Maybe something called "War Suite."
I wrote this at such a time I suppose
and in one respect or another I was
thinking about the Vietnam War although it's not
mentioned by name.
It was more of a sense of a total war
in the human condition, both inside our own bodies
and history.
Or I mean if we're at a state of war with ourselves,
how can we help but be in a state of war with each other.
In anything more than that I'm on dangerous political grounds.
It's called "War Suite."
The wars were drawn to them as if in fever.
We sleepwalk to them, wake up in full stride
of nightmare, blood slippery, mouth deep in their gore.
Even in Gilgamesh, the darker bodies
strewn over stone battlements, dry skin against rough stone.
The sand sifting through rock face.
Swollen flesh covered with such sand against blackening lips.
Flesh covered with the bodies bloating in the heat,
then hidden, then covered.
Where at an oasis beneath still palms
a vapor floats toward water, her soft belly
flattened of its weight, tongue flicking at water
beside the faces of the dead.
Their faces, chests, pressed to Earth.
Bodies also flattened, lax with the weight now surely
groundlings.
And the moon swelling in the night, the sheen of it
on lax bodies in the underwater.
Now, in Aquitaine this man is no less
dead for being noble at night with the clang
and rasp to his shield and hammer,
air thick with horses, Earth fixed under their moving feet,
but bodies falling.
Sweat and blood under armor.
Death blows sweet nights, blood flowing, horses screaming.
Horses now riderless, drinking at a brook.
More sorry with bits sweat drying
greyhound flanks, noses dripping cool water,
nibbling grass through bits.
Patches of grass with the blood still red and wet upon them.
I've seen 67 wars.
The war now, the war for Rapunzel.
Earth cannot use her hair.
The war of drowning hair, drifting upward as it descends.
The lover holding his cock like a switchblade.
War of apples and pears beating against the Earth.
Earth tearing a hole in the sky.
Air to hold the lighted is gathered, river bending
until its back is broken.
Death, the black carp that swim in our innards.
Grand wars.
The final arc poised down an ice floe.
The wolf shot from a helicopter.
That shrill god in her choir loft
among the damp wine colored crumpled robes
face against the dusty window staring out
at a black pond in the floor of a woodlot covered with ferns,
if that wasp on the pain stings her.
Cancer to kill child, child to kill cancer.
Nail to enter the wood.
The virgin to flutter in the air above roam like a Piper cub.
Giraffe's neck to grow after greener leaves.
Bullet to enter an eye, bullet to escape the skull, bullet
to fall to Earth.
Eye to look for its skull, skull to burst,
belly to find its cage of ribs.
Face down in the pool his great fatty heart
wants to keep beating.
Tongue pressed to rug in a chemical hallway.
On a country road caught by flashbulb headlights,
he wishes suddenly to be stronger than a car.
The elephant to couple in peace.
The porpoise to be free of the microphone.
This page to know a master of future, a page with the flesh
melodious to bring her up through the page.
Paper shrouded from whatever depth
she lies, dulling her gift, bringing her to song and not
to life.
This death mask to harden before the face escapes.
Life passes down through the neck.
The sculpture churns hearing it rub against the door.
Mind to stay free of madness of war, war all howling and stiff
necked dead.
Night of the mind punctuated with moans and stars.
Black smoke roiling, peering minds straight to the zebra.
Ass in air madly stalking her lion.
Fire to eat tar, tar to drip, hair to beat
hound, Grace gross to avoid shot.
Trout to shake fly, chest to draw
breath, breath to force song.
A song to be heard, remembered and sung.
To come finally to an opening in a field
without pausing, to move there in a full circle of light.
But nights out they're not even behind the glass.
There's nothing to keep her out or in.
To walk backwards to her, to step off her edge
or become her edge.
To swell and roll in her darkness
a landlocked sea moving free dark and clear
within her continent.