Go Figure

And aside from collapsing a few

Personae into each other—

Anyone can love Romaine Brooks’ work

If not her—how big a fascist bitch

remains to be seen

 

Natalie was the one

Who financed Pound

And she was one

Quarter Jewish—

 

Go figure

Gertrude was a big fascist

Supporter and Eliot and John Dewey—

 

Go figure

 

Figure

Today’s neo-Nazis

Or Neo-Nazi America

How Can I Love You Romaine Brooks?

The stout party was Gertrude Stein

You said and  Picasso was there

Toting his quick avant-garde guitar

You said it

Belied the most normally reliable walk

Home each night

That's the night we met

Romaine Brooks

My sister Janis Joplin was unborn yet

When we met

Romaine Brooks

After Gertrude Stein got her hair off

She was a proper Roman emperor

You said before then

With all that hair-flop back of her head

She was uptight California matron all the way

Wonderful cucumber sandwiches 
In spite of everything

When you walked the streets of Paris

Romaine Brooks I saw you

Wounded by sensuous everythings of the moment

Possessing and caressing

Dressing and compressing now

I swear I saw you

Expressing entire worlds of now

O cripes Romaine Brooks

You took off the top of my head with your art

Do not follow the cow you said

The wife was a love story

Shoved deep in the pocket of her blouse

The full tits and the song

The ways of reading your paintings

Did I tell you Romaine Brooks

That my little sister Janis Joplin was not yet born

When we met?

O sweet Jesus

Cry baby

Welcome home you don't you

Want to cry baby cry cry baby

Welcome you home

Searching for the great sentence

All these years these misplaced decades

Finding only quaint words for everyday life

Right there

O good God though

Good-good-good God though

Settling for the everyday uninspired lover

Right there in Von's Bookshop Lafayette Indiana

Where we last met Romaine Brooks

Where I showed you my scars

Told you my final lies thin fabrications

Janis Joplin would one day buy baby

You never fished though

Except at your table

Where we fished

After you held up something

More than you were prepared to give

That's not when I fell

Fell in love with you

Romaine Brooks

Yes it was and you know

All I got was twenty-five fleas off two tom cats

You left behind

Beyond its tortured anthology the day we met

Left small rabbit turds along the sidewalk

O Janis Joplin my rough sister

Would one day sand that song into soul

Your life belonged to you Romaine Brooks

So we could own our own our own whatnot

Because you asked all the right questions

You suffered that terminal period of writer's block

Just like my sister Janice

Maybe five minutes before you died

O how you loved Ezra Pound and James Joyce

I hated you for that

Because you like Pound were a fascist

And Joyce was a such a turd

Close behind you

I closed behind you

Closed every door behind you

There are many ways of carrying out sabotage

Romaine Brooks I love you

Fascist bitch

When Woody Guthrie Returns to America

When the land dries & the sand flies

fold on fold of black dust rolls so dark

a yellow light bulb in the kitchen

looks like a burning cigarette.

But it's okay okay because

the Okies & the Arkies & the Texicans

follow Woodie to the sun-sun-sunny Californy sand.

Sing

they sing the Dust Bowl Blues

& everything's hunky-doria

hunky hunky dunky-doria.

Everybody's feet in everybody's face

you know how that is

buried head-over-heels in this land

got stole from you & me.

Just so you have the do-re-mi

brother.

Just so you have the do-re-mi

sister.

Somewhere grass grows

high & sweet & sad

as the voice of a blue-glass tenor.

Woody says at church they say

stand up stand up for Jesus

& at the ball game

for Christ sake

sit down.

Woody says what's God want

from a Dust Bowl refugee

sleeping under a railroad bridge

living outside like a coyote.

Woody says when Rose blows

her nose on her toes

her hose

shows.

The left arm of America

tingles more & more

a limp heart-pressed limb.

Truth is out there

coming over the horizon with a bilious smirk. 

Woody says you can keep

tall buildings where elevators run

too straight up & too straight down.

Which floor are you on

he says.

Which floor are you on.

Woody says the sour & sweat

soaked denim of my overhauls

they was bound for glory

like a straw boss of the pyramids.

They never does go

quite right in my head

he says.

Something goes out

goes out the dark house.

Mind your own business.

Mind your own.

Your own.

Ain't got no home.

Blinking once for yes

twice for no.

No home.

God Only Knows What We Would Choose

We play the game of being

and not being.

Why should we dread being

no one? We are born.

We die. We don’t dread

the water-fire of birth. We don’t 
dread whoever talks to us. 

Oh, unengendered hope!

Oh, perfect silence!

We play the game. We play 
always and forever

and never. 

We ponder our fingernails,

where breath can’t follow,

where no voices echo in half-

moons and chipped pyramids.

We with cheeks that bear kisses—

we float at our far self

like mist in a low field.

We hear the last 
azaleas bloom and bloom and bloom.

When Night Flies We Hide

Night opens vast wings and eyes 
earth for day-weary prey, 
cruising the wilderness with fell-lurking swoops.

Night spews torn 
necklaces of pewter emerods,

spits ten trillion strings of wounded pearls.

Night drowns our star-proof dreams

in lugubrious rhapsodies

and afterclaps of grim grammar.

Night sniffs the gullet of our wet cave,

fore-paws piercing the nether-lip of dawn.

Night waits. 

Night waits and watches 
blood-shadows ooze
from yondermouth of morning.