"Es ist gar hübsch von einem großen Herrn,
So menschlich mit dem Teufel selbst zu sprechen."
("How decent of so great a personage
to be so human with the devil.")
Goethe's Faust
"The bum's as holy as the seraphim! the madman's as holy as you my soul are holy! …
Holy! Ours! bodies! suffering! magnanimity!"
Ginsberg's Howl
I.
I have watching seen the world
from tiptoes around window
frames and now a word venture.
I have since dawn been wearing
my sleep clothes and night is come-
time for a dance and a change
time to wander and observe
outdoors, from without. I have
for too long bowed, submissive;
rest will my throat and knees now,
and roam, mine own songs to find.
II.
I've met you here before on another walk
and passed without blinking but you circled,
the streets were emptier then and your brows more expectant
but I am hungry still
when no meats grow pure.
Approach with arms, not words
to let me come once more into the pelting warmness
you will bring a candle and receive me
I will tell you of my inside watch and out and you of life
you will tell me of what you are able,
a place of nuance and song,
where friends argue because their bond is aging after two years of green knowing and nothing
is sacred not even the gay men she has loved without knowing or the other's obsession
with strange men's perfect noses,
where girls run in circles away from ridicule and complain that their chests are flat when their
asses finally become manageable,
where lunch means a time to nap between hurried interviews of child molesters and domestic
violence offenders in the nonsupervised open rooms of a maximum security prison and
dinner is a microwave soup in the lounge of a pediatric cancer ward,
where joy can be spitting grape seeds ten feet at a trash can for distance and accuracy in the
school parking lot before a look and stealing a first kiss,
where the children of high school dropouts speak five languages at eight learning from do it
yourself ten minutes a day books and speaking to no one,
where professors ignore gentle snoring and laugh softly thinking of their families and their
research and categorize for students and visiting onlookers their similarities to
coffee black and bitter,
where fifteen year olds flaunt with cocaine and homosexuality when their friends surpass them
in charm as the sidekick barnaby and smile condescendingly at their rosy cheeks,
where corporate associates with portentous armani wardrobes play dungeons and dragons on
the weekends with their watercooler friends in the fields wearing 5000 dollar steel armor
where girls dream of mr darcy and search for soft spoken conversation in a night club with fast
music and loud lights fifty miles from home,
where students silently observe through slanted eyes and fast close steps the evolution of a
forced friendship and claim in two months that there is nothing new to learn,
where mute young executives reject superficial conversation and dream of sensitive knights in
shining armor who appear to carry them away knowingly,
where sixteen year old leaky fords pause on dusty roads during a rainstorm for a family of
ducks to cross while the drivers cap their whiskey,
where boys leave stanford to become men and end up serving drinks on a beach in brazil
boasting of their learned ideals,
where love is offered by idealistic thirty year olds as a consolation prize to tired eighteen year
old girls with long lives out of pity and a longing for reciprocation,
where killing a man is a path to freedom from rape and daily beatings in a lonely black trailer in
a town of 250 but only with a ten year sentence and a four hundred thousand dollar
probation price tag and glares from a publicly appointed white counsel,
where boys who go dutch in every situation compare themselves to all others in derision and
return home in the afternoons to wash their faces and regel their hair,
where twenty six year old men must limp on atrophying limbs to 5am cold offices to answer
phones for a living after a night like every other of drinking and chicken with the boys,
where retiring men sell coffee machines to finance the wedding of their youngest daughter who
only knows how to say i am pretty in 14 languages
and I will smile, but in sadness at what I have heard,
show you in measurement what I have seen:
lonely eyes gazing unblinkingly out of doors,
quick walks in the rain to the shelter of squealing cities,
gentle fervent movements of bodies learning under candlelight
and all under a domed ceiling of cement.
In and out at once, I have been watching
your silence and no words
the twilight falling without lifting-
III.
Come now and we again will finally speak,
dance without explanation for the play needs no excuses
A mille stone has come, you to me
an offer, so kind for my acquiescence
my signature in song and serving
blind smiles and curtseys
but never wandering, to leave behind
all cows and nows and bows for fleece,
only kneeling in light.
As ever, I watched alone here
terror crying unheard in darkness
I watched alone here
lonely hands meeting blank walls
I watched alone here
candles casting only shadows
I watched alone here
stuffed dolls that bring more joy than martyred men
I watched alone here
thoughts held superior
I watched alone here
men laughing at invisible humor and no one wonders
I watched alone here
paints and whips and dollars becoming releases
I watched alone here
grinding without thoughts of touching
I watched alone here
restlessness held up as templates
I watched alone here
loneliness' birth and hopelessness flourishing
I watched alone here
where I have found my kindreds.
IV.
No, perhaps I will live still in the house built from my memories
because lightning frightens children and your shows
are acted by young boys who play harlots.
But before I found another carnival in the night,
let me light my torch to find a way
shut the window and lock the door.