The sky along the street a gauzy yellow:
The narrow lights burn tall in the twilight.
The cool air sags,
Heavy with the thickness of bodies.
I am elated with bodies.
They have stolen me from myself.
I love the way they beat me to life,
Pay me for their cruelties.
In the close intimacy I feel for them
There is the indecency I like.
I belong to them,
To these whom I hate;
And because we can never know each other,
Or be anything to each other,
Though we have been the most,
I sell so much of me that could bring a better price.
RIOTS
As if all the birds rushed up in the air,
Fluttering;
Hoots, calls, cries.
I never knew such a monster even in child dreams.
It grows:
Glass smashed;
Stores shut;
Windows tight closed;
Dull, far-off murmurs of voices.
Blood—
The soft, sticky patter of falling drops in the silence.
Everything inundated.
Faces float off in a red dream.
Still the song of the sweet succulent patter.
Blood—
I think it oozes from my finger tips.
—Or maybe it drips from the brow of Jesus.
THE CITY AT NIGHT
Life wriggles in and out
Through the narrow ways
And circuitous passages:
Something monstrous and horrible,
A passion without any master,
Male sexual fluid trickling through the darkness
And setting fire to whatever it touches.