American Papyrus: 25 Poems

Earth

I use her earth to plant my seed-- My limbs twisting around the collective molecules, Trying to dig in. Only the obscurity of my body Presses so fully that it is neither Body nor bed nor the intersection of both, But euphoric traction; And then, planted and repulsed, Only the seam of backbone minutely faces her, That bed of earth. With all conscious force I breathe the aloneness that intangibly defines the Air. I swallow its ambrosia Of depth and ask myself Why I ever married the woman. There is void. Then a hollow answer calls my name and says "it was time." I realize myself in movement, parting the scene.

I use what has been planted for the reaping-- My suit tucks me into its structure of cotton; And soon a building will be again the structure Around men of cotton suits, pushing a product.

Lost, I drink my coffee alone on the stoop. She had asked to fix me breakfast But I would not let her. My miniature is one and black. I drink me in when I am not Pressed by the coffee's steam. Cars' casketed phantoms of people Chasing up and down Dunlavy Street of Houston After something--their whole lives after something-- Come and go from consciousness like respiration. The people plant and reap. Who can count all of their Insignificant names?-- Animals that are not created sensible enough To propagate unless lost to frenzy, Caught in structures without meaning.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -

Bar-Room Buddies

We Mongoled Human experience. We pushed it into our mouths As the crisp pretzels of which the shape became salty dust At our tastes: the crispness of life, And we Mongoled human experience.

The tequila, that Sandras or Cassandras, or whomever it had beeen At the moment of malevolently blessing our heated and Maddening consumption, was what we left Our wives for; and then hardened ourselves on The springless cushions of the sofas of our friends Whom we eventually forgot the names of: The wetness of human experience that we Mongoled, And felt the bladed emptiness Of stomachs that could not consume food On mornings after. But the Angels of bar rooms continually Appeared before darkened stages where, in front of guitars, We played. They apppeared at various stages to the weeks of the years. They came, silently whispering themselves off As Sandras or Cassandras; Stared up at us for two hours; and disappeared. The reappearance of their light enamored us, and we left And followed but found bats that offered No shelter, and often caves we could not fit into Or were forbidden from entering.

We invested our capital In the Silicon Valleys of this great nation. Third-world bitches, in factories, became sick for our chips. We held power. We bred metals and bought the ownership titles Of properties, but could not find a home of the world.

We married again and brought forth children Who were duplicate strangers of ourselves.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -

The Retarded

Legs clamp around the rim-- The whole seated body sticking slightly As moaning howls come from his Paralyzed mouth. It is after having Put him to bed for a nap, and then the pot, That this woman who would dab the bile From his bed like one who napkins a spill from A tablecloth, does not clean away The substance behind the smell Which predominates over the bathroom urinal And aggravates his senses. No woman to do these tasks, And then to rim her hand Under the butt; No woman to drag him from The pot, After she has had his body bent Toward her for the wiping, And flop him onto the bench In the shower; no woman...

She sits, cigarette limp in her mouth, Thinking that the day has almost ended. And the stars she stares out at From the living room of the group home She remembers are other earths limping Half-free in the grips of other Dying suns.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -

Houston

In Houston's summers the gods Use the clouds as urinals For three minutes daily. In Houston the Boat-People Come from planes.

Inner-city--intermingled and alone Like its green Buffalo-Bayou Strewn only in the imaginations Of those who run along it briefly.

A mile from the bayou The settled imagination of a Nine year-old Vietnamese girl Allows a mangled brown horse To elongate and flatten out To the reality of the rolled up carpet (All because of the rain). She feels the wetness now beginning To seep into her clothes; She raises herself; she sees the old Cuban Walking from the house with hands To the sky, as if to make the heavens appear a little longer In the manner that the downtown buildings, From Dallas Street on, by their Stories of windows draw down the sky's enormity from measurement Both extensive and inadequate; And she follows him.

