Sitting Men

Black wens, pockmarks, green bags
Under eyes; pudgy fingers clutching thighs,
Skulls tormented with angry blotches
Like leprous blossoms on old walls;

With epileptic affection they graft
Ghostly skeletons to chairs'
Black bones. Night and day
Their feet entwine with rickety rungs.

These old codgers are inseparable from their seats:
They sit stewing in sunlight searing their skin,
Trembling the painful tremble of toads,
Peering through the windows at melting snow.

Their seats are good to them: old and brown,
The straw gives against their angular rears;
The soul of old suns brightens, woven
Through braided ears which once cradled corn.

The sitting men gnaw their knees, ten fingers
Drum beneath their seats, green pianists listening
To the rhythmic rapping of sad barcaroles,
Noggins bobbing on waves of love.

-Oh don't tempt disaster and make them rise...
They hiss like cats caught by their tails, heaving up
And slowly spreading angry shoulders
As their pants balloon around swollen rears!

And you'll hear them bumping their bald heads
Against dark walls, stamping and stomping
Their crooked feet, their buttons ogling you
Down hallways like eyes of hungry beasts.

They can kill you wordlessly:
When they return, black venom seeps
Through stares that would down a dog:
And so you sweat, stuck in this horrible pit.

Seated again, their fists swim in dirty cuffs,
They stew upon whoever made them stand,
And from dawn until dusk their tonsils tremble
Nearly bursting beneath weak chins.

When stoic sleep finally finds their visors,
On folded arms they dream of pregnant chairs
And chair children sired in sleep,
Gathering around their regal desks;

Cradled by inky flowers spitting pollen commas,
They walk down rows of drooped calyxes,
Dragonflies through gladiolas. -And their members
Are stirred by the sharp straw of their seats.