Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Here's a poem I wrote in 2000

Pretty, Soon

Pretty soon if we don’t do the thing
we need to do, the windows (they might shatter)
will implode. And all the lights we would
have lit inside our homes will find the shadows
we’ve become. The falls and rises, things
which flipped our hearts, will fail to thrill
us anymore. The winds that spank wisteria
spores around the driveway -- all will end.
Rain corpuscles and cloud-pimpled skies
will cough up helicopter carnage.
Little boys will suffocate and die.
Women’s flesh might melt from bone;
cunts will crumble. There’s a girl named Thursday
downstairs. Her boyfriend lives with her (a whore
the neighbors say, siren, femme fatal).
Hell has a special ring for her, we’ve heard.
Lucky girl. I wonder if she knows
the thing we need to do. Pretty soon
if we don’t do it, they might turn us in
to law-abiding citizens. Why
do they abide? And who are they, besides?
Might they be those whose dumb philosophies
despise the chaos that’s erupting here?
What is there to fear? Every thing
is everything. There is nothing so dear
it can’t be rent and made more beautiful
than it was when it first began. All
my little pretty ones, and ugly ones,
too, take off your shoes and socks, your shirt,
your pants, your underwear. Take off your skin
and peel the sinew from your bones. Go back
to being less than everything you have
become. It must be done. You’ll see.

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