Read She Walks in Beauty: A Woman's Journey Through Poems for Free Online

married? Should I be good?
    Astound the girl next door with my velvet suit and faustus hood?
    Don’t take her to movies but to cemeteries
    tell all about werewolf bathtubs and forked clarinets
    then desire her and kiss her and all the preliminaries
    and she going just so far and I understanding why
    not getting angry saying You must feel! It’s beautiful to feel!
    Instead take her in my arms lean against an old crooked tombstone
    and woo her the entire night the constellations in the sky—
    When she introduces me to her parents
    back straightened, hair finally combed, strangled by a tie,
    should I sit knees together on their 3rd degree sofa
    and not ask Where’s the bathroom?
    How else to feel other than I am,
    often thinking Flash Gordon soap—
    O how terrible it must be for a young man
    seated before a family and the family thinking
    We never saw him before! He wants our Mary Lou!
    After tea and homemade cookies they ask What do you do for a living?
    Should I tell them? Would they like me then?
    Say All right get married, we’re losing a daughter
    but we’re gaining a son—
    And should I then ask Where’s the bathroom?
    O God, and the wedding! All her family and her friends
    and only a handful of mine all scroungy and bearded
    just wait to get at the drinks and food—
    And the priest! he looking at me as if I masturbated
    asking me Do you take this woman for your lawful wedded wife?
    And I trembling what to say say Pie Glue!
    I kiss the bride all those corny men slapping me on the back
    She’s all yours, boy! Ha-ha-ha!
    And in their eyes you could see some obscene honeymoon going
    on—
    Then all that absurd rice and clanky cans and shoes
    Niagara Falls! Hordes of us! Husbands! Wives! Flowers!
    Chocolates!
    All streaming into cozy hotels
    All going to do the same thing tonight
    The indifferent clerk he knowing what was going to happen
    The lobby zombies they knowing what
    The whistling elevator man he knowing
    The winking bellboy knowing
    Everybody knowing! I’d be almost inclined not to do anything!
    Stay up all night! Stare that hotel clerk in the eye!
    Screaming: I deny honeymoon! I deny honeymoon!
    running rampant into those almost climactic suites
    yelling Radio belly! Cat shovel!
    O I’d live in Niagara forever! in a dark cave beneath the Falls
    I’d sit there the Mad Honeymooner
    devising ways to break marriages, a scourge of bigamy
    a saint of divorce—
    But I should get married I should be good
    How nice it’d be to come home to her
    and sit by the fireplace and she in the kitchen
    aproned young and lovely wanting my baby
    and so happy about me she burns the roast beef
    and comes crying to me and I get up from my big papa chair
    saying Christmas teeth! Radiant brains! Apple deaf!
    God what a husband I’d make! Yes, I should get married!
    So much to do! like sneaking into Mr. Jones’ house late at night
    and cover his golf clubs with 1920 Norwegian books
    Like hanging a picture of Rimbaud on the lawnmower
    like pasting Tannu Tuva postage stamps all over the picket fence
    like when Mrs Kindhead comes to collect for the Community Chest
    grab her and tell her There are unfavorable omens in the sky!
    And when the mayor comes to get my vote tell him
    When are you going to stop people killing whales!
    And when the milkman comes leave him a note in the bottle
    Penguin dust, bring me penguin dust, I want penguin dust—
    Yet if I should get married and it’s Connecticut and snow
    and she gives birth to a child and I am sleepless, worn,
    up for nights, head bowed against a quiet window, the past behind me,
    finding myself in the most common of situations a trembling man
    knowledged with responsibility not twig-smear nor Roman coin
    soup—
    O what would that be like!
    Surely I’d give it for a nipple a rubber Tacitus
    For a rattle a bag of broken Bach records
    Tack Della Francesca all over its crib
    Sew the Greek alphabet on its bib
    And