An American Papyrus: 25 Poems | Page 4

had beeen
At the moment of
malevolently blessing our heated and
Maddening consumption, was what we left
Our
wives for; and then hardened ourselves on
The springless cushions of the sofas of our
friends
Whom we eventually forgot the names of:
The wetness of human experience
that we Mongoled,
And felt the bladed emptiness
Of stomachs that couold not
consume food
On mornings after. But the Angels of bar rooms
continually

Appeared before darkiened stages where, in front of
guitars,
We played. They
apppeared at various stages to the
weeks of the years.
They came, silently whispering
themselves off
As Sandras or Cassandras;
Stared up at us for two hours; and
disappeared.
The reappearance of their light enamored us, and we
left
And followed
but found bats that offered
No shelter, and often caves we could not fit into
Or wer
forbidden from entering.
We invested our capital
In the Silicon Valleys of this great nation.
Third-world
bitches, in factories, became sick for our
chips.
We held power.
We bred metals and
bought the ownership titles
Of properties, but could not find a home of the world.

We married again and brought forth children
Whom were duplicate strangers of
ourselves.

The Retarded
Legs clamp around the rim--
The whole seated body sticking slightly
As moaning
howls come from his
Paralyzed mouth.
It is after having
Put him to bed for a nap,
and then the pot,
That this woman who would dab the bile
From his bed like one who
napkins a spill from
A tablecloth, does not clean away
The substance behind the
smell
Which predominates over the bathroom urinal
And aggravates his senses.
No
woman to do these tasks,
And then to rim her hand
Under the butt;
No woman to
drag him from
The pot,
After she has had his body bent
Toward her for the wiping,

And flop him onto the bench
In the shower; no woman...
She sits, cigarette limp in her mouth,
Thinking that the day has almost ended.
And the
stars she stares out at
From the living room of the group home
She remembers are
other earths limping
Half-free in the grips of other
Dying suns.

Houston
In Houston's summers the gods
Use the clouds as urinals
For three minutes daily.
In
Houston the Boat-People
Come from planes.
Inner-city--intermingled and alone
Like its green Buffalo-Bayou
Strewn only in the
imaginations
Of those who run along it briefly.
A mile from the bayou
The settled imagination of a
Nine year-old Vietnamese girl

Allows a mangled brown horse
To elongate and flatten out
To the reality of the rolled
up carpet

(All because of the rain).
She feels the wetness now beginning
To seep
into her clothes;
She raises herself; she sees the old Cuban
Walking from the house
with hands
To the sky, as if to make the heavens appear a little
longer
In the manner
that the downtown buildings,
From Dallas Street on, by their
Stories of windows
draw down
the sky's enormity from measurement
Both extensive and inadequate;

And she follows him.
Apart
And yet they both think about the Vietnamese
Teenager with curlers in her hair

Who yells "boo" behind doors
That are entered;
The Cambodian boy who
To the
view of the Montrose area
Pours on the bare shrubs,
And then strips and pours upon
himself,
The water from a hose, and that both animal and plant
Glisten in the sun

As if they have been greased;
Falling into Houston's world of high buildings
From the
descending planes
While hoping that the big world would
Not overpower their

memories;
And the Cubans, in house #2 always yelling of "Miami."
They believe that Cambodian refugees
Always clean house #1,
That Africans never
clean themselves,
and that Laotians often pour rice down the drains
Causing the
faucets of the house to stop-up;
And that the welcome-center Manager
Does not care
to bring over a little clothing
And a little food or take them on little trips
To the Social
Security Office or the doctor's office
Past 5 p.m.--
But of different seconds in that
minute,
Different lengths, and various perceptions.
She remembers the ugly man
In
Vietnam that ran from the police
And then a scar around his eye
Opened from the
clubs and the blood
Tried to escape him completely
As the body attempted to pull
itself
From the street, and could not.
He remembers thinking that the
Cranium of an
old man is always heavy
On the neck, and that his
Is becoming like this.
He desires to clasp the gate
That is around the Hispanic cemetary
And watches the
cars on Allen Parkway, below,
Curve and toward the sun
Become a gleam moving
endlessly
And instantly gone.
He desires to arrive there and
Read a few tombstones

Before and after watching.
She desires to imagine horses
Carrying her away from
here to the West,
And other horses following with her family behind.
She desires to
follow the Cuban that she fears
Since he is moving away from the refugee houses.

There are no horses in inner-city; and
The Hispanic cemetery cannot be found
To
souls wanting to rest there.
"Este cerca de calle Alabama?"

He wonders,.
The rain stops. The hammers and saws
peel their sounds from a roof.
And he notices
her steps
Despite the stronger sounds; halts;
And glances behind him as shingles fall
ahead,
While wanting her to completely leave him
And wanting her to come with
him.
In Houston's summers,
At certain areas, shingles like
The god's shit falls from
housetops
And the dung dries in the air,
Flattens, and ricochets to sidewalks.
In
Houston Cubans pack
From refugee houses
And plan to