PAUL SKYRM

Rattle

herald the coming
or such as you saw -
millions of thighs carrying shit-filled underwear
for garbage dumpsters smeared with egg-yolk-tagging
& corona of shell blinking through -
the French laveriette barked "aucun etranger de facon!"
to requests of scrub
soak /sink /dry on a line
& tho' not a lick of French to save rats from skinning
do commuters know,
they understand the ridding of shit
as their own task.

only oil-men hang Gandhi's corpse by his own homespun loincloth
& hand-crush his folded spectacles
belching their oleo-oh! mouths gripping cigar
stuffed with Apollinaire's fingertips & shrapnel-skull
as they go chuckling :
"the old brownie-baldy is nothing without his glasses ;
a saint my ass! Punjab can't saw outta the eyes Jesus gave heem! what kinda holy man
needs glasses to see shit in the toilet?"

when i found there was such a thing as "pen" and "paper" ,
( i recall tonguing sharp protrusions from gums - first appearance of TEETH
coinciding -)
boy did the shit diaper gallop furious!
these visions no-one saw or stuck around long enough to hear!: beheaded soldiers
hanging in
trees! ,
battleships passing between houses & i could see Mary there combing hair through the
mast, the window & drapes her mother pulled apart at dawn !
dead great-grandmother knitting me grey sweater there at the foot of my bed & boy-
body - couldn't wear it around mother for she would notice & say : "where did you
get that sweater? loose threads - wide neck - tattered even new - (sniff) smells like
Chesterfields!? where did you find this Paul?"

so good luck when i try to donate old clothes to Goodwill charity -
drive me a garbage sac fulla treats for the naked
only to hand some sweet red-smocked fluttering-nose-haired memere a sac of air
she balls up & tosses to waste.
'swhat happens when the dead make yr clothes for ya : nothing's ever ill-fitting eternal
& better buy yr underwear at full price.
so i wrote - wrote it all & my socks kept warm feet in winter sleep where i found
spiral notebooks the immensity of palm sandwiches on Sunday snow;
little pocket notebooks & you could buy shirts with full-frontal pockets over nipple!
be a regular Wild Bill Hickock of the Mounting Poetry Outlaw Re-emergence ;
bells instead of bones!

shirts right with pockets fit enough for the world through human eyes remind ;
i could still hug girls & dream of open-eyed kisses without an "excuse me for a
moment..."

i forgot more than i give you.....a letter for my sister saying : "no one more sturdy
during the old man's licking another woman's sag than you that night at dining table
while football on muddy-television-turf & mom crying in her hands"
- just remembered.

i learned to play the sitar in my dreams - holding it as if i was a woman - contorting
legs into tubular bells & wending them around the pumpkin-swell where the neck &
treble ran into -
straddle a sitar , youngblood, with a body ghost-ships will pass through
& you cant callous a woman for her yellow teeth or sweaty hair.

Bernstein covered me in his sheet music as i had sleep with human-nakedness
& i woke - panting want for wool.

"what piece are playing Leonard?"

"Snoring No.5 - you will listen to yr dreaming heart & bless the femur with raucous
interpretation of dream-body's obedience to its brethren the body of bells"

a fart woke me up again before spontaneous composition & Bernstein dissolved like
gas
yet only the stink left behind & i thought maybe my HAH-CHOO was a "BRAVO!"
in-ka-hoots;
the body delighting in its precision - burning what it needs for power & propulsion
while launching the refuse out back-door.

around here,
folks take their shitty underwear out the front door

& Beelzebub asked the same questions Gandhi posed :
"why is this door locked?"
"why do you carry the key?"

thing is, Beelzebub didn't write any of it down...
men came long after & wrote what they were told
to write about Her
& children grew up pissing their pants
& kissing crucifixes until the money......
Gandhi at least wrote his mind for you -
and they laid his body on flowers o'er the heads of lovers
& roofs of cars
where not even an ant would see him.

& underwear
& carrying of shit
& oil-men lighting cigars of our hair
& our bones singing -

they are all but the broken skeleton of Lucifer,
this world - Beelzebub piecing Her skeleton
back to Angel!

herald the coming
or as such as you saw!

falling from yr fingers
yr eyes
yr kisses
yr cumming alone in the lips of moon !

wings breaking from bullet holes!