Poems 1959-2009 Read online

Is doubled over, having an attack.

  The man is standing up, but bent in two

  To put his contacts in. He looks at you

  Because you’re looking in the mirror, too.

  You want to see what Baudelaire will do.

  Lenticular astigmatism makes

  His fangs squirt sperm and what a pair of snakes,

  Blue eyes that bite through lenses tinted blue!

  When I’m goose-stepping down the avenue,

  My other self is with me. Here’s a clue—

  The one with the umbrella is the Jew.

  PORTIA DEW

  Freddy Dew was Portia’s younger brother.

  Lord Dew was just eighteen.

  Last year they lost their father and their mother,

  A cousin of the queen.

  They had the house in Mayfair on their own,

  Right out of Henry James.

  A brother/sister strangeness set the tone,

  Blonds wrapped in icy flames.

  The English are so goddamn glamorous,

  Too fucking much to bear.

  The women are both cold and amorous.

  One almost doesn’t dare.

  “Dewy” had the most amazing tits

  And lots of love down there.

  One-size-fits-all loved lots of boys to bits,

  And coldly couldn’t care.

  Of course she had her ignorance to thank.

  Her sort was all she knew.

  Freddy’s friends read Chairman Mao and drank

  Champagne from her shoe.

  “Bloodies” were aristocratic brutes—

  Not Freddy’s cut of meat!

  They liked to beat up whores and beat up fruits,

  And drink and barf and eat.

  To Portia they were lovely penises,

  Fox hunters fucking fox.

  She thought of them as English Venuses,

  But with outrageous cocks.

  A SONG FOR COLE PORTER

  The tennis ball is in the air to be struck. Thwock.

  The dove is in the air to be shot. Bam.

  The fuzz will come off the white, off-white.

  You always leave me.

  Soft is whack.

  It’s completely a sign of age

  That suddenly I have breasts.

  Mine are as big as my girlfriend’s.

  Yes, hers are small.

  I have so many girlfriends.

  It’s endocrinal. It’s disgusting. It’s de-lovely.

  She always says, “You always leave me.”

  True, me and my breasts leave town.

  I have so many girlfriends.

  But one’s the one.

  I for years was unable to decide,

  Tits or ass? And don’t forget legs.

  Which one do you think is the best?

  My choice would vary. Who would you choose?

  It was all too good to be true. Then came you!

  Everyone’s a sexual object.

  Everyone is something to use.

  Everyone is something good.

  I’m her vibrator—but believe me,

  Everyone is something unphysical also.

  I’m so cool—I’m so hot!

  I make her oink when we fuck.

  Me and my breasts, we’re leaving town.

  We’re going to Montana to throw the houlihan.

  Ride around, little dogies, ride around them slow.

  For everyone’s a sexual object.

  Everyone is something to use.

  Everyone is something good.

  I oink when I fuck but have feelings and wings.

  Pigs can fly.

  “SII ROMANTICO, SEIDEL, TANTO PER CAMBIARE”

  Women have a playground slide

  That wraps you in monsoon and takes you for a ride.

  The English girl Louise, his latest squeeze, was being snide.

  Easy to deride

  The way he stayed alive to stay inside

  His women with his puffed-up pride.

  The pharmacy supplied

  The rising fire truck ladder that the fire did not provide.

  The toothless carnivore devoured Viagra and Finasteride

  (Which is the one that shrinks the American prostate nationwide

  And at a higher dosage grows hair on the bald) to stem the tide.

  Not to die had been his way to hide

  The fact that he was terrified.

  He could not tell them that, it would be suicide.

  It would make them even more humidified.

  The women wrapped monsoon around him, thunder-thighed.

  They guide his acetone to their formaldehyde.

  Now Alpha will commit Omegacide.

  He made them, like a doctor looking down a throat, open wide,

  Say Ah; and Ah, they sighed;

  And out came sighing amplified

  To fill a stadium with cyanide.

  He filled the women with rodenticide.

  He tied

  Their wrists behind them, tried

  Ball gags in their mouths, and was not satisfied.

  The whole room when the dancing started clapped and cried.

  The bomber was the bomb, and many died.

  The unshod got their feet back on and ran outside.

  The wedding party bled around the dying groom and bride.

  BIPOLAR NOVEMBER

  I get a phone call from my dog who died,

  But I don’t really.

  I don’t hear anything.

  Dear Jimmy, it is hard.

  Dear dog, you were just a dog.

  I am returning your call.

  I have nothing to say.

  I have nothing to add.

  I have nothing to add to that.

  I am saying hello to no.

  How do you do, no!

  I am returning your call.

  I rode a bubble to the surface just now.

  I unthawed the unthawed.

  I said yes. Yes, yes,

  How do you do?

  I called to say hello

  But am happy.

  Today it is spring in November.

  The weather opens the windows.

