The Complete Poems of A R Ammons, Volume 2
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desert: burn the insides of your head out: want
to get away from pollution, but there’s no nearest hospital:
810try southern California, look out for the rattlesnakes:
Florida, hurricanes: Vermont, timothy in August and
the winter dreadful: well, well: it looks as if
paradise was built elsewhere: find a nice island, it’s
waterless and fifty minutes by launch to the mainland:
815had a lot of aggravation: contradictions going by in
arpeggios, obbligatos, cadenzas, droves: listen
to the swarm: but I don’t care; I still know to
a hair what my desire is: contrarieties, swift and
heavy confluences, “whole” situations good and bad:
820get a little crust: the defenseless are so generous
and kind: paint your mean streak: nothing banishes
fear like meanness: just a touch: a little whatfor:
aggressive is a nice adjective for up-and-coming young
men: but the noun is a little heartless: aggressive
825means resistant to wilting and withering under trying
_________
conditions: means willing to figure out ways to prevent
failure: means right in there: (get your poetical
omnibus of cozy statements and friendly feelings,
several dollars and nothing taxing): what animals
830we are, Men Stinking: we can’t fix our attention on
ourselves and stay sober: fellow in his big car
yesterday, drove up to the intersection and, bloop,
emptied his ashtray in the middle of the street: well,
if one cannot improve things, one must improve one’s
835view of things: but one must keep the improvement
slight, so one’s views will not get too filthy with reality:
if one announced a deep or high improvement one would be
classified: though trash collector (lingo, junk talk,
street bitch) somewhat extraordinaire (I deal in pretty
840high-level stuff) (I mean there are a lot of streets
I haven’t been in) I don’t make much of a good job
of it, nothing thorough or scientific, I just wallow
around like a caddis fly larva and let any loose
bit stick to me and my glue-like interest: I was
845brought up on “I ain’t got nary’un” instead of “I
don’t have one”: but I (do) don’t deal with lingo in
its fresh, dough-like origins but in its cast-offs,
worn-outs, stiff-and-thins, the used-up literary:
I like that because who would want to fool around
850with anything live: just when words, all glare and
no energy, are cascading out of vital curvatures, I
go about and pick them up (seine them out) tinny
_________
mementos: go to the ocean always at the same time, the
ocean will always be different: I used to think there
855was something ahead of me, but now I think there is
nothing behind me: the noise level here is bel canto:
several children yelling, crying, agreeing and
disagreeing: a dull plane burring: the dog across
the street yapping furiously: cars burning through
860the air, splitting, the tires thubbing the cracks in
the concrete: the record-player of the boy-house right
behind us at record level: cars rodding off from the
intersection or screeching off or screeching to a stop:
dishes rattling: water frying through the pipes: the
865typewriter clacking: that’s some of it at the moment:
it subsides, it rises, but it never goes away: Edison
was half-lucky when he got his ears pulled and couldn’t
half hear thereafter: now, a man is yelling, hey, hey,
and a big-truck’s motor has started: the dog is at
870his high-excitement level, yipping: Royall Drive in
Winston-Salem was so quiet by comparison, maybe a car
an hour, the dogs loose, at least (unleashed) and nosing
quiet: Hanshaw, too, is better than this: anything is:
pile on that the stagnant, humid air, rated “unhealthy”
875and the hanging cloudcover, two days old and scheduled
to hold: there are a number of other conditions
that promise no improvement: I wonder how people get
by and what they could want enough to give them the
strength to get by: whatever it is, I must be missing it:
_________
880this was supposed to be Judge the Fucking Photography
Contest Day but the rains, by the beautiful sea,
continued, and it was deemed better not to show one’s
photos than to get them rainacid etched: so I made it Get
the Fucking Car Serviced Day and Try to Figure Out
885Why the Fucking Accelerator Sticks: the importance
of a bright spot has not been grossly exaggerated:
there at the service station were the verbal
artifacts hanging on the wall, the appropriate
summation or penates of the place: “I know that you
890believe you understand what you think I said but
I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not
what I meant”: or “We’re too lazy to work and too
nervous to steal,” (that’s a literary steal) or, “As you
slide down the banister, etc. splinters the wrong, etc.”
