Nobody whispers because
it’s Sunday
even the sky seems a bit orderly
not fit for blank verse
in any case silence never
did anyone any good.

Someone ought to put
the wind up those Sunday clouds

Things that fit scare me to death
like wearing the right armour
for talking to people.
People are only naked
when it’s no good for anyone
for money because they think
other people do it
or locked in some box

People in money-box attitudes
are invisible to me
so they can’t expect me to
say what beautiful bodies they have

I’ll tell you when I see
a beautiful body
but somebody will have to help
me out of this armoured box first.

I should understand something by now
I’ve thought plenty
I should but I don’t.

When I hear you crying
I should be able to say
Yes, my tears have been a kind of language too,
and they mean that all the eyes
we’ve spoken with have not been dumb
but I cannot say anything at all.

I’m always about to discover
what it all really adds up to
and about to save you from the pain of going
where you would have to if you wanted my secret
then my dreams in geometry burn like
outdated maps and my feet stand on some
garbage hill and the roads in front and behind
are all charred ruins
and I offer you a handful of ashes

Forget it you say
and you care just as much as me
or just as little
and our minds hold each other by a thread
of electric pain which is very small
and very easy to switch on and off
and usually it is the easy darkness

I should understand something by now
I try to be obedient
but I always leave school early
for this twisted, unruly refuge

I should not wander or feel sorry for myself
but some words are too hard and too loud a lesson
for my mind ever to unlearn.

Holden Caulfield
I walked right past you
over the cliff
and at the time I just wondered
what hit me
I wondered
till I forgot what I was wondering about
and then you came tumbling after
into this hideous new nursery rhyme

and here we are
upside down heads in the sand
lapped by a rock-eating sea

it makes me cry like a lost child
and my tears once ran straight
from a point of knowledge
but now they die unjourneyed
immediately choked by sand
not that it was ever easy
before
but now even pain
is killed in the death rush
and the best we can do now
is quickly commiserate
shake hands without disturbing
one grain of sand
although we do it a million times a minute.