Red Roses
Tommy is three and when he’s bad His mother dances with him. She puts on the record, “Red Roses for a Blue Lady” And throws him across the room. Mind you, She never laid
Elegy In The Classroom
In the thin classroom, where your face Was noble and your words were all things, I find this boily creature in your place; Find you disarranged, squatting on the window sill, Irrefutably placed up
After Auschwitz
Anger, As black as a hook, Overtakes me. Each day, Each Nazi Took, at 8:00 A. M., a baby And sauteed him for breakfast In his frying pan. And death looks on with a
The Fury Of Abandonment
Someone lives in a cave Eating his toes, I know that much. Someone little lives under a bush Pressing an empty Coca-Cola can against His starving bloated stomac, I know that much. A monkey
The Stand-Ins
In the dream The swastika is neon And flashes like a strobe light Into my eyes, all colors, All vibrations And I see the killer in him And he turns on an oven, An
The Ambition Bird
So it has come to this Insomnia at 3:15 A. M., The clock tolling its engine Like a frog following A sundial yet having an electric Seizure at the quarter hour. The business of
The Moss Of His Skin
“Young girls in old Arabia were often buried alive next To their fathers, apparently as sacrifice to the goddesses Of the tribes…” Harold Feldman, “Children of the Desert” Psychoanalysis And Psychoanalytic Review, Fall 1958
The Fury Of Cocks
There they are Drooping over the breakfast plates, Angel-like, Folding in their sad wing, Animal sad, And only the night before There they were Playing the banjo. Once more the day’s light comes With
Frenzy
I am not lazy. I am on the amphetamine of the soul. I am, each day, Typing out the God My typewriter believes in. Very quick. Very intense, Like a wolf at a live
The Addict
Sleepmonger, Deathmonger, With capsules in my palms each night, Eight at a time from sweet pharmaceutical bottles I make arrangements for a pint-sized journey. I’m the queen of this condition. I’m an expert on
Barefoot
Loving me with my shows off Means loving my long brown legs, Sweet dears, as good as spoons; And my feet, those two children Let out to play naked. Intricate nubs, My toes. No
Some Foreign Letters
I knew you forever and you were always old, Soft white lady of my heart. Surely you would scold Me for sitting up late, reading your letters, As if these foreign postmarks were meant
The Bells
Today the circus poster Is scabbing off the concrete wall And the children have forgotten If they knew at all. Father, do you remember? Only the sound remains, The distant thump of the good
The Room Of My Life
Here, In the room of my life The objects keep changing. Ashtrays to cry into, The suffering brother of the wood walls, The forty-eight keys of the typewriter Each an eyeball that is never
The Fury Of Jewels And Coal
Many a miner has gone Into the deep pit To receive the dust of a kiss, An ore-cell. He has gone with his lamp Full of mole eyes Deep deep and has brought forth