Read Ebook: American Papyrus: 25 Poems by Sills Steven David Justin

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Ebook has 123 lines and 12561 words, and 3 pages

No, the supremity of having been split off from A larger entity by being spit out From pussy lips while Reeking pain and havoc Like a living tongue pulled From aperture and den Is not sign enough That he is meant To be sustained As an integral part of the world, Unique and indispensable. Thinking about how much longer He will need to play out the day That issue is not his, and never has been. "The job was done" He could say, later, After the storm. Hand-limp, His broom dance sweeps Upended under an empty park bench-- Dirt caught under The tongues of his feet-- So his paycheck Will come in the mail And become bank figures He can suck from To keep he and his woman Housed and fed, and well enough To legally rape each other in embraces, Forgetful of their lives.

The man has a son, and stands nights aching behind an assembly line, Sleeping the days away While his son goes to school. The son thinks his father Is thoughtless and dirty And his mother a grease-bitch For marrying him. The son grows up Between his college books, And begins to put it together: A society of men Wanting to take a variety Of stimulating produce-- Though some were more the makers Than the takers; The image of rightness In a man putting his hormones To the making of a company In a family; a family That needs a provider to survive; A man honorable and trapped

And there are nights He awakens, gagging at the Sudden thought of a man Next to him Who had engaged his body In a lower form of sharing. And he wonders if embracing a world Of ideas can be done When all things cannot be believed; If humanism is Energy vented To avoid futility; And what grossness He would have to justify next-- All on those nights When self-perspectives Are swept under in change.

Man of Coal

You knew it was coming: Twenty-three years and the mine Would notice you one time, Photocopied. A voice below bellows Your name, Dave, Into the settling air of coal dust.

After you shut off the engines And descend beneath the dragline's skeletal Nose which canopies like a skyscraper on Its side in mid-air You confront a face You cannot see in the descending sun. Shadow-still, Enormous might engulfing over you To the height of The dragline's triple-tank wheels, You see him-- The heels on his leather boots Locked in the train-track grooves of dirt.

As he hands the notice to you Its stiffness shakes In your calloused hand. You know that what is left of the day Is becoming cold; and despite the smell Of dirt there is a scent Of watermelon in the damp air, Although you do not know it as that smell Or that there is a smell at all, really. And yet a faintness of some half-knowledge That touches its weight lightly in your mind Drags itself into places you cannot touch.

Pulling out of his shadow You think of how you might hand This sheet to your wife Like a child presenting to his mother An award from school: Your wife screaming laughter of relief As she hugs the paper to her breast;

Or how your strong hand might sweat As you pick up the receiver of the ringing phone, Expecting that after saying "Hi" That one of your college children's voices would end The conversation there For you to hand the vibrations To your wife--but instead That child Congratulates you For no longer destroying the land.

The noon hour whistle Vibrates the walls Of the hollow heavens To the cab; the thermos-well Of soup, sitting on your lap, you cannot see, but You feel its stillness Stagnating and absorbing The contaminating minerals Of the tin, walling in the contents; And still you want to turn on the ignition To finish out one more complete day In the twenty-three years here Of hard work. The quandary then snaps, and you escape. When out of the valley you enter the truck And close the door-- The second time harder, and it latches. You turn the key And the truck bounces to the highway. You stop at the sign; Stop the motor while Still on the dirt road; But in the end turn left, again, Home.

Maddog

You said that it happened--that day you ran away From a self you buried underneath the ice-packed snow,

All those cold years ago--when your last friend, then Had put an end to the Gabriele whom I've never known. This Friend, like yourself a Barbie Dame, became totally lame and Withdrew out the door when you needed more hands to keep Your epileptic roommate From smashing her head on the floor.

Gabriele, held together by the stitching of hate-- The plastic-eyed polar bear with the stiff arms That the factory of the human race mutantly created-- This time it will be you who shall feel the wall of artificial Fur ripped from its threads, and your stuffing falling out. For a little maddog on top of four joints Makes a person see the unsealed human fragments That had been smoothed over in time Like a million and some bone fractures The milk of approval had swum into and covered over for looks.

For me fragmenting came yesterday when I saw a welcome mat Iced over and yet I entered: Your house was hot and your oven smelled of baking meatloaf Although you had said that you could not be domesticated. And then I saw your bottle of wine Standing at attention before two glasses. The pledge that bowing to anything or anyone was wrong...that people Were only needed to gain the most bare Of physiological and psychological needs --this was gone. Gone with your hair brushed and your skin smelling of perfume For some other man than me.

Come on Gabriele, the gal that used to chew tobacco and Spit it into an empty beer can... The gal with the deep dark-ocean eyes... The maddog gal, grip that wine glass now. For Gabriele, you smile at everyone with meaning You are as together as a feather when a hurricane is in town, And when the hangover's over and your own insight has Fragmented you from a million pieces to a billion, My stiff polar bear arms Shall poke and not embrace.

I sit back at this party I am hosting-- My back firmly pushing against the back of my chair, And my head and eyes cocked. You all are the performers this time... And Gabriele, you are the main attraction, Attracted, after this night, to the omni-present sense of your Smashed self; and me-- Sensitive little me in no man's land Where no man wanted to grasp me from... And no woman-- Mended back together in thy survivalistic polar bear image.

