An American Papyrus: 25 Poems | Page 7

rib
in.
And inside that bar where women snuggle
Away their faces in equality,
And
where men rotate hips on the dance floor
Like an earth's axes...this would not do:
For
there were no friends to affect
Mutually and faggishly in embraces;
And the young
and sensitive

Were Oriental and fonder
Of the cigarettes
They put in their faces

And the beers that suddenly appeared
Before them. This would not do:

Mouth-hugging the earth
On its bulge of life
Or moving to songs
Where the dances
never end.
He was an old fag and must retain
A square orbit.
It, at least,
Was a
gentleman's right
And in accordance with the
Manner of the fags.
The block was
long.
In the shadows and oblique actualities
He felt its length. His stomach tightened

In fear of the length.

Transitional Mendacities
No, the supremity of having been split off from
A larger entity by being spit out
From
pussy lips 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