What are you up to son of a gun? I roast on my heart's dark side. What do you use as a skewer sweetheart? I use my own crooked backbone. What do you salt yourself with loverboy? I grind the words out of my spittle. And how will you know when you're done chump? When the half-moons on my fingernails set. With what knife will you carve yourself smartass? The one I hide in my tongue's black boot. Well, you can't call me a wrestler If my own dead weight has me pinned down. Well, you can't call me a cook If the pot's got me under its cover. Well, you can't call me a king if the flies hang their hats in my mouth. Well, you can't call me smart, When the rain's falling my cup's in the cupboard. Nor can you call me a saint, If I didn't err, there wouldn't be these smudges. One has to manage as best as one can. The poppies ate the sunset for supper. One has to manage as best as one can. Who stole my blue thread, the one I tied around my pinky to remember? One has to manage as best as one can. The flea I was standing on, jumped. One has to manage as best as one can. I think my head went out for a walk. One has to manage as best as one can. This is breath, only breath, Think it over midnight! A fly weighs twice as much. The struck match nods as it passes, But when I shout, Its true name sticks in my throat. It has to be cold So the breath turns white, And then mother, who's fast enough To write his life on it? A song in prison And for prisoners, Made of what the condemned Have hidden from the jailers. White--let me step aside So that the future may see you, For when this sheet is blown away, What else is left But to set the food on the table, To cut oneself a slice of bread? In an unknown year Of an algebraic century, An obscure widow Wrapped in the colors of widowhood, Met a true-blue orphan On an indeterminate street-corner. She offered him A tiny sugar cube In the hand so wizened All the lines said: fate. Do you take this line Stretching to infinity? I take this chipped tooth On which to cut it in half. Do you take this circle Bounded by a single curved line? I take this breath That it cannot capture. Then you may kiss the spot Where her bridal train last rustled. Winter can come now, The earth narrow to a ditch-- And the sky with its castles and stone lions Above the empty plains. The snow can fall... What other perennials would you plant, My prodigals, my explorers Tossing and turning in the dark For those remote, finely honed bees, The December stars? Had to get through me elsewhere. Woe to bone That stood in their way. Woe to each morsel of flesh. White ants In a white anthill. The rustle of their many feet Scurrying--tiptoing too. Gravedigger ants. Village-idiot ants. This is the last summoning. Solitude--as in the beginning. A zero burped by a bigger zero-- It's an awful licking I got. And fear--that dead letter office. And doubt--that Chinese shadow play. Does anyone still say a prayer Before going to bed? White sleeplessness. No one knows its weight. What The White Had To Say For how could anything white be distinct from or divided from whiteness? Meister Eckhart Because I am the bullet That has gone through everyone already, I thought of you long before you thought of me. Each one of you still keeps a blood-stained handkerchief In which to swaddle me, but it stays empty And even the wind won't remain in it long. Cleverly you've invented name after name for me, Mixed the riddles, garbled the proverbs, Shook you loaded dice in a tin cup, But I do not answer back even to your curses, For I am nearer to you than your breath. One sun shines on us both through a crack in the roof. A spoon brings me through the window at dawn. A plate shows me off to the four walls While with my tail I swing at the flies. But there's no tail and the flies are your thoughts. Steadily, patiently I life your arms. I arrange them in the posture of someone drowning, And yet the sea in which you are sinking, And even this night above it, is myself. Because I am the bullet That has baptized each one of your senses, Poems are made of our lusty wedding nights... The joy of words as they are written. The ear that got up at four in the morning To hear the grass grow inside a word. Still, the most beautiful riddle has no answer. I am the emptiness that tucks you in like a mockingbird's nest, The fingernail that scratched on your sleep's blackboard. Take a letter: From cloud to onion. Say: There was never any real choice. One gaunt shadowy mother wiped our asses, The same old orphanage taught us loneliness. Street-organ full of blue notes, I am the monkey dancing to your grinding-- And still you are afraid-and so, It's as if we had not budged from the beginning. Time slopes. We are falling head over heels At the speed of night. That milk tooth You left under the pillow, it's grinning.

A tearful tincture washes Cabbage-green skies; Beneath the dribbling bushes Your raincoats lie; Pale white in private moonlight, Like round-eyed sores, Flap your scabby kneecaps apart, My ugly whores! We loved each other in those days, Ugly blue whore! We ate boiled eggs And weed. One night you made me a poet, Ugly blond whore. Get between my legs, I'll whip you. I puked up your greasy hair, Ugly black whore; You tried to unstring My guitar. Blah! Some of my dried-up spit, Ugly red whore, Still stinks in the cracks Of your breast. O my little lovelies, I hate your guts! Go stick big blisters On your ugly tits! Break the cracked bottles and jars Of my feelings; Come on! Be my ballerinas Just for a while! Your shoulder blades are twisted back, My masterpieces! Stick stars in your snatches and shake Them to bits! And it was for you hunks of meat I wrote my rhymes! My love was sticky self-deceit And dirty games! Dumb bunch of burnt-out stars, - Against the walls! Go back to God, croak in corners Like animals! Pale white in private moonlight, Like round-eyed sores, Flap your scabby kneecaps apart, My ugly whores!