Becky's Demon

"Something happened. i don't have those visions anymore." And you believe with a mind like Papa believed with When i told him i could see things Clearly before they actually Were.

His back and forth pacing from those same two windows-- Which had been like a toy soldier powered on a human battery With a three minute's stand at one, and then the next,

Suddenly stopped. For i was different. You anointed me And cast me out. i was alone. You caused me to hide Beside a pitchfork in the shadows of the corners of the barn. Yes. Papa stopped. His eyes moved. i'd never seen his eyes move Before. They stared down at me. My child's eyes Below--and he aimed his for them as a fisher for prey in clear waters. i backed up behind the pipe of the kitchen stove.. But with one stretch he reached his arm over Like a bear's paw that in force comes down like a Redwood.

my knee aching as if broken, i crutched up From the other side of the room, beside the door.... Then, bending on my knees the next conscious second-- Feeling the blood of knee caps sticking to hay and dirt-- Seeing the sun poke like sticks through rafters and cobwebs-- Thinking i grabbed a hold on the sunlight which could Lift me Up like a rope; but grasping the pitchfork-- Raising the pitchfork-- Pitching the pitchfork-- After hearing the creaking and scraping of the opening barn door Plowing The top soil of the dry earth. Thinking: he would never kill my shadowy corner.

II And in this plush chair of the Bishop's office i sit a decade And a half later--a Salem witch of the west explaining her Dull, trembling self before three Mormon men bending above me. But you don't understand me, as if anyone ever has. i had psychic abilities. But you don't want them, so they're Gone; And i'm good. i no longer believe, Bish'y, that I saw Benson Dying And Yourself rising above the Twelve. But You're still scared of me. You only want to anoint me And cast me out. You only want me to hide in a barn, And belong to shadows. You call my abilities a possession of a demon.

Papa doubted i could see; and you see me as perverted.

But you do see that i see... That i have something with some power. You and the Missionaries lay your hands on me... me who left my Protestant roots so as to be rooted in your Family. You put your cold hands on my forehead, Trying to vacuum out my psychic abilities, Which i tell you are no longer-- Trying to take away my saying that i'm okay... i'm good. Speak to me. Don't cast me out and leave.

Where, Oh Where, Did The Mall-Lady Go?

They wanted her to drop her thoughts As naturally as her underpants fell, after they were Over the hips, so the steaming winds of her daily showers Could clear her of encroaching stain As she had been cleared away.

They were a function, ignorant of their thinking, charting Charts. She felt she would have to ignore these doctors and Nurses in the mental ward. She would have to ignore the pacing patients Asking cigarettes from her. The hall was rectangular. Everyone moved rectangularly.

She would go to dreams of past realities Where she was watching the shoppers' reflections As they passed mall's little fountains-- Different types of people-reflections but all silvery In the still of the waters, Happy and part of the lives of the mall. She would imagine herself sitting on a metal bench-- packages of her new clothing pulling on arms and chest

Like the recalling torpor that came more easily To her lower legs; the weight of the mink that arched Her aching shoulders more like a lady; And a small sack of chocolate stars Touching her upper neck-- Wondering what packages her fellow-creatures Bought to be brought home and to whom They brought them to. And then, as the locks of solitude clicked in her consciousness, Came the wondering of where, oh where, Did the Mall-Lady go?

Savior-Searcher In The Bible-Belt

I can see you in those dry moments, then As clearly as if I were there: staring at the cracks Of the white ceiling above the bedpost, wondering if You will slip down three flights to the outer darkness

Like your ex-Mormon roommate, here. Your visual mind, Against your will, probably thinks about your squirm That a few moments ago squirmed you of your juice, Wiggled her skirt back on, resurfaced the lip-spit Crackup in her concrete of makeup, and wordless, Walked like a princess out the door. As the last of the ecstatic vibrations tides you in the rear You arise from the raft of the mattress. Then you cover up your nakedness, And move to the light of the living room.

And then I actually see you, Don, in the hour that you had told Me to step back in. You are bending over the end-table stained In the blood of wine. Sunlight, stripped silver from the grey Clouds, pours through the window to the table. To your right a nine of swords card of a man pierced in the Back gleams as it walls the card of your future lovers., And the redness of Doctrines and Covenants to the far left of That table also looks pure in the light. You do not see me. Your mind is racked in screwing the pack For an answer. You turn another Tarot Card In the order your destiny is to be read.

Your sad eyes look up And your languid voice says that you are late For your meeting with the local Bishop... A meeting to straighten up your fucking life. I laugh! In bitterness that shakes my intestines, I laugh! Another hillbilly man Has lifted his head above the rest--a foot up from the jug-- And has blown his breath into the air Which 'naps another young and fragmented one To the call of being holy. But before you arise You turn the gleaming card of number four-- Your eyes in a more motionless trance than before.