895or, “Labor Charges—Per hour, $10.00; If you watch,
$12.50; If you help, $15.00; If you do the job,
$20.00”: this has not been a good year for summers:
as long as I can lay my hand to it, I will try to
assuage the problem: live living it up down: shake
900a tower (take a shower): as we were driving to the mainland
this afternoon, the accelerator kept sticking at fifty while
I was braking and shifting into neutral and roaring:
how scary! an unturnoffable car! unslowdownable!
but then when we got to Mary’s, Bob fixed it for me:
905greased the works, put the return spring in a tighter
notch: there was so much Saturday traffic, stacked up,
_________
I couldn’t imagine how I’d get back over the bridge:
we came home via the toll, Longport Bridge: how sweet
it was, to be in charge of idling, though the bridge opened:
910the weather’s so rainy and stormy you can’t get your
astronauts up: birds can’t fly dry: worms are out of
their holes: the cookies are bewithered with dew:
the towels are sticky, sour, and repulsive: every
dainty pussy’s indoors: this is Aren’t There a Lot of
915Those Fucking Little Raindrops Today Day (7-13):
if I touch your balls, you will never forget me: if
I nip your clit, I will forever appear as an imagination
in your thoughts: if I only touch the fringe of the
hairy aura around your balls, so they shrink and,
920crinkling, cringe, a ghostly spook will be on you,
haunting: or if I describe with the lightness of
a mind’s lineation the expanded folding labia of
your whompus, you will bear forever the start of a
nearly actual surprise: if I mark you with a touchous
925incision in your tenderest parts, and meanwhile hold
you with my probing eyes, you will never give my
presence up, a dwelling about you: you will wonder
& dream: you will search my lines for my line: in
your deepest moment with another, I will appear and,<
br />
930possessing you, shoo you over the hills, the agony
and the glide: but since I don’t need to ravish
more than a million, don’t take it too seriously:
skirmishes: splinters: after a while, depression depresses:
_________
one morning you see on a bright concrete
935corner a stack of dog-do and you think, that must
be quite a pooch, but the sun bakes it and the next
morning the pooch seems smaller until one morning the
do is so tight, dry, and trivial the pooch is a poodle:
sum & tendency: (7-19): the prettiest day invited
940thousands of shoobies to come to the beach, every
parking place car-solid, but early afternoon has
turned cloudy, windy, cooler, few raindrops, and the
shoobies are packing up their boxes, beach chairs,
umbrellas, etc. and heading back for the mainland:
945“That’s the way it goes” is the cheerful summary:
have fun: what, you mean toss the cares and worries
like a beachball, the way the cares and worries toss
us like a beachball! the very idea of having fun!
try to imagine it, just dropping the fears and severe
950entertainments and letting the self sing with loss of
caution! sing into something like the delightful
terror of the salt-and-pepper shaker, scrambler or
tilt-a-whirl: what a security, to be able to taunt
terror: what a stability that hungers for disaster,
955inferno, earthquake as no more than a sweet unsettling
while I, contrariwise, shaking dream on sweet ease:
oh for a security that thinks in years: oh for rock
underfoot: well, that is my pitiful, self-pitying
problem: I will spare you the details: or any
960realization of languishing anguish: just remember
_________
with air-conditioned cars the unnatural air can make
you think unnaturally: if you have a dog or baby in
the car, you must remember if you leave the car to roll
down the windows and let the warm air in: for the
965closed windows that protected your coolness will hold
heat when the cooler stops: think unnaturally right:
disaster is natural: look at my face: some concession
to gravity: I knew this lady: she did everything for
her husband: she did everything for her children:
970she said, sit down to the table: she had the most
beautiful voice, I mean as to tone and range and before
breakfast cooking stuff up: now, she bubbles belching
in terror and can’t keep her tongue in: I can’t stand
pretty beauty anymore: I can’t stand any beauty that
975doesn’t sit and think her the most beautiful person
living: disaster is natural: I saw the legless
ward at the VA lots of times, diabetes gangrene
amputations, old boys: each carried a bottle of urine
under his wheelchair with a tube: like gas for the
980motor: and just about everyone slouched over and
slept as deep as possible: there was the young
veteran, though: he burned up the halls and
shot the corners on one wheel: he had it down to
nothing how much breeze he could make of speed: oh,
985the loft is high and rid of such: up in the sways,
