38.
I can't look out at beautiful women any more.
There is nothing but pain
Between their Being and my brain.
And every nerve throbs and is sore:
What could come of any touch or breath
But ruin, sorrow, punishment, or death?
39.
My boy, you are hurting. The man
Inside you is on his haunches
Smoking a rolled cigarette and blowing
Dirty air.
Nothing makes sense, feels right,
Has that imprimatur of good housekeeping.
Don't look—don't focus in on the blood in your temples
And write sweet paragraphs about all your
Dreams and punctuate
with exclamations only
that sure-fire yell
available as air
To all students weilding the bâton
In fast meters, accentuate whatver beat your
Heart slaps out
But listen from within and listen
As a stranger listening.
40.
Reading the Times is leafing through tablets
Enscribed with all we have not done, laughing
Shrilly between the columns, hashing omelettes
Of every egg we've borne; Coughing
Over the rolls of dormant doormat feelings; Eating
From the manger of dry time and foolish fatewhims—
Brassmouthed, bluenosed, buttertongued,
Crenellated in foil to reflect, protect, disinfect,
Hemisemidemimordants incisively hitting
At the pitiless moribund world,
All caught shitting.
