Lunch Poems

… and I’ll be happy here and happy there, full of tea and tears

Leaf! you are so big! How can you change your color, then just fall! As if there were no such thing as integrity!

...but it is good to be several floors up in the dead of night wondering whether you are any good or not and the only decision you can make is that you did it...

when I think of all the things I’ve been thinking of I feel insane

all I want is a room up there and you in it

the only thing to do is simply continue is that simple yes, it is simple because it is the only thing to do can you do it yes, you can because it is the only thing to do

The moon passes into clouds so hurt by the street lights of your glance oh my heart

I’m so damned literary and at the same time the waters rushing past remind me of nothing I’m so damn empty

I seem to be defying fate, or am I avoiding it?

willow trees, willow trees they remind me of Desdemona I'm so damned literary and at the same time the waters rushing past remind me of nothing

I can’t even find a pond small enough to drown in without being ostentatious

but to be part of the treetops and the blueness, invisible the iridescent darknesses beyond, silent, listening to the air becoming no air becoming air again

… and surely we shall not continue to be unhappy we shall be happy but we shall continue to be ourselves everything continues to be possible

… my words are love which willfully parades in its room, refusing to move.

Mothers of America let your kids go to the movies! get them out of the house so they won't know what you're up to it's true that fresh air is good for the body but what about the soul that grows in darkness, embossed by silvery images and when you grow old as grow old you must they won't hate you

Oh say can you see Alma. The darling of Them. All her friends were artists. They alone have memories. They alone love flowers. They alone give parties and die. Poor Alma. They alone. She died, and it was as if all the jewels in the world had heaved a sigh. The seismograph at Fordham university registered, for once, a spiritual note. How like a sliver in her own short fat muscular foot. She loved the Western World, though there are some who say she isn't really dead.

Five Poems" 1 Well now, hold on maybe I won't go to sleep at all and it'll be a beautiful white night or else I'll collapse completely from nerves and be calm as a rug or a bottle of pills or suddenly I'll be off Montauk swimming and loving it and not caring where 2 an invitation to lunch HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT? when I only have 16 cents and 2 packages of yoghurt there's a lesson in that, isn't there like in Chinese poetry when a leaf falls? hold off on the yoghurt till the very last, when everything may improve 3 at the Rond-Point they were eating an oyster, but here we were dropping by sculptures and seeing some paintings and the smasheroo-grates of Cadoret and music by Varese, too well Adolph Gottlieb I guess you are the hero of this day along with venison and Bill I'll sleep on the yoghurt and dream of the Persian Gulf 4 which I did it was wonderful to be in bed again and the knock on my door for once signified "hi there" and on the deafening walk through the ghettos where bombs have gone off lately left by subway violators I knew why I love taxis, yes subways are only fun when you're feeling sexy and who feels sexy after The Blue Angel well maybe a little bit 5 I seem to be defying fate, or am I avoiding it?

oh god it's so wonderful to get out of bed and drink too much coffee and smoke too many cigarettes and love you so much

POEM I watched an armory combing its bronze bricks and in the sky there were glistening rails of milk. Where had the swan gone, the one with the lame back? Now mounting the steps I enter my new home full of grey radiators and glass ashtrays full of wool. Against the winter I must get a samovar embroidered with basil leaves and Ukranian mottos to the distant sound of wings, painfully anti-wind, a little bit of the blue summer air will come back as the steam chuckles in the monster's steamy attack and I'll be happy here and happy there, full of tea and tears. I don't suppose I'll ever get to Italy, but I have the terrible tundra at least. My new home will be full of wood, roots and the like, while I pace in a turtleneck sweater, repairing my bike. I watched the palisades shivering in the snow of my face, which had grown preternaturally pure. Once I destroyed a man's idea of himself to have him.

