Free Poems 1959-2009 by Frederick Seidel Page B

yes I don’t.
    Do you love me?
    The answer is yes.
    The eyes glisten with feeling.
    The creature hath a purpose and its eyes are bright with it.
    This sudden pecking of asking, of being asked, is this.
    The answer is yes I don’t.
    The heart got the shot but got the flu anyway,
    And the body aches, and fever and chills, and can’t sleep.
    The forest shivers with fever.
    Their mother pulls their covers up.
    The whippoorwill keeps calling
whippoorwill whippoorwill
.
    Do you love me? Do you love me? I don’t love you.
    Not everyone is afraid.
    Not everyone feels vulnerable.
    Everyone is afraid of the terrible joy. I do.
    Each other is Mecca,
    The hajj to the Other.
    Â 
IL DUCE
    More than one woman at a time
    Is the policy that got the trains running on time.
    More than one at a time in those fascist days, and I climb
    Into the clouds and then above—the sublime!—
    And wag my wings and make it rhyme.
    More than one woman at a time was enough.
    On time because there were enough.
    Mussolini in riding boots stood at his desk to stuff
    Himself into the new secretary who was spread out on the desk. He goes
uff
.
    He goes
uff wuff, uff wuff
, and even—briefly—falls in luff.
    It’s getting worse, and I don’t like the way it sounds.
    Down in the subway, while you are waiting, all those humming sounds.
    In New York City, all the Lost-and-Founds.
    All the towed-away-car pounds.
    While you are waiting on the subway platform—God’s wounds! Zounds!
    Mussolini is standing on the little balcony
    Above Italy, and Italy is looking up at Mussolini on the balcony,
    Who is looking over at Ethiopia across a deep blue sea.
    I never have enough for me.
    I am getting on a girl motorcycle to go across the sea to see.
    Â 
I AM SIAM
    I saw the moon in the sky at sunset over a river pink as a ham.
    I am the governess imported from England by me,
    The widowed King of Siam.
    I drop down on one knee.
    I want to marry me.
    Where you are I am.
    Là où tu es je suis. Où tu es je suis.
    I drop down on one knee.
    I want to marry me.
    I do a
saut de chat
at sunset over a silver spoon of jam.
    Jam for the royal children, Felicity
    And Sam.
    I am the English governess imported from England by me.
    I am the widowed King of Siam! The widowed King of Siam!
    Â 
THE BIG JET
    The big jet screamed and was hysterical and begged to take off,
    But the brakes held it in place to force it to flower.
    The runway was too short, that’s why, kiddo.
    Till the engines powered up to full power.
    In a little school in what was then still called Burma, not yet cancered,
    Carolyn was teaching English to the lovely brownish children.
    The assignment was to use the word “often” in a sentence.
    â€œBirds fly more often than airplanes,” the boy answered.
    Little sudden flowers in the desert after it rains,
    Bearing gifts of frankincense and myrrh …
    What thou lovest well remains.
    Birds fly more often than airplanes.
    Meat-eating seagulls shout their little cries
myanmar myanmar
above the airport,
    Dropping razor clams on the runway to break them open.
    Hard is soft inside.
    The big jet has soft people inside for the ride.
    Â 
THE BLACK-EYED VIRGINS
    A terrorist rides the rails underwater
    From one language to another in a packed train of London
    Rugby fans on their way to the big match in Paris
    And a flock of Japanese schoolgirls ready to be fucked
    In their school uniforms in paradise.
    This is all just after Madrid in the reign of terror.
    This is the girls’ first trip outside Japan.
    The terrorist swings in the hammock of their small skirts and black socks.
    The chunnel train stops in the tunnel with an announcement
    That everyone now alive is already human remains.
    The terrorists have seen to it that trains
    Swap human body parts around with bombs.
    The Japanese schoolgirls say so sorry.
    Their new pubic hair is made of light.
    Â 
EUROSTAR
    Japanese schoolgirls in their school uniforms