Not the Sky

Man in the sun

she reads to me from the New Yorker
which I don't buy
don't know how it got in here
but something about the mafia
one of the heads of the mafia
who ate too much, and had it too easy
too many fine women patting his walnuts
he got fat
sucking up good cigars and young breath
and he had these heart attacks

so one day, somebody's driving him
in his big car along the road and he doesn't feel so good
and he asks the boy to stop and let him out
and the boy lays him out along the road
in the fine sunshine
i don't know whether it's Crete or Sicily or Italy proper
but he's lying there in the sunshine
and before he dies he says,
"how beautiful life can be" and then he's gone

sometimes you've got to kill four or five thousand men
before you somehow get to believe that the sparrow is immortal
money is piss and that you've been wasting your time
sing to gods, or kangaroos

the fire circles like a worm inside the radio
it is the nuns
it is the nuns
it is the nuns
with yellow teeth dancing in the sun
it is ladders gone mad with brain and wrinkling in the air like tragedy
my, my, my, it gets so fearful
it gets so fearful
it gets me, wrinkles me without consultation
birds in my dreams
walking with kings
people in my world walking like nightmares
it gets fearful like; gas, barbwire, picture books of doctors, the history of the world
i need pans of ice
i need colored tubes to spit light into eyes
i need straighter backs, money, watchdogs, a horse in Florida
and afternoons to throw away like old napkins
i need forty-five days to sleep
i need to beat hell out of somebody

i need to kneel among roses like a madman and sing to gods
or kangaroos
however you spell it out
and however you spell it out it's going nowhere and I'm going with it
of all the beauty I can think of
is maybe ten minutes of staring at an old bell nobody knows about
or smelling my toes like a cranky kid
or thirty minutes with John Dillinger, listening to how it happened
of all the beauty I can think of,
is watching a long freight of boxcars go by
sunburnt and hurt and wooden
myself watching, watching
yet, now all I can see is some kind of color
a green thin-yellow, steamlike
threads, warm
belonging and not belonging
all I can see is windows and streets and dirt
that wants to cry
it is getting late and the shades go down
pictures of long-legged girls stroll through my brain
and the caterpillar wants to speak my name
it knows me, it does

the nuns dance