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AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL
The logarithm. The fraction. The bead of dew.
The illusion. The quality
that leaps out of the bicycle. The possibility again
of heroism. The dispelling of sadness. The dynamo
and the huge act. The inclusion of machines
and therefore the mastery of machines.
The Big Dipper and the smoothness of aluminum.
The absolute colors. The April
that ascends and descends at once in the mercury.
The white bicycle of thought.
The way out of the doldrums of locomotives
and the smokestacks whose bodies are totems
of maniacal clarity. The moon
absorbed by the intelligence. All “property”
transformed without being “owned”. The possibility again
of the heroic and gloomless claritas of sense.
Stoned visions of facts themselves.
The actual objects, around whose shapes accumulate the halos
of presence.
The milkman come back, more jangling than war, the New War
declared on demythologized THINGS.
The investment of stone again
with the mercurial feathers and eyes
of the boneless breeze.
No victory but in the perception of the emotional quality.
Victim and victor transposed. The melting down
of the locomotive in the machine of its making.
All rhythms seen as extensions of spirit.
All spirit seen as extension of motion.
The ferociously benevolent dilation of the eye
at the warcraft of Knowledge. At last
the vision complete of this: that the excesses of today
are the natural resources of tomorrow. By which
the data quivers with delight in the graph,
and the formerly dead hairdomes ignite with feeling,
and the moosehuge inanity of literal competition
is transformed into the ecstatic sexual come.
Not the loss of all energy into sloth
but the internalized energy of sensual synapses,
of galaxy and water and brilliant brain and breast and nipples
and scrotum and mons and scarlet tip.
America The Beautiful. At last
the Constitution made fact and the fear of actualized Liberty
renounced and the Void smoothed like a bed.
I pledge allegiance again,
this time to the vivifications of our lost Body Politic,
nerves and follicles and arteries
ablaze in the suaveness of night.
3 A.M. OPENING THE WINDOW
Because I will die
I open the window
at 3 a.m. I am up writing
and drinking
and dying.
In the Yellow Sea
the South Koreans report
death never retreats,
nor from the Wailing Wall
do new deaths
step back blessed.
The night air
is cool and watery.
Lows in the 50's.
Highs in the 70's. Occasional drizzle.
Those are the facts, says the radio. But
we forget.
Right?
The North Koreans
report
the Yellow Sea
is sorry.
But we are drowning
and wailing.
In Lima
after The Earthquake
clean water
was gold.
It is death’s
drizzle we write
checks on.
When we die
we bounce.
FORGETTING HER BIRTHDAY
Yesterday was her birthday
and I simply lay with her birthday
and I simply used her birthday
and turned once in the night
without making a wish
and blew out her hair.
THE HUNTERS
We hunt deer with swords.
In ice we go.
We wear disguises.
Mascara. Rouge.
Round red O we cock loud crow
the mating cries
of the glaciers.
And bag no meat. No No.
Our swords rust. The deer in the blade is no shadow. Off,
the snake-grip crawls.
Because we had to draw so close to kill them
with our swords we
saw their eyes. They kissed our lip-stick.
Our hearts broke.
Here are our hearts in this sack.
Now we are woodsmen.
We hunt with an axe. We wear feathers.
These are their slim necks.
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