And so the police ask for the house of the hen, and there take themselves to the monotony of the chicken perch, where it is that their term of earth is spent, their badges tarnishing, their pistols rusting …
And in the moonlight the smell of hay and stars …
Through Dream and Suppertime
FOR W. C. W.
The man’s head is a vehicle … No no, let it sleep.
It has hair growing from its trouble. Hair grows out of the idea of death. The head is death with hair upon it. Also it is a vehicle upon which it is itself to ride through dream and suppertime.
Do you see how the china is full of intestinal matter?
Soon, too soon, the soft mouth of the worm is eating the idea of itself …
Ape
You haven’t finished your ape, said mother to father, who had monkey hair and blood on his whiskers.
I’ve had enough monkey, cried father.
You didn’t eat the hands, and I went to all the trouble to make onion rings for its fingers, said mother.
I’ll just nibble on its forehead, and then I’ve had enough, said father.
I stuffed its nose with garlic, just like you like it, said mother.
Why don’t you have the butcher cut these apes up? You lay the whole thing on the table every night; the same fractured skull, the same singed fur; like someone who died horribly. These aren’t dinners, these are postmortem dissections.
Try a piece of its gum, I’ve stuffed its mouth with bread, said mother.
Ugh, it looks like a mouth full of vomit. How can I bite into its cheek with bread spilling out of its mouth? cried father.
Break one of the ears off, they’re so crispy, said mother.
I wish to hell you’d put underpants on these apes; even a jockstrap, screamed father.
Father, how dare you insinuate that I see the ape as anything more than simple meat, screamed mother.
Well, what’s with this ribbon tied in a bow on its privates? screamed father.
Are you saying that I am in love with this vicious creature? That I would submit my female opening to this brute? That after we had love on the kitchen floor I would put him in the oven, after breaking his head with a frying pan; and then serve him to my husband, that my husband might eat the evidence of my infidelity … ?
I’m just saying that I’m damn sick of ape every night, cried father.
The Father of Toads
A man had just delivered a toad from his wife’s armpit. He held it by its legs and spanked it.
Do you love it? said his wife.
It’s our child, isn’t it?
Does that mean you can’t love it? she said.
It’s hard enough to love a toad, but when it turns out to be your own son then revulsion is without any tender inhibition, he said.
Do you mean you would not like to call it George Jr.? she said.
But we’ve already called the other toad that, he said.
Well, perhaps we could call the other one George Sr., she said.
But I am George Sr., he said.
Well, perhaps if you hid in the attic, so that no one needed to call you anything, there would be no difficulty in calling both of them George, she said.
Yes, if no one talks to me, then what need have I for a name? he said.
No, no one will talk to you for the rest of your life. And when we bury you we shall put Father of Toads on your tombstone.
The Ox
There was once a woman whose father over the years had become an ox.
She would hear him alone at night lowing in his room.
It was one day when she looked up into his face that she suddenly noticed the ox.
She cried, you’re an ox!
And he began to moo with his great pink tongue hanging out of his mouth.
He would stand over his newspaper, turning the pages with his tongue, while he evacuated on the rug.
When this was brought to his attention he would low with sorrow, and slowly climb the stairs to his room, and there spend the night in mournful lowing.
A Performance at Hog Theater
There was once a hog theater where hogs performed as men, had men been hogs.
One hog said, I will be a hog in a field which has found a mouse which is being eaten by the same hog which is in the field and which has found the mouse, which I am performing as my contribution to the performer’s art.
Oh let’s just be hogs, cried an old hog.
And so the hogs streamed out of the theater crying, only hogs, only hogs …
Toward the Writing
If you wish to write something of value you will get yourself a mouse which has died of some dreadful disease.
… Lingering long in bed with a brave smile, marred only by its rodent’s teeth, which for love you had ceased to see; or seeing, loved the more as a nakedness …
You had to say, please do not smile, I bear your death easier than my will to humiliate.
Do not be brave nor give me cheer.
Bury your ugly face in your pillow and weep for yourself. Think of the springtime and of the newly risen; the soft greens of the sexual beckoning …
Oh Mimi, weep into your pillow, I cannot bear your face!
