The Mirror

I reflect on this desperate note while waiting in the children's hospital. The desperate cry my son left cold as ice in his closed eyes after poison. Benches of blood. This is a wooden tragedy. Joyce & I walked home under the huge night thru a grand sweep and around midnight I scribble a letter to my sister, who is dying five minutes at a time:             You are the flower of confusion             coming up in the morning             of my love and             going tightly shut in the afternoon of             anger. Anger & bitterness.                                          I look forward to your resurrection....

While the carrots sang arias into the holy earth and the snowmen turned into bronze weathervanes, I underwent a removal, tearing my skin off me, plucking out the eyes like Ping-Pong balls, squashing the shriek of my heart like a phone off the hook — and as these phenomena occurred, a fool walked straight into         me. He was named Mr. Rabbit. My own voice spoke to people, anyone, friends, strangers on the street, saying, "I am Mr. Rabbit."  The flesh itself had become mad and at three mirrors this was confirmed. Next it was bad Friday and they nailed me up like a scarecrow and many gathered eating popcorn, carrying hymnals or balloons. They were three of us there, though they appeared normal. My ears, so pink like powder, were nailed. My paws, sweet as baby mittens, were nailed. And my two fuzzy ankles.  I said, "Pay no attention. I am        crazy." But some giggled and some knelt. My oxygen became tiny and blood...

i say i am conscious i am discreet i like the feel of his breast hair i like the smells of sex of sweat of skin i write the word 'blood' i imagine a meal meat in its crumbs veal beaten flat sour cream onions i get off the bus prosperous comfortable London taking by hazard is part of the pleasure an unfairness of secretaries nurses an impersonal poison it was part of his intention to rob words of their power to grow big if you insist on going to bed with history a period is something i forget seven of my family mother father most of my friends communists for days i have had to deal with a bad smell a remnant refugees in strange countries i pack myself with cotton wool i dream a great deal the history of Europe a grand piano a notebook a doll i take six earthenware pots i am giving pleasure an exterior orgasm a vaginal orgasm oh boy oh boy oh boy [From: Antin, D. (1968) Code of flag behavior . Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press. p57.]

iii. Our heads ached. we were slightly sick with the smell of blood to a woman to women to the enemy i suppose we could say that they name us we feel safe with them we are on some kind of frontier we are frightened  trying to create men have i hurt you that i dreamed the dream was a telephone conversation these words moved me but i sat in a kind of cold fog i am the evil vase yet they were all used to it they had been living inside it for years it was not strange to them only to me a man about fifty a bachelor or perhaps a married man a man and a woman married or perhaps in a long relationship an American man and an English woman man and a woman both sexually proud two rakes male and female together this time the woman a wandering man a woman artist a man and a woman in a love affair a woman who has fallen in love against her will a healthy woman in love with a man a man using g...

Sleep     horns of a snail                                           protruding, retracting What we choose to know                                            or not know                                                                  all these years sleepwalking                         next to death I  This snail could have been eaten  This snail could have been crushed This snail could have dreamed it was a painter or a poet This snail could have driven fast at night putting up graffiti with a spray-gu...

Three-days rain and, Right in the middle of town This small farmhouse.                                    I could have Dressed, rushed out, come back In five minutes with a wild Armful of wet apples Or one warm egg For a love gift.                         Freud Was out in the barn Munching hay with Marx, And Darwin dozed in the loft. We were alone for miles With honest coffee And a few words. You said: I'd sure hate to live in town. I said: This farming— It won't pay. [From: Nathan, L. (1975) Returning Your Call . Princeton: Princeton University Press.]