Read Poems 1959-2009 for Free Online Page B

ocean this far inland.
    We are in France. We are in Italy. We are in England. We are in heaven.
    Lightning with a noose around its neck, feet on a cloud,
    Drops into space, feet kicking, neck broken.
    The parachute pops open … a red flower:
    Plus ne suis ce que j’ai été,
    Et plus ne saurais jamais l’être.
    Mon beau printemps et mon été
    Ont fait le saut par la fenêtre.
    Â 
DICK AND FRED
    His dick is ticking …
    Tick tick tick tick …
    The bomb looks for blonde.
    It smiles like a dog.
    Werner Muensterberger liked to say to his patients
    A stiff prick has no conscience …
    Tick tick tick tick …
    Fred Astaire in a tuxedo is doing a blind man with a white cane.
    He is looking for blonde.
    He looks for brunette.
    He licks to play golf.
    A bomb is blind.
    There was a king.
    His name was King Wow.
    Anyhow,
    In the kingdom of Ebola,
    It was on his mind
    Constantly. Be kind,
    King, be a kind king.
    The oceans rose.
    About the queen his mother, Gertrude.
    Shit with a cunt!
    The prince was blunt.
    Shit with a cunt.
    Cunt with a dick!
    Judith slew Holofernes.
    Cut his head off.
    Slew slime.
    Cunt with a dick
    Cut the monster’s head off.
    Holofernes’ startled head farts blood
    And falls off.
    Man delights not me; no, nor woman neither.
    Viagra has caused blindness
    In thirty-eight impotent men
    Who paid for their erections with their eyes.
    One man in his eighties took the pill
    For the first time and went blind
    When his penis started to rise
    For the first time in years.
    Imagine his double surprise!
    The joyous, fastidious, perfectionist
    Fred Astaire flies!
    Astaire,
    Debonair,
    Tap-dances the monomania and mania
    Of Napoleon Bonaparte’s tiny penis, the up.
    Fred flies, fappingly, bappingly,
    Tick-tick-tick-tick-tappingly,
    That athletic nonchalance that Fred Astaire defined.
    A penis in a tuxedo is flying all over the place
    With the white cane of the blind!
    Fred is dancing on a tilting dance floor on the ocean floor
    In a sunken ocean liner
    In 1934—lighter than air!—Fred Astaire!—
    In the depths of the Great Depression.
    White people froze the world markets to a great whiteness.
    The world will end tomorrow.
    They walk around like penguins in their tuxedos.
    The planet is frozen.
    Â 
NEW YEAR’S DAY, 2004
    It used to be called the Mayfair.
    Leonardo Mondadori used to stay there.
    The lobby was the bar.
    Fancy Italians were on display.
    They sat in the lobby for years.
    They seduced from the lavish armchairs.
    They told their driver and car to be waiting outside
    On their European cell phones.
    I was a Traveller then upon the moor.
    I walked directly through and down the three stairs.
    Their women were theirs.
    The Milanese women wore couture.
    They smoked cigarettes and smiled and did not blink.
    They were going to eat at Le Cirque.
    Who could have been kinder than Leonardo?
    It was a long time ago.
    Â 
THE ITALIAN GIRL
    Monsoon is over but it’s raining.
    The rain keeps coming down. It gets you down. It’s draining.
    The sticky heat in Singapore is really not that entertaining.
    The boutique hotel air-conditioning is aquaplaning.
    The rain stops just inside the door and the fashion show goes on.
    So they board the little tram at the zoo to do the “Night Safari”
    To experience wild animals who are separate but equal.
    The Chinese tour guide puts her finger to her lips: “Let us be quiet.”
    They hear the silence roar
    In humid Singapore.
    Nobody has hair like this Italian girl, in this humidity!
    She came three days ago to do the fashion show.
    She hadn’t cut her mane in weeks.
    She loves the hippos bathing in the perspiring water.
    Her curls are African lions exploding from a thicket.
    Â 
THE BIG GOLCONDA DIAMOND
    The Master Jeweler Joel Rosenthal, of the Bronx and Harvard,
    Is Joel Arthur Rosenthal of JAR, place Vendôme.
    The greatest jeweler of our time
    Has brought to Florida from his safe
    A big