An American Papyrus: 25 Poems | Page 7

while?Reeking pain and havoc?Like a living tongue pulled?From aperture and den?Is not sign enough?That he is meant?To be sustained?As an inegral part of the world,?Unique and indespensable.?Thinking about how much longer?He will need to play out the day?That issue is not his, and never has been.?"The job was done"?He could say, later,?After the storm.?Hand-limp,?His broom dance sweeps?Upended under an empty park bench--?Dirt caught under?The tongues of his feet--?So his paycheck?Will come in the mail?And become bank figures?He can suck from?To keep he and his woman?Housed and fed, and well enough?To legally rape each other in embraces,?Forgetful of their lives.
The man has a son,?and stands nights?aching behind an assembly line,?Sleeping the days away?While his son goes to school.?The son thinks his father?Is thoughtless and dirty?And his mother a grease-bitch?For marrying him.?The son grows up?Between his college books,?And begins to put it together:?A society of men?Wanting to take a variety?Of stimulating produce--?Though some were more the makers?Than the takers;?The image of rightness?In a man putting his hormones?To the making of a company?In a family; a family?That needs a provider to survive;?A man honorable and trapped
And there are nights?He awakens, gagging at the?Sudden thought of a man?Next to him?Who had engaged his body?In a lower form of sharing.?And he wonders if embracing a world?Of ideas can be done?When all things cannot be believed;?If humanism is?Energy vented?To avoid futility;?And what grossness?He would have to justify next--?All on those nights?When self-perspectives?Are swept under in change.

Man of Coal
You knew it was coming:?Twenty-three years and the mine?Would notice you one time,?Photocopied.?A voice below bellows?Your name, Dave,?Into the settling air of coal dust.
After you shut off the engines?And descend beneath the dragline's skeletal?Nose which canopys like a skyscraper on?Its side in mid-air?You confront a face?You cannot see in the descending sun. Shadow-still,?Enormous might engulfing over you?To the height of?The dragline's triple-tank wheels,?You see him--?The heels on his leather boots?Locked in the train-track grooves of dirt.
As he hands the notice to you?Its stiffness shakes?In your calloused hand.?You know that what is left of the day?Is becoming cold; and despite the smell?Of dirt there is a scent?Of watermelon in the damp air,?Although you do not know it as that smell?Or that there is a smell at all, really.?And yet a faintness of some half-knowledge?That touches its weight lightly in your mind?Drags itself into places you cannot touch.
Pulling out of his shadow?You think of how you might hand?This sheet to your wife?Like a child presenting to his mother?An award from school:?Your wife screaming laughter of relief?As she hugs the paper to her breast;
Or how your strong hand might sweat?As you pick up the reciever of the ringing phone,?Expecting that after saying "Hi"?That one of your college children's voices would end?The conversation there?For you to hand the vibrations?To your wife--but instead?That child?Congratulates you?For no longer destroying the land.
The noon hour whistle?Vibrates the walls?Of the hollow heavens?To the cab; the thermos-well?Of soup, sitting on your lap, you cannot see, but?You feel its stillness?Stagnating and absorbing?The contaminating minerals?Of the tin, walling in the contents;?And still you want to turn on the ignition?To finish out one more complete day?In the twenty-three years here?Of hard work.?The quandary then snaps, and you escape.?When out of the valley you enter the truck?And close the door--?The second time harder, and it latches.?You turn the key?And the truck bounces to the highway.?You stop at the sign;?Stop the motor while?Still on the dirt road;?But in the end turn left, again,?Home.

Maddog?(Or Death to the Barbie-Dame Image)
You said that it happened--that day you ran away?From a self you buried underneath the ice-packed snow,
All those cold years ago--when your last friend, then?Had put an end to the Gabriele whom I've never known.?This?Friend, like yourself a Barbie Dame, became totally?lame and?Withdrew out the door when you needed more hands to?keep?Your epileptic roomate?From smashing her head on the floor.
Gabriele, held together by the stitching of hate--?The plastic-eyed polar bear with the stiff arms?That the factory of the human race mutantly created--?This time it will be you who shall feel the wall of?artificial?Fur ripped from its threads, and your stuffing falling?out.?For a little maddog on top of four joints?Makes a person see the unsealed human fragments?That had been smoothed over in time?Like a million and some bone fractures?The milk of approval had swum into and covered over?for looks.
For me fragmenting came yesterday when I saw a welcome?mat?Iced over and yet I entered:?Your house was hot and your oven smelled of baking?meatloaf?Although you had said that you could not be?domesticated.?And then I saw your bottle of wine?Standing at attention before two glasses.?The pledge that bowing to anything or anyone was?wrong...that people?Were only needed to gain the most bare?Of physiological and psychological needs (pitstops to?being?human)--this was?gone.?Gone with your hair brushed and your skin smelling of?perfume?For some other man than me.
Come on Gabriele, the gal that used to chew tobacco?and?Spit