I Will Go On Eating Oranges, I Said

I will go on eating oranges, I said,
I will collect shards of tires on the highways,
I will stanch running noses,
I will collect desolate socks,
I will survey the vistas of littered floors
And hills,
Comprehensively, as though I had forgotten the flute,
The gaming parlor, the ululations,
The sharp sparkle of the pre-dawn wind.

I Wondered Why You Were Breaking My Flowerpots

I wondered why you were breaking my flowerpots.
But then you knew, didn’t you
(Even if you didn’t know that you knew),
That I hid my soul there,
That our family had stored its gold and silver there,
That there the constellations hid during the day,
That God Himself hid there.
It wasn’t just me you came to destroy,
For if you destroyed these flowerpots
You could crow naked on the top of the burly hills
And watch mountains of cities slip into the sea,
And your spirit would be freed
To march down the boulevards with squadrons of soldiers,
To requisition mansions without pay,
To dance with the Swiss ambassador’s wife,
To throw back your head and hoot at the moon.
But first you must break the city of stone,
First you must seed these hills with blood,
First you must fill the coastal towns with the winding smoke
Of weariness and decay,
So that the eyes of its pedestrians will not rise from the sidewalk
As your motorcade speeds resplendently by
Taking you to dance naked in your hotel room
And sleep with the corrugated idol
Whose thin loins sing
The odor of the grave.

Suddenly It is Like That

Suddenly it is like that.
You are pulling your feet out of the long, sticky brown mud,
And you will no longer compromise.
But it is only you against a bulldozer,
And the wind and the stars are thin.

Go to the caves in the valley, shake the elders in their casques.
You need more than echoes in the dark.
You need more than youths spilling across valley floors.
You need the strength of mountains,
The bulldozers must stand with gaping mouths.
You must overwhelm them utterly,
Not with your spirit but with your flesh.

You must make your home in the streets,
You must love the mortar and the asphalt,
Or you will be praying in the corner of your home
When you are carted out with the rubble
And the winding smoke of powdered stone blinds your eyes white.

I Will Stop at Nothing

I will stop at Nothing.
You stop at Nothing too
(Robert Frost’s horse did.)
And there in the shapes of darkness,
The huge bent back of the silent slouching beast
Obscures the sight of the stars.
The air rushes up in a trice
Like a paper dancer in the flame,
And you stand like the tin soldier on one leg.

And manifold chambers open like a bright and airy origami.
At your feet the scrub whispers and murmurs,
Small nocturnal creatures.
Your nictitating membrane pops up, and
The dove of your spirit flies up on a gust of words
That are daylight,
That are a fountain of sparks,
That are a clapping of hands,
That are the night sky and its stone stars
And the marvelous humped silent huge back
Of the leviathan.

The Day Rose

The day rose.
The night flowered.
Bakeries were open till dawn,
Pregnant women glided through the streets,
Ships upon the horizon glinted blue, yellow,
At small café tables women pecked at keyboards,
Sleek seals breached the freezing seas,
Eyes gazed upon the beach.
They were incandescent bulbs,
They were tulips,
They were ancient countenances,
They were beyond number.
Mountains floated in their field of vision,
Mountains and declamations.

There is a Messiah Without God

There is a messiah without a God.
We have seen him visiting our beaches,
He commanded the waves and tar infested the sand.
He commanded the heavens
And missiles rained like stars.
He thundered at the mountain
But his voice rattled like the crinkling of a newspaper.
We turned the page, we snoozed,
Our chin bobbed upon our chest
And the air turned red and sullen.