Poem #114 Student

I am a person with nothing much to do:

Not talking

Not screaming

But I can’t afford to do nothing

Not smart enough

Being something is very hard on you

Being nothing is worse

Poem #59 life to fit between the gaps

desperate idealists

twenty-one years old

civil war each tossed down

young man grateful

life to fit between the gaps

of hard work and leisure

cynicism he spent his decade

worry about eventually

a while the most casual observer

headlines turned thirty-six

together another pretty managed wreck

the same old Rome, Rome again

luck everything people called gods

trembling between the music

of the first three books

elaborate and moving

and despair on the other

himself to say as the world outside

ironies are the poet

maybe after a fashion

genius wreck strange unrealistic

the nightmare has come

Dionysus alone

attends rather naughty parties

Apollo a sort of private secretary

set off on premature council

others linger died freedom

of a culture

generation loved it

missed the point

one cannot blame

shredded society

fabricated philosophy

incurable sickness violent 

Poem #58 Hour come to rocking cradle

Fall apart anarchy of innocence conviction full of troubled sight

Lion body, pit less thighs, indignant drops.

Again a twentieth century nightmare: a last born desert rapture

Hour come to rocking cradle

 rough beast slouching

head of this man the sun ‘s vexed image

empty anarchy—hand out words

loose upon the world

drowned the worst everywhere

all about it sands of man sleep

sleep hours come at last

somewhere of a head

now I know a stony sheep shadow

December cannot hold passionate intensity. 

Poem #48 About Being Woman

It doesn’t hurt. It isn’t anything

Gathering embers

Remarkably reasonable

Guilty conscious in one

Expansive grin

Driving home on her forehead

Stop please

Her hand upon the splash-board

Beautiful

Need to fix the man’s eyes

Bent forward

Pretty querulous

Added pity

Her too long and gravely beyond him

Gone

What do you mean

My wife

You’d been telling

I suppose you lied

To do with you double insult

Go on saying plans

Dishonorable eyes

Her whelps

Only an ordinary good woman

Desperation of course swore

Yes forward fainting

What did I tell you

Unbroken light

Passion protestations

Oh you brute

Get her into my room

Until you be quite

Storm of lady’s wrath

Jealousy

Himself discovered

Good looking bad liar

Quickly please?

Some sort of idiotic

“satisfaction”

For her amazing

Indiscretion

Broken off so easy 

Poem #7 Gather you famine and bigotry

My country! My country!

On the neck like a day owned husband.

suppered strange men

with the little news— gone stray

sit right down to his choicest lies

three miles away wears a silk dress

make mischief back up bewailing

slackers, clackers, crackers,

schooling an argument

failing to move me

entitled happiness wild and wooly

representation of deeply sorry days

underdrawn by my country

my country!

my country amazed me

together the language was

blushed similar terms of common sense

forgotten in sermons

selling these bewildered ears anything

one child the devil

because he said something complimentary

forgotten little fortune

nothing like America

why?

Gather you famine and bigotry 

Poem #2 former relationship

inspired to submit

out of hand calls

perpetrating a fraud

livid and tosses a cup of

fantasy

people like me can’t inhabit

scarce employment