Le Coq

Waving his floppy red crown
and boasting, a broad golden chest,
he paraded his intent to make more of himself.
But she stuck him with a needle
before he could act.

Beak down and wings spread out,
blood found its way back to the gutter
and down to the fields where the women dig,
in the soil as black as my grandmothers
once painted their teeth.

The flaccid neck droops off the edge
of the round cedar platter, and
the golden chest is dull and still.
Deceptive feathers, piled high somewhere,
make for stuffing where we had none.

His sound is no more in our ears,
screeching at dawn toward the east.
Take his head and his crest to the forest,
where the bear wakes.

Identity

Jean-Marc rose to get the bottle of cognac and two glasses. Then, after swallowing a mouthful: "At the end of my hospital visit, he began to reminisce. He reminded me what I must have said when I was sixteen. When he did that, I understood the sole meaning of friendship as it's practiced today. Friendship is indispensable to man for the proper function of his memory. Remembering our past, carrying it with us always, may be the necessary requirement for maintaining, as they say, the wholeness of self. To ensure that the self doesn't shrink, to see that it holds on to its volume, memories have to be watered like potted flowers, and the watering calls for regular contact with the witnesses of the past, that is to say, with friends. They are our mirror; our memory; we ask nothing of them but that they polish the mirror from time to time so we can look at ourselves in it."

Milan Kundera, Identity

Lugano, Autumn

Streets lined straight with silver coins

turn men to decorated rats

in our glittering capital of Hamlin.

Sprinklings from pricey powders
rest on the fur shoulders of grannies

without the potpourri pharmacy stink.

Young women grip the refined arms of Guido;

pets feigning balance as they strut and squawk

like exotic birds in mile-high stilettos.

I should snicker. I should be sick,

but I too lick the gaudy stockings

of Our Lady of Material Desires.

Sex and success hang off her skeletal frame.

Objects of beauty branded by commercial names:

this is you.

I have therefore I am.

Flicking tongues spit the flames of a more passionate language,

rolling "r"s over my choppy and guttural expressions

while a conflagration of envy and imitation

sweeps away my sense of another reality.

The pristine lakes and mountain villas,

spotless streets, plastic breasts and stone faces

mock me with their organized perfection,

maintained by lies of good in gold.

Isolated by more than mountains.

----

Thanks to Joe Amato.

Hoffnung:

You listened. But when I spoke, the thoughts I could express were not what I wanted you to hear. Carefully selected pauses in phrases with allusions to shared memories had been telling you all along. The pauses leaked into growing pools of silence that had their own meaning between us, for what could be louder than those spaces when the Gods speak? How often is the attempt at articulation only superfluous digression and the struggle for eloquence merely wasted clichés? How underestimated is the power of a glance? I valued subtlety and the elegance of brevity, and I knew you knew how to read between the lines. Then we began to sense the soundless interludes had become a pernicious gap in communication, a growing muted pleading for something more, a connection, which unheard became frustrated, violent and uncontrollable. What I thought was wordless comprehension was but hopeful endurance, wearing out. Front to front I thought my hands could link our thoughts, but sleeping back to back, expectations faltered that you could understand.
Now, alone waiting for dreams I wonder;
why would you speak to someone that way?

You drop a word here or there,
a statement or a question,
or maybe both or neither.
What fears worm back and through to eat
the development of what
you really meant to say
or meant to ask by saying
a thousand words that missed their mark.

Underworld Dirty Epic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWuAc4pnYFc&NR=1&feature=fvwp

Sylvia Plath

Daddy You do not do, you do not do Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time-- Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe Big as a Frisco seal And a head in the freakish Atlantic Where it pours bean green over blue In the waters off beautiful Nauset. I used to pray to recover you. Ach, du. In the German tongue, in the Polish town Scraped flat by the roller Of wars, wars, wars. But the name of the town is common. My Polack friend Says there are a dozen or two. So I never could tell where you Put your foot, your root, I never could talk to you. The tongue stuck in my jaw. It stuck in a barb wire snare. Ich, ich, ich, ich, I could hardly speak. I thought every German was you. And the language obscene An engine, an engine Chuffing me off like a Jew. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. I began to talk like a Jew. I think I may well be a Jew. The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna Are not very pure or true. With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack I may be a bit of a Jew. I have always been scared of you, With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo. And your neat mustache And your Aryan eye, bright blue. Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You-- Not God but a swastika So black no sky could squeak through. Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you. You stand at the blackboard, daddy, In the picture I have of you, A cleft in your chin instead of your foot But no less a devil for that, no not Any less the black man who Bit my pretty red heart in two. I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do. But they pulled me out of the sack, And they stuck me together with glue. And then I knew what to do. I made a model of you, A man in black with a Meinkampf look And a love of the rack and the screw. And I said I do, I do. So daddy, I'm finally through. The black telephone's off at the root, The voices just can't worm through. If I've killed one man, I've killed two-- The vampire who said he was you And drank my blood for a year, Seven years, if you want to know. Daddy, you can lie back now. There's a stake in your fat black heart And the villagers never liked you. They are dancing and stamping on you. They always knew it was you. Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Lady Lazarus I have done it again. One year in every ten I manage it- A sort of walking miracle, my skin Bright as a Nazi lampshade, My right foot A paperweight, My featureless, fine Jew linen. Peel off the napkin O my enemy. Do I terrify?- Yes yes Herr professor, it is I! Can you deny The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth? The sour breath Will vanish in a day. Soon, soon the flesh The grave cave ate will be At home on me And I a smiling woman. I am only thirty. And like the cat I have nine times to die. This is Number Three. What a trash To annihilate each decade. What a million filaments. The Peanut-crunching crowd Shoves in to see Them unwrap me hand in foot - The big strip tease. Gentleman , ladies These are my hands My knees. I may be skin and bone, I may be Japanese Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman. The first time it happened I was ten. It was an accident. The second time I meant To last it out and not come back at all. I rocked shut As a seashell. They had to call and call And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls. Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I've a call. It's easy enough to do it in a cell. It's easy enough to do it and stay put. It's the theatrical Comeback in broad day To the same place, the same face, the same brute Amused shout: 'A miracle!' That knocks me out. There is a charge For the eyeing my scars, there is a charge For the hearing of my heart- It really goes. And there is a charge, a very large charge For a word or a touch Or a bit of blood Or a piece of my hair on my clothes. So, so, Herr Doktor. So, Herr Enemy. I am your opus, I am your valuable, The pure gold baby That melts to a shriek. I turn and burn. Do not think I under estimate your great concern. Ash, ash- You poke and stir. Flesh, bone, there is nothing there- A cake of soap, A wedding ring, A gold filling. Herr God, Herr Lucifer Beware Beware. Out of the ash I rise with my red hair And I eat men like air.