"Poor Hope."
"Which is worse?
The lieutenant raising his rifle toward the astonished women
and children, jammed into the bomb crater.
Raising it, not even aiming.
Just carelessly beginning to do it the way you'd rake a lawn,
you start anywhere.
That, o when I saw a boy in a department store
with his mother, he was skipping along going, toot, tot, toot.
When the mother saw me, I could see her flinch about something.
And when I passed them, she cracked him.
Him not me, across the mouth, stunning him terribly.
Hissing, don't you know where you are?
Which is worse?
To be in the world with that, or with that?
Or is it that there's God and you think they've killed him?
Then the dread, God, did you really say hit them, kill them?
And to the children and the mothers, forgive me.
Then myself, then nothing.
No sacrament for the people forgotten in mid-sentence gone,
except in fuck you, where they cry.
God, I have thought two ways up.
The first is when I felt the boy's spirit become pain,
because of me.
I should have apologized, not to him or even the mother,
but to you, I'm sorry.
And the other is for the others in the ditch,
and their torn clothes, just as the bullets go into them,
I would go mad.
And have you seen how men in toilets at stadiums
or the movie, stare into the wall,
so we won't covet each other's cocks?
I would stare into you like that, and never move again.
Never let you die again.
Never let you be anywhere else.
Staring, watching you boil helplessly back and forth
on the ceiling.
Don't move, trying to electrocute yourself
on the wire.
Stay where you are.
Trying to slice your body to pieces on the fluttering
cobwebs, don't die on me."
This one has terrible allergies for me.
I thought it was the place you came when you were sick.
Anyway, it's in my throat a little bit.