Finish

Finish

The hearse comes through the room filled with the beheaded, the disappeared, the living mad
Flies are a glue of sticky paste, their wings will not lift
I watch an old woman beat her cat with a broom
The weather is unendurable; a dirty trick by god
The water has evaporated from the toilet bowl
The telephone rings without sound, the small limp arm petering against the bell
I see a boy on his bicycle
The spokes collapse, his tires turn into snakes and melt away
The newspaper's oven-hot
Men murder each other in the streets without reason
The worst men have the best jobs
The best men have the worst jobs or, are unemployed
Or blocked in mad houses

I have four cans of food left
Air-conditioned troops go from house to house
From room to room
Jailing, shooting, bayoneting the people
We have done this to ourselves, we deserve this
It is as if, the sun has become disgusted with waiting
It is as if the sun were a mind that has given up on us
I go out on the back porch and look across the sea of dead plants
Now thorns and sticks shivering in a windless sky
Somehow I'm glad we're through, finished
The works of art, the wars, the decayed loves
The way we lived each day
When the troops come up here, I don't care what they do
For we've already killed ourselves each day we get out of bed
Now go into the kitchen, spill some hash from a soft can
It is almost cooked already
And I sit eating, looking at the fingernails
My fingernails
The sweat comes down behind my ears
And I hear this shooting in the streets
And I chew and I wait without blunder