A while back, if I remember right, my life was one long party where all hearts were open wide, where all wines kept flowing. One night, I sat Beauty down on my lap.—And I found her galling.—And I roughed her up. I armed myself against justice. I ran away. O witches, O misery, O hatred, my treasure's been turned over to you! I managed to make every trace of human hope vanish from my mind. I pounced on every joy like a ferocious animal eager to strangle it. I called for executioners so that, while dying, I could bite the butts of their rifles. I called for plagues to choke me with sand, with blood. Bad luck was my god. I stretched out in the muck. I dried myself in the air of crime. And I played tricks on insanity. And Spring brought me the frightening laugh of the idiot. So, just recently, when I found myself on the brink of the final squawk! it dawned on me to look again for the key to that ancient party where I might find my appetite once more. Charity is that key.—This inspiration proves I was dreaming! "You'll always be a hyena etc. . . ," yells the devil, who'd crowned me with such pretty poppies. "Deserve death with all your appetites, your selfishness, and all the capital sins!" Ah! I've been through too much:-But, sweet Satan, I beg of you, a less blazing eye! and while waiting for the new little cowardly gestures yet to come, since you like an absence of descriptive or didactic skills in a writer, let me rip out these few ghastly pages from my notebook of the damned.

Consider a man and a woman on a Saturday night — and a pineapple from the Côte d'Ivoire upright in a blue plastic bowl waiting like an angel to be rent apart and eaten. Consider a Noah's ark full of Sunday roasts and vegetables squealing in their own juices while he meets her parents; and how words are thrown in the pot and wasted like salt until the mouth's soiled and exhausted and incapable of tasting more than brine. Consider all the nights she sits, her body watering for the dark thing it needs most though that too turns milky and terribly northern the minute the story cracks and goes bad, like the naked rind of a pineapple that's been attacked and skinned alive and, dripping flies, is returned to the earth like a young hero everyone indulged but no one gave a damn about in the first place while the woman hunkers down in front of the telephone unwrapping a packet of questions as some would condoms — scrupulously as if that could bind her to another.

It seemed the kind of life we wanted.
 Wild strawberries and cream in the morning.
 Sunlight in every room.
 The two of us walking by the sea naked.

 Some evenings, however, we found ourselves
 Unsure of what comes next.
 Like tragic actors in a theater on fire,
 With birds circling over our heads,
 The dark pines strangely still,
 Each rock we stepped on bloodied by the sunset.

 We were back on our terrace sipping wine.
 Why always this hint of an unhappy ending?
 Clouds of almost human appearance
 Gathering on the horizon, but the rest lovely
 With the air so mild and the sea untroubled.

 The night suddenly upon us, a starless night.
 You lighting a candle, carrying it naked
 Into our bedroom and blowing it out quickly. The dark pines and grasses strangely still.

I. Clear water; [stinging] like the salt of a child's tears, the whiteness of women's bodies attacking the sun; silken, in masses and pure lily, banners under the walls a maiden defended; The frolic of angels - No… the current of gold in motion moves its arms, dark and above all cool, of green. She [the weed] sinks, and having the blue Heaven for a canopy, takes for curtains the shade of the hill and of the arch. II. Oh! The wet surface stretches out its clear bubbles! The water covers the made beds with pale and bottomless gold; [it is as if] the faded green dresses of little girls [were] playing at willows, out of which leap the unbridled birds. Purer than a gold louis, yellow warm eyelid, the marsh marigold - thy conjugal faith O Spouse! - at noon sharp, from its dull mirror, envies the rosy beloved Sphere in the sky wan with heat. III. Madame holds herself too erect in the neighbouring meadow where the threads of [the spider's] toil are snowing down' parasol in her fingers; crushing the cow-parsley; too proud for her; children reading in the flowery greenness; their red morocco book! Alas, He, like a thousand white angels parting on the roadway, makes off beyond the mountain! She, quite cold, and dark, runs! After the flight of the man! IV. Nostalgia for the thick young arms of pure green! Gold of the April moons in the heart of the hallowed bed! Joy of the abandoned boat-yards, the prey to the August evenings which quickened these corruptions! How she weeps, now, under he ramparts! The breath of the poplars above is all there is for a breeze. Then it is the sheet of water without reflections and without a spring, grey: an old man, a dredger, in his motionless boat, labours. V. Plaything of this eye of mournful water, I cannot reach - O boat without motion! O too short arms! - either this flower or that one: neither the yellow one which importunes me here; nor the blue one, the beloved in the ashes water. Ah! The pollen of willows which a wing shakes! The roses of the reeds, long since eaten away! My boat still fast; and its anchor chain taut to the bottom of this limitless eye of water, - in what slime? --------------- What does it matter to us, my heart, the sheets of blood And of red-hot coals, and a thousand murders, and long howls Of rage ; sobbings from every inferno destroying Every (kind of) order ; and still the North wind across the wreckage ; And all the vengeance ? Nothing !... - But still, yes We desire it ! Industrialists, princes, senates, Perish ! Power, justice, history : down ! It is our due. Blood ! blood ! the golden flame ! All to war, to vengeance, to terror, My soul ! Let us turn in the wound : Ah ! away with you, Republics of this world ! Of Emperors, Regiments, colonists, peoples, enough ! Who should stir the vortices of furious flames But we and those whom we imagine brothers ? It's our turn, romantic friends : we are Going to enjoy it. Never shall we labour, O fiery waves ! Europe, Asia, America - vanish ! Our march of vengeance has occupied every place, Cities and countrysides ! - We shall be smashed ! The volcanoes will explode ! And the Ocean, smitten... Oh ! my friends ! - My heart, it is certain ; they are brothers ; Dark strangers, if we began ! Come on ! Come on ! - O evil fortune ! I feel myself tremble, the old earth, On me who am more and more yours ! the earth melts. It is nothing : I am here ; I am still here. Arthur Rimbaud