Read Poems 1959-2009 for Free Online

Poem
,
    From the
Book of Kills
.
    The antlered heads are mounted weeping all around the walls.
    John F. Kennedy is mounted weeping on the wall.
    His weeping brother Robert weeps nearby.
    Martin Luther King, at bay in Memphis, exhausted, starts to cry.
    His antlered head is mounted weeping on the wall.
    Too much is almost enough, for crying out loud!
    Bobby Kennedy announces to a nighttime crowd
    That King has died, and then quotes Aeschylus, and then is killed.
    Kill kill kill kills, appalls,
    The American trophies covered in tears that deck the American halls.
    Â 
FROM NIJINSKY’S DIARY
    And when the doctor told me that I could have died.
    And when I climbed up from the subway to the day outside.
    White summer clouds were boiling in the trees.
    I felt like falling to my knees.
    Stand clear of the closing doors, please! Stand clear of the closing doors, please!
    And when the camel knelt to let me mount it.
    Winged angels knelt in silhouette
    To worship at the altar made of blue
    That the sun was fastened to.
    It all came down to you. It all comes down to you.
    In New York City “kneeling” buses kneel for the disabled.
    My camel kneels. We fly into the desert.
    I flee in terror to my tranquilizer the Sahara.
    I stroll slowly down sweet Broadway.
    It is as you say. We are here to pray.
    Â 
VIOLIN
    I often go to bed with a book
    And immediately turn out the light.
    I wake in the morning and brush and dress and go to the desk and write.
    I always put my arm in the right sleeve before I slip into the left.
    I always put on my left shoe first and then I put on the right.
    I happen right now
    To be walking the dogs in the dangerous park at night,
    Which is dangerous, which I do not like,
    But I am delighted, my dog walk is a delight.
    I am right-handed but mostly I am not thinking.
    (CHORUS)
    A man can go to sleep one night and never wake up that he knows of.
    A man can walk down a Baghdad street and never walk another drop.
    A man can be at his publisher’s and drop dead on the way to the men’s room.
    A poet can develop frontotemporal dementia.
    A flavorful man can, and then he is not.
    The call girls who came to our separate rooms were actually lovely.
    Weren’t they shocked that their customers were so illegally young?
    Mine gently asked me what I wanted to do. Sin is Behovely.
    Just then the phone rang—
    Her friend checking if she was safe with the young Rambo, Rimbaud.
    I am pursuing you, life, to the ends of the earth across a Sahara of tablecloth.
    I look around the restaurant for breath.
    I stuff my ears to sail past the siren song of the rocks.
    The violin of your eyes
    Is listening gently.
    Â 
NECTAR
    A rapist’s kisses tear the leaves off.
    Aiuto!
    The world looks so white on the white pillow.
    I think I know you. I don’t think so.
    Winter is wearing summer but it wants to undress for you, Fred.
    Oh my God. Takes off the lovely summer frock
    And lies down on the bed naked
    Freezing white, so we can make death.
    Joel and I were having lunch at Fred’s,
    The restaurant on the ninth floor of Barneys
    Where Joel likes to eat when he is in New York,
    Who had just landed, and when I ask him what astonishment
    He is carrying around with him this time,
    He takes out of his jacket pocket
    A beige
pochette
,
    And out pops a stupefying diamond ring I know from Paris.
    It opens its big eye.
    It went nonstop to Florida in his pocket on the plane.
    Now returns with a stop in Manhattan to the JAR safe, place Vendôme.
    I have to try it on.
    It is incredible what travels
    Unprotected in that pocket through the time zones.
    I look down at my finger
    And field-trip an alternate universe.
    Don’t I know you? I don’t think so. It is not for sale.
    Diane von Furstenberg in those sweet bygone days
    Got it in her head I had to meet her friend
    The jeweler to the stars.
    Two hummingbirds hummed across the pont des Arts,
    And through the cour du Louvre, to Joel’s JAR.
    At her old