To you, Walt Whitman has probably
always been dead but to me he died
just yesterday after many pages,
his body a mess, large portions
nearly empty although it was the other parts
filled with masses beyond the understanding
of the 19th century that prevented him
from becoming a wind instrument or a kite
but sometimes he’s still a whole orchestra
unto himself as if every word he ever wrote
was being said simultaneously although
a little muffled, maybe just a squirrel
landing on the roof of another world
or a vacuum cleaner hose shifting
among the overcoats of another world
because the life of a poet is always
passing from one world to another, dream
to dream, tissue through tissue, red
stain upon the beach. My friend’s solution
is to read me another version of paradise
over the phone. At first the gods lie around
slurping the fruits of the Tree of Knowledge
until they’re full but because this is paradise,
they’re never full but what they get is
stupefied with the silk and slither of it,
the wet-going-down, oh how they long to
click some ammo in, wreck a bicycle,
anything but every greasy secret unhinged,
every outburst musical as if all singing
didn’t come from singeing so finally
they grow intolerable to themselves,
they start to stink and shun each other
until finally (because this is paradise,
it’s finally all the time) finally
they fall like frost-bit peaches
back into the mud, the furnace, into—
the lucky ones—the bodies of caterpillars
who spin from themselves the finest filaments.
It’s hard to believe how strong silk is
considering it comes from a bug’s butt
and often it’s quite instructive to try
ripping some parachute, some net, some flouncy
party dress, to try and break these ties
that bind us oh my lord. Imfuckingpossible.
My friend has almost nothing to say
about the woman he loves who stole his furniture,
nothing about the singing children you can’t
avoid this time of year. I hate singing
children, as if anything deserves to be so un-
ugly, as if we all aren’t on one end or another
of the spear. Ants climbing over ants.
Geese waddling through frozen fields. My friend
has even less to say about Walt Whitman.
Odic force or cosmic wanker? Almost everything
he revised, he made worse. Certainly
his family was a handful. Mom suffered
from rheumatism of the leg variously
diagnosed as Vaporous Ejectum, Crunching
Womb, Salt in the Clusters then she died,
still unable to punctuate sensibly. And Eddy,
retarded, mostly confined younger brother,
came to resemble the flyleaf portraits
of the bard more than he did himself
those waning years. Eddy, however,
responded only to sweets. Led into his rooms
those waning years, you’d be greeted
by the Kosmos enveloped in white sheets
unable to get up from the piles of papers
he forbade his housekeeper (who
would have to sue for back wages)
to touch. Little wound, little wound,
what is it you wish to say? You think
you’ll recover but you’ll never recover.
I was drunk when I got here, I plan
on being drunk when I leave.