I’ve seen you out there by the barn,
surreptitiously tucking away your meditative, image-driven lyrics
Between hard covers,
Thinking that absolves you, that it’s enough.
Well, no, goddammit.
I mean, really, I don’t have to explain it to you, do I?
God damn it, get out there and sell us some poetry!
Are you with us, or against us?
Since that first phone call
I’ve been somewhat confused, sure. But finally
things are back to normal, I think.
Anyway, I awoke this morning
then didn’t bother to get up.
The sun was shining anyway,
like always. So, I thought… after a while…
why bother
getting up?
I just lay there for a while,
thinking about nothing in particular,
and not wondering why things weren’t really going anywhere.
I don’t care about progress, anyway,
it doesn’t interest me. Never has,
even though I’ve somehow lived to see my seventies anyway. You see?
You don’t really have to try.
And really, why get up, after all is said and done?
Well, said, anyway.
Although, one gets hungry
eventually.
And the people at school aren’t really waiting for me to show up.
They already know where I am,
or suspect that I am
probably just lying in bed, or dead.
I.
Polytentacular, it grips
And rends to flinders passing ships.
II.
By covering itself with sand,
The Kraken poses as a Land—
And rises with an awful roar
When hapless sailors come ashore,
Till falling back, it drags them down
To whirl and spin, and fail, and drown.
III.
A dozen years have come and gone
Since when I held the watch at dawn
And through the water clear as air
Saw my own shadow riding there;
And stared into the glassy sea
As jelly eyes stared up at me.
Lily Lake
Loved her snake.
Leroy Lay
Stole it away.
Lucas Lops
Called the cops.
Laura Leaf
Chased the thief.
Lenny Loun
Knocked him down.
Lamia Lake
(That was the snake)
Swallowed him whole.
That’s all.
Down by the hill, or lower down,
The larks and lizards built a town.
They sang for fun and lay in the sun
And life was easy.
Seasons came, and came, and came,
And some were different, some the same;
The flowers grew, and blossomed, and blew,
And life was easy.
But a lark grows bold to stretch its wing
While a lizard sleeps and dreams of spring.
So the larks forgot – what the lizards did not –
That life is easy.
Then they went their ways, no one knew why,
Some to the desert and some to the sky,
With the turning spheres and the passing years,
Like life, so easy.
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Out of some place they came
Out of any place they came
And everywhere out of place
Making the whole world out of place:
Kicking monster, old-age monster,
Yaitse, eye monster, rolling monster.
And that’s not all, there are
Monsters nobody ever saw.
Old man said:
Pretty soon
They gonna monster us all up —
Pretty soon, mind,
Be no more people.
This is what awful Yeitse said
At the moccasin game,
That great destroyer,
That bad fucking news:
Woe! Woe!
You should have left it where it was!
I would have played it there,
You should have let it lie!
Striking the ground hugely
So that the tent-rags shook,
He guessed wrong,
Knowing someone had moved the stone.
Some of the people were
Always up to no good,
Making up evil games.
Pretty soon they made some monsters.
Oh, women, women!
What did you need so badly,
What midnight things did you practice?
Now what will become of your own children?
Oh, men, men!
What did you want so much,
Why did you never stop?
Now what will become of your own children?
She jumped up high but fell into a hole
As deep as night, as dark as low.
She climbed back out, it took all day.
By then her friends had gone away:
Some to build,
Some to earn,
Some to gather things to burn.
Some to work,
Some to school,
Some to follow the golden rule.
She laughed, and got on out of there.
But she kept the hole as a souvenir.
The first people came up, they say,
Up through four worlds,
Up through a hollow reed, they say,
Up to this world.
When they arrived
This world was dark
Then someone said
It will not always be this way.
The clouds shone
Then birds came, talking loud.
Sun took hold the mountain
And leaped into the sky.
Day came
Then the waters rose in mist.
Spider-woman caught a fly
To celebrate dawn.
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