  The windows look pretty dirty.

  I go to my computer to see.

  The six-day forecast calls

  For happy haze for six days.

  The trees look like they’re budding.

  They can’t be in late November.

  It is mucilaginous springtime.

  It is all beginning all over.

  The warplanes levitate

  To take another crack at Iraq.

  Hey, Mr. Big Shot!

  I bet you went to Harvard.

  Leaves are still on the trees.

  The trees are wearing fine shoes.

  Everything is handmade.

  Everything believes.

  MIAMI IN THE ARCTIC CIRCLE

  And the angel of the Lord came to Mary and said:

  You have cancer.

  Mary could not think how.

  No man had been with her.

  And then there was the other time.

  Remember how happy we were.

  You were in my arms.

  I still had arms.

  The rain fell on upturned faces.

  Stars rained down on the desert.

  Everybody was body temperature.

  Everywhere was temperate.

  It was raining and global warming.

  Spiritual renewal made it beautiful.

  Desertification turned into desert.

  The sky above was shooting stars.

  The Martians rode across the desert

  In their outfits and their armbands,

  Clanging cymbals and banging a big drum.

  Boom! Boom!

  I am in favor of global warming.

  I don’t care about great-grandchildren.

  I won’t be here.

  I won’t be there.

  Angel, I can see your mout
h wide open,

  But can’t hear what you are singing.

  The shaking roar of the liftoff

  Does a vanishing act straight up.

  Fiddles and viols, let me hear your old gold.

  Trumpets, the petals of the antique rose unfold.

  This is the end.

  Testing, one, two, three, this is a test.

  COCONUT

  A coconut can fall and hit you on the head,

  And if it falls from high enough can kind of knock you dead.

  Dead beneath the coconut palms, that’s the life for me!

  And green jungle and white beaches and the blue South China Sea.

  That New York night at Café Lux when Cathy Hart was there,

  I knew that I was not prepared, but how does one prepare?

  When the coconut that kills you smiles and says, Please, Fred, have a seat—

  And feeds you fresh coconut milk to drink and sweet coconut meat to eat.

  I learned it was her birthday—which meant of course champagne!

  I ordered up the best Lux had with my extinguished brain.

  Do not resuscitate the zombie under the coconut tree!

  It’s me on my Jet Ski painting a contrail on the blue South China Sea!

  Happy birthday, Doctor Hart.

  You stopped my heart.

  You made it start.

  You supply the Hart part. I’ll supply the art part.

  MARRIAGE

  It was summer in West Gloucester.

  It was winter in West Gloucester.

  The birds sang in the brambles.

  Hands cut off for stealing.

  Hands cut off for stealing wings and song.

  New Eden 1960.

  Jack Kennedy campaigning.

  Every morning showered sparks of frost and freshness.

  Our fifty-acre magic carpet flew

  Out over the Atlantic.

  The birds sang in the brambles till

  The total-whiteout blizzard stopped everything but lust.

  ODE TO SPRING

  I can only find words for.

  And sometimes I can’t.

  Here are these flowers that stand for.

  I stand here on the sidewalk.

  I can’t stand it, but yes of course I understand it.

  Everything has to have a meaning.

  Things have to stand for something.

  I can’t take the time. Even skin-deep is too deep.

  I say to the flower stand man:

  Beautiful flowers at your flower stand, man.

  I’ll take a dozen of the lilies.

  I’m standing as it were on my knees

  Before a little man up on a raised

  Runway altar where his flowers are arrayed

  Along the outside of the shop.

  I take my flames and pay inside.

  I go off and have sexual intercourse.

  The woman is the woman I love.

  The room displays thirteen lilies.

  I stand on the surface.

  HOME

  The homeless are blooming like roses

  On every corner on Broadway.

  I am unclean.

  I bathe in their tears.

  The homeless are popping like pimples.

  They’re a little dog’s little unsheathed erection sticking out red.

  It makes us passersby sing.

  Ho ho. It’s spring.

  West Siders add fresh water

  But feed the flowers with urine.

  Sir, can you spare some change?

  Can you look at me for a change?

  Uncooked hamburger

  Erupts when he lowers his trousers.

  It’s his song.

  It’s raw oozing out of a grinder.

  He looks like a horrible burn from Iraq.

  His wound ripples

  In a hot skillet.

  America doesn’t look like that.

  He bends down to eat garbage.

  I bend down with a bag to clean up after the dog.

  I take the shit out of the bag

  And stuff it back up inside the dog

  And sew the anus closed,

  And put the dog in a two-fifty oven to scream for three hours.

  The homeless are blooming like roses.

  I’m hopeless.

  I bathe in their screams.

  I dress for the evening.

  My name is Fred Seidel,

  And I paid for this ad.

  I OWN NOTHING

  I own nothing. I own a watch.

  I own three watches.

