My generation, we know
close to nothing of the ice man
his monstrous hooks,
the coming and going
of the gaunt black dude,
Simon and his piss jug
all the other long-nailed wanderers
of whom we now refer as nothing.
More than modern-day miracles,
we will never know
your dead brother, neither blood
on the brain nor farmhouse
diminished to code:
mounds and holes
in steaming black
ash on snow
*
Instead, we wrap our fists around
long necks, suck down
what's been verboten for years.
Girls kiss girls
Boys cry
We desire
beer, weapons, anything
that deadens, not heaven
not hell, but our pleasures
in an empty-palmed earth
*
They would turn in their graves, you say
and they do. Back home
underground Amishmen squeal
like old-fashioned augers through knotted wood
Others turn as if on spits obliging the earth
to churn, to blister up like lepers' skin
their work in death not unlike worms
which you always told me were good
but which
I still have not grown to believe  |