Soon then, when grief has turned to art, you take the mouse to the writing table, and dip its rodent’s tail into the ink …
… But you will need many mice and many prayers … And still the writing will wait, for the ritual is long …
Antimatter
On the other side of a mirror there’s an inverse world, where the insane go sane; where bones climb out of the earth and recede to the first slime of love.
And in the evening the sun is just rising.
Lovers cry because they are a day younger, and soon childhood robs them of their pleasure.
In such a world there is much sadness which, of course, is joy …
Conjugal
A man is bending his wife. He is bending her around something that she has bent herself around. She is around it, bent as he has bent her.
He is convincing her. It is all so private.
He is bending her around the bedpost. No, he is bending her around the tripod of his camera.
It is as if he teaches her to swim. As if he teaches acrobatics. As if he could form her into something wet that he delivers out of one life into another.
And it is such a private thing the thing they do.
He is forming her into the wallpaper. He is smoothing her down into the flowers there. He is finding her nipples there. And he is kissing her pubis there.
He climbs into the wallpaper among the flowers. And his buttocks move in and out of the wall.
The Dainty One
I had remained in bed longer than it usually takes one’s fatigue to drain off.
Very often there is a song one must sing the whole night through; it repeats, and there is no stopping it. One beats it out with one’s canine teeth, or one’s toes. It is a musical tic.
I have heard it said that it is a message that one dares not hear. In the dark the unconscious is a dangerous thing. I prefer “Melancholy Baby” to what else I might hear. And so I listen all night to “Melancholy Baby,” gnashing each syllable with my teeth.
One feels that things are about to change. I have felt this all my life. It is a readiness that robs every act of meaning, making every situation obsolete, putting the present into the past.
A man is a series of objects placed in a box, the sound of a train, the sounds of his own liquids trickling through the intimate brooks of his body, a certain number of bones, tree shadows that fall through the flesh as nerve patterns, or blood vessels; pourings, exchanges, disconnections …
Improvisation mounted in a piece of meat, lying abed in the night. “Melancholy Baby” over and over. Slowed. Out of time … Each syllable again and again …
The Further Adventures of Martha George
FOR ROBERT BLY
There was a woman named Martha George
was a radio. She turned it on with her left
nipple. A voice came out from between her
breasts: We now present the adventures of
Martha George. As you remember
in our last episode Martha had
been fiddling with her breasts —
We find her now fiddling with
her breasts. She turns her left
nipple. She’s afraid it might come
off. But instead, a voice comes out
from between her breasts: We
now present the fur-
ther adventures of
Martha George …
The Toy-Maker
A toy-maker made a toy wife and a toy child. He made a toy house and some toy years.
He made a getting-old toy, and he made a dying toy.
The toy-maker made a toy heaven and a toy god.
But, best of all, he liked making toy shit.
V
from The Intuitive Journey 1976
The Terrible Angel
In a nursery a mother can’t get her baby out of its cradle. The baby it has turned to wood, it has become part of its own cradle.
The mother, she cries, tilting, one foot raised, as if in flight for the front door, just hearing her husband’s car in the driveway; but can’t, the carpet holds her …
Her husband, he hears her, he wants to rush to her, but can’t, the door of the car won’t open …
The wife, she no longer calls, she has been taken into the carpet, and is part of it; a piece of carpet in the shape of a woman tilted, one foot raised as if to flight.
The husband, he no longer struggles toward his wife. As if he sleeps he has been drawn into the seat of his car; a man sculptured in upholstery.
In the nursery the wooden baby stares with wooden eyes into the last red of the setting sun, even as the darkness that forms in the east begins to join the shadows of the house; the darkness that rises out of the cellar, seeping out from under furniture, oozing from the cracks in the floor … The shadow that suddenly collects in the corner of the nursery like the presence of something that was always there …
How Things Are Turning Out
FOR MICHAEL CUDDIHY
A man registers some pigeons at a hotel. They fly up to their rooms. He’s not sure that his mind doesn’t fly with them …
He asks the desk clerk if everything seems all right. He would like to know if the smoke coming out of his cigarette is real, or something the management has had painted on the wall?
The desk clerk has turned his back and is sorting the mail.
Sir … , says the man.
But the desk clerk continues to arrange the mail.
Sir, would you look this way for a moment?
I can hear you, I’m just sorting the mail.