New England Washing

Another hour. There is no circulation Beneath the steering wheel for my feet. Outside myself There is the last of the sun at dusk But like the conquering Hsuing-Nu Pushing themselves beyond a Great Wall and through an eternal Gathering, it is hardly felt. There is nothing great to trouble me And nothing substantial descends on my senses, Giving me thoughts other than the fact I'm thinking nothing: Only A flock of birds in the corner of my left eye Blend down with the grey skies As if the fence barricading The farm land does not pertain to them; Thoughts of the center line And not going over it. Days of Gorbechev, the radio speaks of, But not his nights--where, one time He may have smashed A big, red cigarette in an ashtray With an action stiff and slow; And as he stood up the mattress of his bed may have Raised to touch his rear, again, Like a quick and soothing give-me-five handshake; And opening a window of the embassy To escape the stuffy dryness Of electric heat to his suite, He may have let the cool American air Attack him with the smells and sights Of its diplomatic car exhausts, Grey and orange from street lamps And store lights...and how The nation breathed for once as it moved.

The third: road; cows, like islanders; Multi-tinted bladed fields broken by acres Of forests and pastures; a black-sun scene with Car lights; a vision blurred and pebbled Through the windshield-- A truck passes my pinto; Muddy water slapping its face; Its stick eyes smoothing it To a duller complexion. It isn't yet Christmas And I am going home. My parents one day drooped In front of all, and were old-- We should be having much to say... I, thinking like them, with The mind of the world, And us smiling unhappily And speaking none of that: But a lot will be said. I am a bum. One of their hearts shall give in And their marriage will be a farce... Even in car accidents the married Die separately. And then the widowed Mother, smoking the cigars of her husband, And coughing them as the husband had done But in the apartment of the son, might Visit away her life: I would Bring her there, thanking God for a reason Not to try hiding all of me in some pussy As in daylight the main part Goes into underwear.

This is their town Far from trays with saucers And plates and spoons and forks and knives and glasses ... But forever coming down the belt for the Dumping and washing...the trays that disappear In a square hole and come out clean Will continue regardless if I am there. Men fuck virgins; a child-worker Is born and all is holy. There is nothing great to trouble me: The rains that drop and drift next To streets in gutters, take away Smashed Pepsi cups and beer cans Without intent, bound God knows where, But out of sight.

The San Franciscan's Night Meditations

When I am at a dead-lock In your rear and the language of my body Will not come from The third element of the soul, What am I to say?-- 'ALL BUT ONE DEAD: Mexican immigrants celebrating the Stowing away on a 120 degree boxcar With urine in their stomachs, Acknowledging capitalistic thirsts... Sigue sobre pagina".. Double hubble The peso is in trouble And to Mars America plans Jumping over the moon, And all this has disturbed me!"

The night is full of impulses To live and to run and seep heavily Into its dark robes of Silence and morbid rightness; And as I, again, try to thrust on dryly-- A log without a river traveling it To the product of lumber-- and hope to create love in The smackings of night, Like anyone else, I know that soon I am to apologize for lack Of an ejaculation, And will promise to have a counselor Tame me to the exclusion of All but work and lust.

Sounds of people Kicking around the Night of early morning Beneath my lover's window; And I withdraw under the sheet, lying flat with the dead moonlight.

The Philosophy Of Rita And Herb

Staring fixed at the rows Of flowered Wallpaper a pale gray In the dark efficiency-- The three walls still absent To her consciousness As a shadow of silver lightning Fades the greyness Of one portion in her view-- The "schitzophrenic" lifts up a cigarette hidden behind An ashtray and the flat ground Of ashes on the table, which Skid and resurface with her Hot breathing. She thinks they are Continents drifting, and herself Upon them. From feeling stiff and pushed under-- Numb to the point of a corpse-- With insecurity enough not to remember, Even, her ABC's, Rita runs into the night Where outside of a window She blesses the workers making Colonial bread.

An old man in a cowboy hat, Herb, Is saddled on the wooden railing of a porch To an apartment complex: seated there beside a remembrance Of a young woman like Rita. And in the spitting fumes; bad-muffler sounds; The rocking phallicism in radio music of passing cars,

He feels he has to move or die And gets down To his pickup.

And Rita, upon dawn and upon the end of rain, Walks the streets again after tiring, Ready to go back and confront the curfew-conscious Group home, and the "zero" on her record full of Zeros. She worries about carrying in her womb A mini-Herb with scabs of grey hair And little pot-holes in his tiny face, Though she is still a virgin.

Estivation

Weekends in Tranquility Park-- With the downtown buildings, hallways of giants clustered, Exhaling the coolness echoed From the rectangular mouths of doors Opened and closed by cityers-- A coolness came over my thoughts The way lack of wind contains The hastening of Yosemite's flames.

There, diurnal and punctual, she crossed That small area of grass, fountains, and cement Which were generally buffeted more fully by sun and adjacent Sounds, moving the park more than Bush and Dukakis' Presence. "WALK" was always lit when la chica Approached the street, carrying her library books. When would she, artificial and pneumatic, Who like Houston's miniature stop-lights While going to work, veer my movements To slide off a plane ticket and be led Through and from burning Amazons And green-house climactic changes-- Through wasted ozone and my own depleted life-- The breath of her mouth my only nourishment.

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