Apart And yet they both think about the Vietnamese Teenager with curlers in her hair Who yells "boo" behind doors That are entered; The Cambodian boy who To the view of the Montrose area Pours on the bare shrubs, And then strips and pours upon himself, The water from a hose, and that both animal and plant Glisten in the sun As if they have been greased; Falling into Houston's world of high buildings From the descending planes While hoping that the big world would Not overpower their memories; And the Cubans, in house #2 always yelling of "Miami."

They believe that Cambodian refugees Always clean house #1, That Africans never clean themselves, and that Laotians often pour rice down the drains Causing the faucets of the house to stop-up; And that the welcome-center Manager Does not care to bring over a little clothing And a little food or take them on little trips To the Social Security Office or the doctor's office Past 5 p.m.-- But of different seconds in that minute, Different lengths, and various perceptions. She remembers the ugly man In Vietnam that ran from the police And then a scar around his eye Opened from the clubs and the blood Tried to escape him completely As the body attempted to pull itself From the street, and could not. He remembers thinking that the Cranium of an old man is always heavy On the neck, and that his Is becoming like this.

He desires to clasp the gate That is around the Hispanic cemetery And watches the cars on Allen Parkway, below, Curve and toward the sun Become a gleam moving endlessly And instantly gone. He desires to arrive there and Read a few tombstones Before and after watching. She desires to imagine horses Carrying her away from here to the West, And other horses following with her family behind. She desires to follow the Cuban that she fears Since he is moving away from the refugee houses. There are no horses in inner-city; and The Hispanic cemetery cannot be found To souls wanting to rest there. "Este cerca de calle Alabama?" He wonders,.

The rain stops. The hammers and saws peel their sounds from a roof. And he notices her steps Despite the stronger sounds; halts; And glances behind him as shingles fall ahead, While wanting her to completely leave him And wanting her to come with him.

In Houston's summers, At certain areas, shingles like The god's shit falls from housetops And the dung dries in the air, Flattens, and ricochets to sidewalks. In Houston Cubans pack From refugee houses And plan to fly away into America, and depart Far from the Castilian hot-dog vender Of Herman Park waiting for The thirsty and hungered And those ignorant of what they want But know that they want something And so come to buy from her Who wants people to come to her For more than the chips Because the hotdogs are overpriced, Who formulates That she is unskilled

And that a computer course would answer it all; Far from the Netherland psychologists who Stares at her ebony reflection In Rothko Chapel's dyed pool; Apart from others, and no-one, all Pulling alone for humanity to both Come and go from their lives.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -

And nearly empty of thoughts--Herb's woman, Jeanie, Behind the Ellison Building standing With concrete drilling its stiffness Through her soles. There had been a time-- With face raised from her age-smelted pose To the ever firm stories of that building-- That she would think of receiving her paycheck so she could Go to K-Mart and have something. But now years on top of each other, Uncountable to her, She continues guiding The few of the masses of cars That turn into the lot Where to park: in winters Conscious of the visibility Of her cold breathing, And summers with the scents Of greased telephone poles And sights of light gleaming off Car windows, she thinks Of buying old junk from garage sales For her yard sales, with the same prices, So as to recall the sounds of human voices Other than her own.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -

Brumfield

His job was a novitiate where there was no operator's manual With which to have faith in, and no rules But to move with the dustmop pushed before him Along the empty corridor, and then down a staircase Where he could descend to more passive depths in cleaning.

At home he would smell the odor of his bare feet coming to him; Would see the blue under his toe nail that looked like marble; And these would be dominant sensations Though he would be vaguely aware of them. Beneath his bended legs he would sweep his hand To capture a fuller scent as his fingers would flick To capture a fuller scent as his fingers would flick His unshaven face. Then in his only room where the bare mattress Was lain along with his leather jacket And the dirty underwear cuddled around a clean toilet-- Where the Rosary hung on a wall And the guitar leaned in a corner-- he would do his push-ups.