It's so hard-- I wrote these poems.
They're all political poems about the war, what things were
really going on about the war.
And I have the feeling that we've really
been conned somehow, that we really
don't think about it anymore and act
as though it's not happening.
And I think I feel it in myself somewhat,
that just out of touch we've been
treated with such contempt.
That we almost don't exist anymore.
There's just this government doing things.
"The only way it makes sense is that we
have terrible wounds inside us like mouths, hard metallic,
made in America.
They swing fatly open like wallets,
and gorge in strict vaginal contractions, what touches us.
What comes to us living, wants us.
How many times the one we kiss with affirms life, life,
but the other, when the saints said they heard thunder,
it was just it closing.
And this time when it opens, corpses soar in it, officers
at attention, shells.
This time not enough pain in all Asia for it.
I want you not comforting me.
The soles of our feet beaten until worms of flesh
erupt from them, our genitals dialed like wrong numbers.
Don't put your tongue in me.
Don't give me anything, heart, soul, laughter anything.
Children turning the light on and off, on and off.
Ma, don't feed me.
Don't feed me."
That was called "The Undead."