Polluted, and: The Cure

Polluted

it's so polluted       so more and more polluted andhot       Remember the year 2006 it was in the '70sat my birthday in November       we saw a flock of parakeetslike green pigeons in a tree in Brooklynthere was a botanica in that neighborhoodI wondered if you could buy a goat there to sacrificea fantasy of propitiation to the Yoruba pantheonthere are no gods there are no people the words are lies

if we called the gods people and the people gods . . .would we act like adults would we not stabthe mammal to see if it bled       I once saw a guywho'd just been knifed on the corner of First and NinthI was a block away he was bleeding I heard sirensthen I can't remember       the washing machinethe lavage it's clean and I don't know if he livedthat was earlier when I used to know how to remember

I am holding you together       I am like Legbaand I understand crossroads as every momentI was living in Paris but traveled often to New Yorkat the corner of France and US who are you itdoesn't matter       as long as I can find the allyin myself a light bursting out of my forehead and heartI am standing here hoping to appease your brutalitywords said in the daily way not poems are incorrect

though an anecdote might be true and artbut the sun doesn't care about us and we just tryto get by still owning cars like suicidal idiotsI just crossed out lines about watching a film with Eddie

ancient Village folksingers remembering DylanI remember Mississippi John Hurt at The Bitter EndI could say or who got rich and famous what was thatall about       I am the crossroads what's happening

I'm what's happening porous and permeated with scorching light

The Cure

You start and then you make rules for yourself grad-ually       It is predicament same how to live butwhy Animal habitudes so complex or am I an un-inherited mind that obeys no rules of my speciesI perhaps speak as a badger or stork and if I amgranite I've gathered my mien together over mil-

ennia my mien and adamantine depththe spars and no junk       Keep portraying somethingI just don't want to in 2003 I am diagnosedwith hepatitis C and write In the Pines and coedit intro-duce and annotate The Collected Poems of Ted Berriganthe treatment legendarily grueling strips me of weight

and moral confidence my liver is scarred but do I havethat or anything? I perhaps speak as a batwolf bear or owl with its terrifying howlin the forest wild and drear       It's connected by song tooI can see the atoms singing to each other can't youI was welcomed into the French community of medical patients

in which you're treated regardless of worth monetaryor social       they treated me and I wasn't pretty jolie ouFrançaise       What is being sung the song of your locationas physical one whose molecules observable co-here can you hear them       I told the story of myself as folkand vibrated to Leadbelly and The Man in the Long Black Coat—

I had often worn one myself Blind Willie McTell andCareless Love the species motto       I am watching the elect-ion I mean now but politics being shitty species be- havior of competition domination and looking for ex-cuse to hate and beat up so don't do it (a line fromthe theme song of Baretta) it's been It Was Just One

Of Those Things in my head in the kitchen mornings recentlyalso I'm wild again beguiled again etceteraWe saw an emu with its head holes staring at usin a zoo last week American culture now figures nearly nakedwomen singing songs they wrote too       the turtles' heads pointedall in one...