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THE BODY KNOWS
Eyes that have seen the glory of the coming of the 3rd Avenue bus,
thankful because they’ve waited on the corner long and it’s cold.
Bus tilting down for the old man who’s first on line to board.
He takes it one step, rest, next step, rest.
Testy guy behind him says,
“Will somebody just throw pops up to the top step?”
Pops gets to the top, complains to the driver,
“You could have pulled a little closer to the curb.”
Dirty snow melts into dirty tears,
stains run down pavement like mascara.
moon breathes dust in and out of a silver navel.
Eyes that study it.
Eyes that study abroad and on some nights two broads,
blinking to the beat of sirens that are too late to save the republic,
that corpse of somebody’s nitwit god.
O, to gaze up the ladder of success and say,
“Man, there are a lot of torturers at the top of the food chain.”
Eyes that have seen the glory of the materialistically benumbed,
rising from their TVs at home,
locked into their radios in cars,
parked before computers in the office,
keeping themselves cocooned inside a closed circuit of misinformation.
They dive into into a bed bigger than Dick Chaney’s fantasy
about screwing Kate Smith
on the radioactive battlefield of the Apocalypse.
(If you dive deep enough into a particular pussy,
you run into big-name poets there:
Pound in whose song we sing,
Yeats in whose lyric we rebel,
Eliot of the missed opportunities between grace and a flesh-locked
hell.)
Eyes that have seen the glory of the coming of the 3rd Avenue bus
and taken it to the 3rd Avenue whores
who have vanished but can still be reached by cell phone,
numbers in the back of the Village Voice.
Arms raised to hail cabs in the rain
and remaining that way well into eternity.
Tongue that has licked the finicky woman’s pearl,
hearing her moan, “You’ve got it, you’ve got it, you’ve got it.
Oh, oh, ohhhhh—you missed it. And I was so close.
But it’s not you, it’s me, for your technique
is so much more than adequate.”
Ginsberg leaping out of Whitman’s beard,
The Hindenburg floating out of Warhol’s ass.
Man, anything can happen in this poem, it’s a loose-cannon poem.
Ears that await George Bush ordering the demolition
of a disgusting little country of religious zealots
called Texas.
Arms that stroke across that ocean of a puddle on 6th,
as the cop says, “You can’t swim here, there’s no lifeguard.”
O, to have cradled the chunky moon
while swearing eternal moans.
Eyes that float freely in the sockets of their own headstones.
Nose picking up the fragrance of grilled steak and frying bacon;
hungriest baby ever born, that’s what the nurses of Queen’s hospital
said.
Eyes that have seen the coming of green lights
and gunned lost engines into the enormous mouth of the dead.
(O, sacred suckers of the Boobacracy,
exposed to mediocre Hollywood,
persecuted by dancing soda cups,
haunted by snickering Snicker bars,
counting elevator floors just to be hypnotized.
The crap you’ve take in,
somebody better sell you something quick,
what else are you good for?)
Eyes angrier than fire, wider than construction pits,
rolling like stones behind a hubcap,
Hands placed over hearts, not because patriotic,
it’s just they can’t stop playing with their own tits in public.
Eyes that have seen the glory of the coming of the 3rd Avenue bus
and taken it to highest point in the park
to observe the construction of something so gigantic
there will no longer be a sun.
Ears that have heard the coming and the going of everyone.
Read more of Doug's work on Poetz 2002. |