New Poems Book Three Read Online Free PDF Page B

finally
    gone
    for
    good.

IT’S OVER AND DONE
    sensibly adorned with its iron cross
    the red fokker sails my brain
    and
    as my father opens a door from hell and screams my name
    up from below
    I know that it is time to
    accept what is true:
    while there can be no reconciliation
    between us
    to carp about old wounds is a stupid waste of the heart.
    sensibly adorned with its iron cross
    the red fokker flies away
    and disappears over Brazil
    and I close my eyes
    as
    the light fails in the eye of the falcon,
    and the useless anger of the living
    for the dead
    is
    lost
    forever.

NICE GUY
    I broke his bank, totaled his car and slept with
    his wife.
    of course, everybody was sleeping with his
    wife but a nicer guy you never
    met.
    T.K. Kemper played a couple of years with
    the Green Bay Packers
    then a bad knee got him.
    he went into automotive repair,
    did very good work.
    he was a
    lousy card player though; we’d get him
    drunk and take it all from
    him,
    his wife lurking in the background, her tits
    hanging out.
    T.K. Kemper.
    big, big guy.
    hands like hams.
    honest blue eyes.
    give you the shirt off his back.
    give you his back if he could.
    one night after work he saw two punks
    snatch a purse from an old
    lady.
    he ran after them trying to get that purse
    back.
    he was gaining on them when
    one of the punks turned, had a gun, fired
    5 shots.
    he was a big, big guy.
    he caught all 5 shots, hit the pavement
    hard, didn’t move.
    there was a good crowd at the funeral.
    his wife cried.
    my friend Eddie consoled her,
    then took her home and fucked
    her.
    T.K. Kemper.
    bad knee.
    good heart.
    he was not meant for this indifferent world.
    only with supreme luck did he last
    29 years.

FEET TO THE FIRE
    June, late night, common pain like a rat trapped in
    the gut, how brave we are to continue walking through this terrible
    flame
    as
    the sun stuns us
    as a dark flood envelops us as
    we go on our way—
    filling the gas tank, flushing toilets, paying bills—as we
    float in our pain
    kick our feet
    wiggle our toes
    while listening to inept melodies
    that float in the air
    as the agony now eats the soul.
    yes, I think we’re admirable and brave but we should have
    quit
    long ago, don’tcha
    think?
    yet
    here we sit
    uncorking a new
    bottle and listening to
    Shostakovitch.
    we’ve died so many times now that we can only wonder why we still
    care.
    so
    I pour this drink for
    all of us
    and
    pour another
    for
    myself.

THE POETRY GAME
    the boys
    are playing the poetry game
    again
    putting down
    meaningless lines
    and
    passing them off as art
    again.
    the boys
    are on the telephone
    again
    writing letters
    again
    to the publishers and
    editors
    telling them
    who to edit and who to
    publish.
    the boys
    know that either you
    belong or you
    don’t.
    there’s a way to do it
    you see
    and
    only a few know how to
    do it
    the right way.
    all the others
    are
out
    and
    if you don’t know
    who’s out
    or
    who’s in
    well
    the boys
    will tell you
    again.
    the boys
    have been around a
    long time:
    for a couple of
    centuries
    at least.
    and before some of
    the old boys
    die
    they pass their wisdom on
    to the younger
    boys
    so
they
can put down
    meaningless lines
    and
    pass them off as art
    again.

THE FIX IS IN
    children in the school yard, the horrors they must
    endure as they are first shaped for life to come and then
    handed a hopeless future consisting of:
    false hope
    cheap patriotism
    minimum-wage jobs
    (or no
    job at all)
    mortgages and car payments
    an indifferent government—
    the days, nights, years all finally pointing to the
    dissolution of any possible
    chance.
    as I wait in the car wash for my automobile
    I watch the children in the school yard to the west
    playing at recess.
    then a little old man waves a
    rag and whistles.
    my car is
    ready.
    I walk to my car, tip the old
    fellow: “how’s it
    going?”
    “o.k.,” he answers, “I’m hoping for it to
    rain.”
    just then the school bell rings and the children