Norman Mailer tried to punch everyone in the face
then he had a hard time getting up the stairs.
Fuck it, he thought, Keep working.
And you’re worried about what?
Blossoms fall into vroom,
graffitied all the way down.
Whatever you can throw back into the ocean,
go ahead, throw back into the ocean.
Fall into vroom. Sideways flung unto
the scissoring flyways and fallways. Heaved
fallward into the mortal coil.
Kenneth Koch wanted to make even grief delightful
then he could hardly chew dim sum.
Oh well, he thought, Keep working.
I tried to hold on by the suction of my hand
against the plane window shadowing over
the Sierras that only seem not to quiver.
Everything quivers. Words, chalices, ash, friendship.
The waves sluther themselves quiet
heeding whatever moody pull,
my underworld connections amazed I still breathe,
my lover an oyster, my overlords
embezzling the last wits from my mother
so she forgets where everything is hidden,
the Nippon chocolate sets, my birth certificate,
the mink collar that clamped its own tail
in its mouth, bead-eyed. That was her
with the knife in the condo hall. That was me
unrecognizable. Childhood falls into vroom.
Tuesday into vroom. When the ocean has its face
covered with fog, it hears something it can’t reach.
Yeah, like who don’t, only smaller.