Oh to be an angel (if there were any!), and go straight up into the sky and look around and then come down not to be covered with steel and aluminum glaringly ugly in the pure distances and clattering and buckling, wheezing but to be part of the treetops and the blueness, invisible, the iridescent darknesses beyond, silent, listening to the air becoming no air becoming air again

an invitation to lunch HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT? when I only have 16 cents and 2 packages of yoghurt there's a lesson in that, isn't there like in Chinese poetry when a leaf falls? hold off on the yoghurt till the very last, when everything may improve

you know we've all sinned a lot against science so we really ought to be as available as an apple on a bough pleasant thought fresh air free love cross-pollenization oh oh god how I'd love to dream let alone sleep

you were made in the image of god I was not I was made in the image of a sissy truck-driver and Jean Dubuffet painting his cows

Why do you play such dreary music on Saturday afternoon, when tired mortally tired I long for a little reminder of immortal energy? All week long while I trudge fatiguingly from desk to desk in the museum you spill your miracles of Grieg and Honegger on shut-ins. Am I not shut in too, and after a week of work don’t I deserve Prokofieff? Well, I have my beautiful de Kooning to aspire to. I think it has an orange bed in it, more than the ear can hold.

I wish I were reeling around Paris instead of reeling around New York I wish I weren't reeling at all

[...] The moon passes into clouds so hurt by the streetlights of your glance oh my heart The act of love is also passing like a subway bison through the paper-littered arches of the express tracks the sailor sobers he feeds pennies to the peanut machines Though others are in the night far away lips upon a dusty armpit the nostrils are full of tears High fidelity reposed in a box a hand on the windowpane the sweet calm the violin strings tie a young man's hair the bright black eyes pin far away their smudged curiosity Yes you are foolish smoking the bars are for rabbits who wish to outlive the men

the Louvre stays open it continues it hardly closes at all the Bar Américain continues to be French de Gaulle continues to be Algerian as does Camus Shirley Goldfarb continues to be Shirley Goldfarb and Jane Hazan continues to be Jane Freilicher (I think!) and Irving Sandler continues to be the balayeur des artistes and so do I (sometimes I think I'm "in love" with painting) and surely the Piscine Deligny continues to have water in it and the Flore continues to have tables and newspapers and people under them and surely we shall not continue to be unhappy we shall be happy but we shall continue to be ourselves everything continues to be possible René Char, Pierre Reverdy, Samuel Beckett it is possible isn't it I love Reverdy for saying yes, though I don't believe it

oh oh god how I'd love to dream let alone sleep it's night the soft air wraps me like a swarm it's raining and I have a cold I am a real human being with real ascendancies and a certain amount of rapture what do you do with a kid like me if you don't eat me I'll have to eat myself

Mothers of America let your kids go to the movies! get them out of the house so they won't know what you're up to it's true that fresh air is good for the body but what about the soul that grows in darkness, embossed by silvery images and when you grow old as grow old you must they won't hate you they won't criticize you they won't know they'll be in some glamorous country they first saw on a Saturday afternoon or playing hookey they may, even be grateful to you for their first sexual experience which only cost you a quarter and didn't upset the peaceful home they will know where candy bars come from and gratuitous bags of popcorn as gratuitous as leaving the movie before it's over with a pleasant stranger whose apartment is in the Heaven on Earth Bldg near the Williamsburg Bridge oh mothers you will have made the little tykes so happy because if nobody does pick them up in the movies they won't know the difference and if somebody does it'll be sheer gravy and they'll have been truly entertained either way instead of hanging around the yard or up in their room hating you prematurely since you won't have done anything horribly mean yet except keeping them from the darker joys it's unforgivable the latter so don't blame me if you won't take this advice and the family breaks up and your children grow old and blind in front of a TV set seeing movies you wouldn't let them see when they were young

AVE MARIA Mothers of America . let your kids go to the movies! get them out of the house so they won't know what you're up to it's true that fresh air is good for the body but what about the soul that grows in darkness, embossed by silvery images and when you grow old as grow old you must they won't hate you they won't criticize you they won't know they'll be in some glamorous country they first saw on a Saturday afternoon or playing hookey they may, even be grateful to you for their first sexual experience which only cost you a quarter and didn't upset the peaceful home they will know where candy bars come from and gratuitous bags of popcorn as gratuitous as leaving the movie before it's over with a pleasant stranger whose apartment is in the Heaven on Earth Bldg near the Williamsburg Bridge oh mothers you will have made the little tykes so happy because if nobody does pick them up in the movies they won't know the difference and if somebody does it'll be sheer gravy and they'll have been truly entertained either way instead of hanging around the yard or up in their room hating you prematurely since you won't have done anything horribly mean yet except keeping them from the darker joys it's unforgivable the latter so don't blame me if you won't take this advice and the family breaks up and your children grow old and blind in front of a TV set seeing movies you wouldn't let them see when they were young