| Reviews Notes
Chronology
About William
|
from STORIES: Came In On a Train
Came in on a train
11:45pm
went to a hole downtown drank a beer waiting for the last
bus to carry me home
sat next to a completely drunk man::::
he had to work eight the next morning::::
in records at the county courthouse
He switched to sipping coffee said to me over and over
"I've got everything I want in life, except
one::::don't ask, I don't know what it is"
not said in perplexity or humor, not said in drunkenness
though slurred drunkenly
He offered to buy me a beer
I passed, headed out to the bus stop.
There a young man curled up on the bench wearing a filthy
tee-shirt shaking uncontrollably
his eyes both wild and glazed
harsh frightening cough echoing through the deserted
streets
"You all right, man?"
"Don't feel so good. "
"Do some crank or something?"
"No, man, I swear, I'm sick "
"You on the street?"
"Yeah::::I need the hospital"
"Bus'll be here in ten minutes"
I walked across the street and emptied a garbage bag full
of papers
ripped holes in it for his head and arms:::: "Here,
wear this"
helped him onto the bus
He slumped down, nodded out coughing, shivering
We got off two stops past mine
I walked him to the entrance of Mercy Hospital::::
an aide took him over
He wasn't to his senses enough to thank me, but would
have::::
a kind, gentle man::::real sick::::would have died if
left outside
No reason for him to die tonight.
from OBJECTS:
In
the Mirror There's a Knot
In
the mirror there's a knot as if a tree had fallen into
its mixture while solidifying flat, gray, causing
distortions in every face, a fissure, where you and I
collide into one break apart a riverless canyon, ice
crevasse or storm rising from us both and I enter by
staring by stretching with my hands stepping through and
creating what's on the other side::::
You called to me once when I was
standing there I thought of hiding so I ran but was still
standing there and you came up kissed my neck your arms
around me pulled me back I turned to you and said "I
wonder if I'm still alive?"
from POEMS:
I
pick lice from your hair and eat them
I pick lice from your
hair and eat them
in return you do mine, driven to find
through reciprocity that divine storm
beyond sensation: the idea of love
creation of your
imagination
which I parrot in the form of language;
and you listen, and this is also love.
I perceive your love's effects with reason
and uncover their
causes in knowledge.
Impressions I receive from my senses
are flat, glossy, pigmented surfaces
as if experience occurs in film.
So I project my flesh
onto your flesh
to show you what you feel that I cannot.
* * *
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