The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills Read Online Free

monkey-rhyme,
    climb out through the ceiling
    breaking TV antennas and
    the dull howl of canned laughter,
    canned humor, canned death;
    idle, idle in this forest,
    calla lilies, grass, stone,
    all nighttime level peace
    of no bombers or faces,
    and I dream the stone dream,
    the grass dream,
    the river running through my
    fingerbones
    one hundred and fifty years away,
    leaving shots of grit and gold
    and radium,
    lifted and turned
    by dizzied fish
    and dropped,
    raising flecks of sand
    in my sleep…
    The owl spits his coffee,
    my monkeys chit the gibberish plan,
    and my walls,
    my walls help endure the seizing.
     

II
     
     

I dreamed I drank an Arrow shirt
and stole a broken
pail
     

all-yellow flowers
     
     
    through the venetian blinds I saw a fat man in a brown coat
    (with a head I can only describe as like a marshmallow)
    drag the casket from the hearse: it was battleship gray
    with all-yellow flowers.
    they put it on a roller that was hidden in purple drape
    and the marshmallow-man and one pin-crisp bloodless woman
    walked for him up the incline…and!—
    gore-bell-horror-sheer-sheen-world-ending-moment!—
    almost losing IT there, once—
    I could see the body rolling out
    like one loose dice in a losing game—the arms waving
    windmills and legs kicking autumn footballs.
     
 
    they made it into the church
    and I remained outside
    opening my brain to living sunlight.
     
 
    in the room with me she was singing and rolling her
    long golden hair. (this is true Arturo, and that is what
    makes it so simple.)
    “I just saw them take in a body,”
    I fashioned to her.
     
 
    it’s autumn, it’s trees, it’s telephone wires,
    and she sings some song I can’t understand, some High Mass
    of Life.
     
 
    she went on singing but I wanted to die
    I wanted yellow flowers like her golden hair
    I wanted yellow-singing and the sun.
    this is true, and that is what makes it so strange:
    I wanted to be opened and untangled, and
    tossed away.
     

what seems to be the trouble, gentlemen?
     
     
    the service was bad
    and the bellboy kept bringing in towels
    at the wrong moment.
    drunk, I finally clubbed him along
    the side of the head.
    he was a little man and he fell
    like an October leaf,
    quite done,
    and when the fuzz came up
    I had the sofa in front of the door
    and the chain on,
    the 2nd movement of Brahms’ First Symphony
    and had my hand halfway up the ass
    of a broad old enough to be my grandmother
    and they broke the god damned door,
    pushed the sofa aside;
    I slapped the screaming chippy
    and turned and asked,
    what seems to be the trouble, gentlemen?
    and some young kid who had never shaved
    brought his stick down against my head
    and in the morning I was in the prison ward
    chained to my bed
    and it was hot,
    the sweat coming down through the white
    senseless sheet,
    and they asked all sorts of silly questions
    and I knew I’d be late for work,
    which worried me immensely.
     

spring swan
     
     
    swans die in the Spring too
    and there it floated
    dead on a Sunday
    sideways
    circling in current
    and I walked to the rotunda
    and overhead
    gods in chariots
    dogs, women
    circled,
    and death
    ran down my throat
    like a mouse,
    and I heard the people coming
    with their picnic bags
    and laughter,
    and I felt guilty
    for the swan
    as if death
    were a thing of shame
    and like a fool
    I walked away
    and left them
    my beautiful swan.
     

remains
     
     
    things are good as I am not dead yet
    and the rats move in the beercans,
    the papersacks shuffle like small dogs,
    and her photographs are stuck onto a painting
    by a dead German and she too is dead
    and it took 14 years to know her
    and if they give me another 14
    I will know her yet…
    her photos stuck over the glass
    neither move nor speak,
    but I even have her voice on tape,
    and she speaks some evenings,
    her again
    so real she laughs
    says the thousand things,
    the one thing I always ignored;
    this will never leave me:
    that I had love
    and love died;
    a photo