I wanted you to notice the smoke of my cigarette … Since the pigeons flew up to their rooms … You never know about the future, I mean how things will finally turn out … Please, could you check my smoke … ?
When the desk clerk turns his face is covered with hair, like the back of his head; and the front of his body is like the back of his body.
Where is your front?
My twin brother has the fronts; I was born with two backs … I always got the spankings … But why regret the past?
That’s good philosophy …
My best subject.
… Tell me, is everything turning out all right?
So far so good …
Counting Sheep
A scientist has a test tube full of sheep. He wonders if he should try to shrink a pasture for them.
They are like grains of rice.
He wonders if it is possible to shrink something out of existence.
He wonders if the sheep are aware of their tininess, if they have any sense of scale. Perhaps they just think the test tube is a glass barn …
He wonders what he should do with them; they certainly have less meat and wool than ordinary sheep. Has he reduced their commercial value?
He wonders if they could be used as a substitute for rice, a sort of woolly rice …
He wonders if he just shouldn’t rub them into a red paste between his fingers.
He wonders if they’re breeding, or if any of them have died.
He puts them under a microscope and falls asleep counting them …
The Abyss
A dining room floats out into space …
On earth a cook with a large ham turns back. She calls across the abyss to the living room where people are waiting for dinner, sirs and ladies, I can’t get the ham into the dining room …
Has the Cook suddenly developed a sense of humor?!
… I don’t think she’s so funny.
Sirs and ladies, I can’t get the ham into the dining room … Shall I try the split pea soup? Maybe I could get some bread in … ? I’ll try …
Just get the food on the table, and stop trying to be funny!
… I don’t think she’s so funny.
No no, I didn’t mean she was successful, I meant she was trying to be funny.
Well, that’s something, lots of cooks won’t even try …
Sirs and ladies, I can’t even get the bread into the dining room. Perhaps I could slip a few olives in … ? I’ll try …
What in hell is she trying to pull?! — Olives?! — She’ll try to slip a few olives in?! You’d better just cut the excuses, and get the dinner on the table!
Sirs and ladies, I can’t find the dining room; I don’t think it’s in the house.
… Not in the house?! Have you ever heard of anything so silly?
She’s certainly not clever, but she is trying, you’ve got to give her that.
But she wasn’t hired to entertain us.
… Do you really think she is entertaining?
No no, I didn’t mean she was entertaining, but for some odd reason she’s trying to be. Perhaps she wants a raise … ?
Well, at least that’s more than most cooks’ll do, they all want raises; but how many of them really try to be entertaining?
Sirs and ladies, what shall I do … ?
Try singing; so far your performance is not very good!
… Can she sing?
Who knows? She’s tried everything else, we might as well hear her sing …
The Feet of the Fat Man
The fat man is asked why he’s so fat.
He claims to be only as fat as he needs to be; he doesn’t think he’s overdoing it …
How does one measure? Just being fat seems too much. On the other hand, accepting that there are fat people, how can one tell when a fat man is too fat?
Yet, this man is so fat that his head suddenly slips down into his neck. His face looks up out of his neck. He says, what do you think, do you think I’m overdoing it?
Now his shoulders and chest are slipping down into his stomach and hips — oh my God, he’s beginning to fold down like porridge into his thighs!
He’s definitely too fat, his bones won’t support it.
God, he’s going into his calves! His ankles are beginning to bulge.
When he finishes he’s only a couple of feet all swollen out of shape.
In one of the feet where the ankle should start is his face. He says, what do you think, do you think I’m overdoing it?
We look into the other foot just to make sure he doesn’t have another face; and we are pleasantly surprised to see hair, the foot is full of hair; which we take to be the other half of his head, the back half …
The Neighborhood Dog
A neighborhood dog is climbing up the side of a house.
I don’t like to see that, I don’t like to see a dog like that, says someone passing in the neighborhood.
The dog seems to be making for that 2nd story window. Maybe he wants to get his paws on the sill; he may want to hang there and rest; his tongue throbbing from his open mouth.
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br /> Yet, in the room attached to that window (the one just mentioned) a woman is looking at a cedar box; this is of course where she keeps her hatchet: in that same box, the one in this room, the one she is looking at.
The Tunnel Page 6
