murder
selves that go through our hands like tiny fish.
You said: I am the organizer and took and used.
You wrapped your head in theory like yards of gauze
and touched others only as tools that fit to your task.
Arrogance is not a revolutionary virtue.
The mad bulldozers of ego level the ground.
I was a tool that screamed in the hand.
I have been loving you so long and hard and mean
and the taste of you is part of my tongue
and your face is burnt into my eyelids
and I could build you with my fingers out of dust.
Now it is over. Whether we want or not
our roots go down to strange waters,
we are creatures of the seasons and the earth.
You always had a reason and you have them still
rattling like dry leaves on a stunted tree.
A just anger
Anger shines through me.
Anger shines through me.
I am a burning bush.
My rage is a cloud of flame.
My rage is a cloud of flame
in which I walk
seeking justice
like a precipice.
How the streets
of the iron city
flicker, flicker,
and the dirty air
fumes.
Anger storms
between me and things,
transfiguring,
transfiguring.
A good anger acted upon
is beautiful as lightning
and swift with power.
A good anger swallowed,
a good anger swallowed
clots the blood
to slime.
The crippling
I used to watch it on the ledge:
a crippled bird.
How did it survive?
Surely it would die soon.
Then I saw a man
at one of the windows
fed it, a few seeds,
a crust from lunch.
Often he forgot
and it went hopping on the ledge
a starving
scurvy sparrow.
Every couple of weeks
he caught it in his hand
and clipped back one wing.
I call it a sparrow.
The plumage was sooty,
sometimes in the sun
scarlet as a tanager.
He never let it fly.
He never took it in.
Perhaps he was starving too.
Perhaps he counted every crumb.
Perhaps he hated
that anything alive
knew how to fly.
Right thinking man
The head: egg of all.
He thinks of himself as a head thinking.
He is eating a coddled egg.
He drops a few choice phrases on his wife
who cannot seem to learn after twenty years
the perfection of egg protein
neither runny nor turned to rubber.
Advancing into his study he dabbles a forefinger
in the fine dust on his desk and calls his wife
who must go twitching to reprimand
the black woman age forty-eight who cleans the apartment.
Outside a Puerto Rican in a uniform
is standing in the street to guard his door
from the riffraff who make riots on television,
in which the university that pays him owns much stock.
Right thinking is virtue, he believes,
and the clarity of the fine violin of his mind
leads him a tense intricate fugue of pleasure.
His children do not think clearly.
They snivel and whine and glower and pant
after false gods who must be blasted with sarcasm
because their barbaric heads
keep growing back in posters on bedroom walls.
His wife does not dare to think.
He married her for her breasts
and soft white belly of surrender arching up.
The greatest pain he has ever known
was getting an impacted wisdom tooth out.
The deepest suffering he ever tasted
was when he failed to get a fellowship
after he had planned his itinerary.
When he curses his dependents
Plato sits on his right hand and Aristotle on his left.
Argument is lean red meat to him.
Moses and Freud and St. Augustine are in his corner.
He is a good man and deserves to judge us all
who go making uncouth noises and bangs in the street.
He is a good man: if you don’t believe me,
ask any god.
He says they all think like him.
Barbie doll
This girlchild was born as usual
and presented dolls that did pee-pee
and miniature GE stoves and irons
and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy.
Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said:
You have a great big nose and fat legs.
She was healthy, tested intelligent,
possessed strong arms and back,
abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity.
She went to and fro apologizing.
Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs.
She was
selves that go through our hands like tiny fish.
You said: I am the organizer and took and used.
You wrapped your head in theory like yards of gauze
and touched others only as tools that fit to your task.
Arrogance is not a revolutionary virtue.
The mad bulldozers of ego level the ground.
I was a tool that screamed in the hand.
I have been loving you so long and hard and mean
and the taste of you is part of my tongue
and your face is burnt into my eyelids
and I could build you with my fingers out of dust.
Now it is over. Whether we want or not
our roots go down to strange waters,
we are creatures of the seasons and the earth.
You always had a reason and you have them still
rattling like dry leaves on a stunted tree.
A just anger
Anger shines through me.
Anger shines through me.
I am a burning bush.
My rage is a cloud of flame.
My rage is a cloud of flame
in which I walk
seeking justice
like a precipice.
How the streets
of the iron city
flicker, flicker,
and the dirty air
fumes.
Anger storms
between me and things,
transfiguring,
transfiguring.
A good anger acted upon
is beautiful as lightning
and swift with power.
A good anger swallowed,
a good anger swallowed
clots the blood
to slime.
The crippling
I used to watch it on the ledge:
a crippled bird.
How did it survive?
Surely it would die soon.
Then I saw a man
at one of the windows
fed it, a few seeds,
a crust from lunch.
Often he forgot
and it went hopping on the ledge
a starving
scurvy sparrow.
Every couple of weeks
he caught it in his hand
and clipped back one wing.
I call it a sparrow.
The plumage was sooty,
sometimes in the sun
scarlet as a tanager.
He never let it fly.
He never took it in.
Perhaps he was starving too.
Perhaps he counted every crumb.
Perhaps he hated
that anything alive
knew how to fly.
Right thinking man
The head: egg of all.
He thinks of himself as a head thinking.
He is eating a coddled egg.
He drops a few choice phrases on his wife
who cannot seem to learn after twenty years
the perfection of egg protein
neither runny nor turned to rubber.
Advancing into his study he dabbles a forefinger
in the fine dust on his desk and calls his wife
who must go twitching to reprimand
the black woman age forty-eight who cleans the apartment.
Outside a Puerto Rican in a uniform
is standing in the street to guard his door
from the riffraff who make riots on television,
in which the university that pays him owns much stock.
Right thinking is virtue, he believes,
and the clarity of the fine violin of his mind
leads him a tense intricate fugue of pleasure.
His children do not think clearly.
They snivel and whine and glower and pant
after false gods who must be blasted with sarcasm
because their barbaric heads
keep growing back in posters on bedroom walls.
His wife does not dare to think.
He married her for her breasts
and soft white belly of surrender arching up.
The greatest pain he has ever known
was getting an impacted wisdom tooth out.
The deepest suffering he ever tasted
was when he failed to get a fellowship
after he had planned his itinerary.
When he curses his dependents
Plato sits on his right hand and Aristotle on his left.
Argument is lean red meat to him.
Moses and Freud and St. Augustine are in his corner.
He is a good man and deserves to judge us all
who go making uncouth noises and bangs in the street.
He is a good man: if you don’t believe me,
ask any god.
He says they all think like him.
Barbie doll
This girlchild was born as usual
and presented dolls that did pee-pee
and miniature GE stoves and irons
and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy.
Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said:
You have a great big nose and fat legs.
She was healthy, tested intelligent,
possessed strong arms and back,
abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity.
She went to and fro apologizing.
Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs.
She was
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