Spreading cross-sections of engineers:The way we move.Thumbing the cratered cheeks of farmers:The way we feed.Stroking the silken shorts of fighters:The way we lust. The heat-blood-toilOf Thomas Hart BentonFloods this chamber. Twelve panels’ worth of big-letterVISION: Black sows, white cotton,Steel ships, electric cities,Soda fountains of jazz and money, Furnaces jewelled with sweatAnd carbon. Drink it dry. …
make my ears bleed baby scream yerself raw and sickpour your woes into my holesbring it fast and thick make my ears bleed babyplay a savage tuneshred guitars and bang my drumfrom dusk til dawn til noon leave me quiet babytheres a coma that im in a sweptout cell inside my skullbut boy the walls …
Flotsam of a morning; Jetsam for a moment;Like foam, my breathing’s bursting,Drawn in deepest blue. Fling my tendrils; take me;My limp and drifting endings;Arms and legs sidewinding,Deep through deepest blue. Mesh for messy movement; Marsh of grid and branches; Force from far-off places;Deep-stacked, rolling through. Ground me on the shoreline;Wreck where wits might find me; …
My spine,My limbs,The divot aboveEach buttock:These grumble,But grind againstThe pitted,Man-made shore. It is hot in ChicagoWhere foreheads gleamLike quartersAnd rows of brickAnd limestoneCrack open thatUnctuous Sun.
They carry themselves.How, I don’t pretend to know. Their shins, skinned.Their nails, splintered.Their lips, cracked. (Did medical staffReport these changes?)On. Holding no voiceBeyond reedy breathing:“We are human.We are human.We are.” (Another time,We would be neighbours.)On. That wretch —If he could stop,He’d find lung forTreatise, sermon, song,Civics or bawdy humour. (Fairy tales affectSuch transformations.)On. Those bones …
What are you doing hitting marks,reciting lines, after cremation?Grandfather —you surprise me,appearing like this. Preceding scenes planted youdeep beneath roses,arrested while pruning —soiled handprint on vest.The episode passedwithout laugh trackor revival — Justreaction,silence,credits, death.Yet, here you are. Righted — corrected in fiction:cast as a salaryman, set and shot in Japan. How irresponsible,I think, and:What an …
Amber! Amber!It is all amber. The wood of the barVarnished with sunlight:Amber! The porter rolling in my Glass like syrup:Amber! The eyes all around,Blue, green and brown:Amber! Call them amber!They’re warm enough,For we are wracked — Caught in hiccupped laughter,Creased. Seeping to our edges, Happiness has drenched us. May it be forever thus.
Angel raises my gaze.Angel tugs my locks. Angel nudges my chinSkywards to be struck. Angel caresses my cornea, Lit with pale fire thatMakes me splendid. Say, “Hold the book so I can see.“ Say, “Billow wisdom in my hollows.” Say, “Let me sneak the ending, apparition.”“Holy smokes!”
Everything showed. Breath pocked the air.Streets curled like matchsticksCaught in their own flare.And the dog scuffed stone with me — noticing,In the transparent avenue, a crack:A wall of coats and handbagsTrailing a casket, shiningly black.And I leant to mourn, to decry the day,To quieten my face and my stride.But I held life by the leash …
All SaturdayI beamed For the happiness In my breast HappinessLike a dagger The sheath that wasMy chest Happiness so at homeIt became me Ripped ragged as if readyTo rend Bursting and flaringWith radiance A smile beyond lipsWithout end
