noon was there,

  And every summer breeze forswear.

  Gone blind from stars and dark of moon

  This boychild grew from wry cocoon;