Poems 1959-2009 by Frederick Seidel Read Free Book Online Page A

around barking under the delicious rain, so happy.
    Traditional household cleaners polish the imperial palace floors
    Of heaven spotless. THUNDER. Cleanliness and order
    Bring universal freshness and good sense to the Empire. LIGHTNING.
III
    I have never had a serious thought in my life on Gibson Lane.
    A man turning into cremains is standing on the beach.
    I used to walk my dog along the beach.
    This afternoon I had to put him down.
    Jimmy my boy, my sweetyboy, my Jimmy.
    It is night, and outside the house, at eleven o’clock,
    The lawn sprinklers come on in the rain.
    Â 
THE CASTLE IN THE MOUNTAINS
    I brought a stomach flu with me on the train.
    I spent the night curled up in pain,
    Agonizingly cold and rather miserable.
    I went out for a walk earlier today:
    Snow started falling
    Like big cotton balls this morning
    And the park looks beautiful.
    I will try to eat tonight: steamed cauliflower.
    You would love it here.
    It is still quite nice somehow.
    You would like the emperor.
    Some days the joy is overpowering.
    The last time I was here,
    He told a story.
    It was Christmas.
    Snow kept falling.
    The emperor held his hand up for silence and began.
    His fingernails have perfect moons, which is quite rare.
    You hardly see it anymore, I wonder why.
    The emperor began:
    â€œPrehistoric insects were
    Flying around brainless
    To add more glory to the infant Earth.
    Instead of horrible they were huge and beautiful,
    And, being angels, were invincible.
    Say the Name, and the angel begging with its hand out would
    Instantly expand upward
    To be as tall as the building …”
    The ruthless raw odor of filth in an enclosed space,
    And the slime tentacles with religious suckers,
    And the four heads on one neck like the four heads carved on Mount Rushmore,
    Hold out a single hand.
    Hold out your hand.
    Take my hand.
    Â 
A FRESH STICK OF CHEWING GUM
    A pink stick of gum unwrapped from the foil,
    That you hold between your fingers on the way home from dance class,
    And you look at its pink. But you know what.
    I like your brain. Your pink. It’s sweet.
    My brain is the wrinkles of the ocean on a ball of tar
    Instead of being sweet pink like yours.
    It could be the nicotine. It could be the Johnnie Walker Black.
    Mine thought too many cigarettes for too many years.
    My brain is the size of the largest living thing,
mais oui
, a blue whale,
    Blue instead of pink like yours.
    It’s what I’ve done
    To make it huge that made it huge.
    The violent sweetness in the air is the pink rain
    Which continues achingly almost to fall.
    This is the closest it has come.
    This can’t go on.
    Twenty-six years old is not childhood.
    You are not trying to stop smoking.
    You smoke and drink
    And
still
it is pink.
    The answer is you can drink and smoke
    Too much at twenty-six,
    And stink of cigarettes,
    And stand outside on the sidewalk outside the bar to have a cigarette,
    As the law now requires, and it is paradise,
    And be the most beautiful girl in the world,
    And be moral,
    And vibrate into blank.
    Â 
DANTE’S BEATRICE
    I ride a racer to erase her.
    Bent over like a hunchback.
    Racing leathers now include a hump
    That protects the poet’s spine and neck.
    I wring the thing out, two hundred miles an hour.
    I am a mink on a mink ranch determined not
    To die inside its valuable fur, inside my racesuit.
    I bought the racer
    To replace her.
    It became my slave and I its.
    All it lacked was tits.
    All it lacked
    Between its wheels was hair.
    I don’t care.
    We do it anyway.
    The starter-caddy spins its raving little wheel
    Against the Superbike’s elevated fat black
    Rear soft-compound tire.
    Remember:
racer
—
    Down for second gear instead of up!
    Release the clutch—the engine fires.
    I am off for my warm-up lap on a factory racer
    Because I can’t face her.
    I ride my racer to erase her.
    I ride in armor to
    Three hundred nineteen kilometers an hour.
    I am a mink on a mink ranch about
    To die