nobody is holding on to keep from falling out of his
bed: farther along we’ll understand why: it is not,
_________
finally, perhaps, ingratitude: it is not, finally,
not celebration: it is that we do not understand,
990now: it is that we cannot see beauty all the way
through: it is that we think we would be justified
in wanting it another way, permanent joy: a land
imagined where love would never be pulled away from
love: where mothers and fathers would know beatitude
995and touch us with their unconditioned smiles: where
tenderness would be so high it would transmit
light: and love of lovers would be a continual
music, reconciliations like breeze music: the rivers would
be flowing light and trees would sway with the fruit of
1000light: we do not understand why a place like this
would yield out no design: then, should our beauty
be the dream of the place and have nothing to do with
actual fellows: or should our beauty find itself
somehow perfect in the harelip, the crazy fascination
1005of cross-eyes or in the wild song of the cancer-mad:
our beauty, our beauty: on what shoal or shelf, ledge
or cloud will it lie down, dwelling beyond rust and moth,
so beyond it will know the worm and have no cognizance
thereof: the famous don’t care for change, except
1010the change that nudges them to greater fame: you can beat
up on the ocean but not beat it up: you can beat it
up a little, you can splash or scrinch it: low tide
exposes the flank of the jetty, four strata to view:
lowest, black mussels: next, barnacles: next, seaweed:
_________
1015then, sun country, naked: though the strata are
discernible, they are not insistent: here and there
barnacles lock under a boulder higher than seaweed:
and here and there seaweed clumps right down into the
barnacle bed: orders that permit variety (and adjustment)
1020are sort of casual, optimum dispositions: exactly the
way my poem is or means to be: sometimes a life has so
much thrust and verve, it has to be killed back and
back, until killing back becomes a way of doing things,
and then the verve becomes so great only killing ends
1025it: so, depression is often the sign of too much life,
but not coming through: the withering is the “show”
that holds life in: when it is a life one thinks should
not come through, then it is terribly troublesome, and
one must find ways, bowling or pooling, that will let
1030enough through to keep the rest in: then, depression can
be increased by the knowledge of life lost: it is not
a tangle susceptible to easy untangling, but the most
reliable, partial untangling is to do something physical:
do not languish, weakening with the loss and holding in:
1035getting something out, even if not in the form it desired
release in, will often permit the grip to ease and the
flow, a slow flow, to move: Abby knows a lot but I
doubt she knows much about this: consult your physician:
I say do something physical even when I know that is
1040absolutely the hardest thing to do: but force yourself:
make a daily schedule, or weekly, that includes several
_________
things, walks, showers, hangings-loose, hair combings,
nail cleanings, and then into all the other things:
showers are excellent because depressed people let
1045themselves get dirty and that depresses them: even if
you get a sniffle or two, even a cold, at first, begin
a regime of showers: touch yourself here and there
afterwards with a dab of powder or cologne: strike a
figure or two before the mirror: the tension will
1050sometimes erase wrinkles or re-arrange them: I met
a man this year who has suffered from the sharp
pains of gas for ten y
ears, and he didn’t know what I
told him, that you can take a single swallow of water
and dislodge the bubble enough to stop the pain: that
1055was good news to him, something I discovered: but, of
course, the water doesn’t get rid of the bubble: I’ve
found that walking about a bit will sometimes loosen
the bind enough to free the bubble: also, slowly
twisting the body from side to side will sometimes bring
1060relief: if you’ve never experienced that uncomfortable
tightness with the splinters of pain, you won’t realize
how important this message is: tuck it away in the
wrinkles, grooves, or furrows of your ready remedies:
the message, not the tightness: I’m really interested
1065in you: I mean I think I’m more interested in you than
you are in me: maybe I’m interested in you because I
want you to be interested in me: or maybe I’m just
interested in having you think of me as someone
_________
interested in you: though I’ve never met you, I’ll say
1070this, my interest in you is no vaguer than my knowledge
of you: featherless biped, naked ape: one of us: all
the gulls with nothing chasing the gull with something:
a likely story: a review came today (which is, by the