  I own five motorcycles.

  It’s all I do.

  The undercarriage of the plane, whining to the down position for landing,

  Locks in place, sick of sex.

  My fancy life

  Is plain and strange.

  I always select Map

  On the monitor at my seat.

  It constantly displays where I am in my trip.

  It refreshes the truth minute by minute.

  You’re over an ocean with the other people in the cabin.

  You’re far from your destination.

  It will be hours at this altitude

  Without sex.

  I remember rushing out to an airport in Paris that morning on a whim,

  Trying to get on any flight to divided Berlin

  So I could watch the Wall coming down, which it did.

  Which I did. I suppose it did some good.

  I take my watch off at night but first thing in the morning slip

  The platinum jail cell on my wrist like a noose and close the clasp.

  Meanwhile, time is passing.

  Sometimes I shave twice—

  On waking as usual and then again

  In the evening to be smooth,

  Don’t ask for whom.

  My new motorcycle goes a thousand miles an hour.

  The plane has touched down in the rain

  In a country I don’t know.

  Talk about plain and strange.

  I don’t speak their singsong ugly language. Having arrived,

  I am ready to leave already.

  I love it out on the runway.

  It’s late at night. I love an empty airport.

  They stamp my passport.

  I’M HERE THIS

  My dog is running in his sleep.

  He’s yipping, his paws twitching, fast asleep.

  Hey, wait a minute, he’s been dead two years.

  The sunlight’s pouring down outside.

  Salt Lake City, how exotic, here I come!

  I can’t believe how far it is to here.

  I can’t accept, Get on a plane and go,

  Just pack and leave yourself behind and fly,

  And take the free trolley three stops to the Mormon Temple.

  It turns out there’s nothing much to see.

  The girl guides are darling, but watch it, they’re sinister.

  They’re programmed to save you right there in the Visitors’ Center.

  Welcome to Saudi Arabia in the middle

  Of snow-capped Switzerland!

  No yodeling, no alcohol—and I’m forbidden even

  To think about the inside of the Temple.

  Picture a blue-eyed sky

  Above a white man waiting on God.

  I mean a waiter.

  I mean serving a meal.

  Here I am, cooked through.

  Here I am, covered with snow.

  The prehistoric lakebed is sunbaked in a crust of prayer, salt, lies,

  Gold, silver, copper, lead, zinc.

  Here we are at the Grand America Hotel

  On Main Street, opposite the Little America Hotel

  On Main Street. My room the size of a ballroom

  Stares at the mountains.

  The owner of Sinclair Oil and his wife

  Designed their Taj Mahal and bought the best.

  Handloomed English woolen carpets on every floor
>
  Guarantee a blue-flash shock.

  Bush and an army of Secret Service stayed here last week—

  I’m here this.

  I get the afternoon tea pianist to play Bach

  When I get back from my motorcycle race.

  It’s L’année dernière à Marienbad, dude.

  It’s Mr. Sinclair Oil’s idea of classy wow.

  It’s the Ice Age—spa for the tuxedoed dead.

  Joy ahoy!

  ITALY

  TO JONATHAN GALASSI

  My last summer on earth

  I spent admiring Milan,

  But they were having a heat wave.

  The Japanese were everywhere.

  They eat lice.

  They order risotto milanese.

  They eat everything.

  My cell phone has changed my life.

  I never talk to anyone.

  I spent the summer in Bologna.

  Bologna is my town.

  Bologna is so brown.

  I ate shavings

  Of tuna roe on buttered toast

  Despite the heat,

  Brown waxy slices of fishy salt

  As strong as ammonia, Bologna.

  Bologna, it takes a prince to eat bottarga.

  Italy, your women are Italian!

  Your motorcycles are women.

  Milan, your men are high-heeled women.

  Bologna, your brown arcades

  Are waterfalls of shade.

  Fascist Italy was ice cream in boots.

  Its crema straddled the world.

  It licked south in the heat.

  It licked its boot.

  Fascisti! They take American Express!

  Comunisti! You forgot to sign!

  I have my table at Rodrigo in Bologna.

  I always eat at Bice in Milan.

  It is sweet to eat at Bibe, outside Florence,

  To walk there from Bellosguardo through the fields.

  Montale’s little Bibe poem is printed on the menu.

  I write my own.

  Islam is coming.

  MR. DELICIOUS

  I stick my heart on a stick

  To toast it over the fire.

  It’s the size of a marshmallow.

  It bubbles and blackens to

  Campfire goo—

  Burnt-black skin outside

  Gooey Jew.

  From the twentieth century’s

  24/7 chimneys, choo-choo-

  Train puffs of white smoke rise.

  The trains waddle full of cattle to the camps.

  The weightless puffs of smoke are on their way to the sky.

  Ovens cremate fields of human cow.

  Ovens cremate fields of human snow.