John Wieners

The scene changes

Five hours later and
I come into a room
where a clock ticks.
...

God love you
Dana my lover
lost in the horde
on this Friday night,
...

I sit in Lees. At 11:40 PM with
Jimmy the pusher. He teaches me
Ju Ju. Hot on the table before us
shrimp foo yong, rice and mushroom
...

And with great fear I inhabit the middle of the night
What wrecks of the mind await me, what drugs
to dull the senses, what little I have left,
...

to Somes

from incarceration, Taunton State Hospital, 1972

gaunt, ugly deformed

broken from the womb, and horribly shriven
...

For I have seen love
and his face is choice Heart of Hearts,
a flesh of pure fire, fusing from the center
where all Motion is one.
...

Yes I put her away.
But now life flares up
As safe as China in a cup
You hear the droppings
of her heart.
...

O poetry, visit this house often,
imbue my life with success,
leave me not alone,
give me a wife and home.
...

The quality of mercy

is not strained

It lieth along the center road

It falleth from the nude sky

as gentle earth rained

over green pastures He maketh
it to abide by Misted Q lanes

whosoever can tell what kiss
brings forward HIS peace

The quality of mercy is not strained
It falleth from the gentle earth like heaven.
...

Destiny lies behind our forces
and what lives in the soul
dies not. It inhabits our dreams
as perpetual as light.

As the spring grass flowers,
it sprouts out in hair on our chin
and keeps birds thin
with the perpetual gnawing of desire.

The higher one goes
up the angelic ladder
remains the minute bits
and ends of our life.

Seeds there to recur when we
are most unaware.
Old faces, letters crop up again.
Words from our poems

Menace the night
...

to Ms. Reid & Nana Will Never Forgive Me

Commencement exercises inhibited
by prevalent narcotics less habituated

forbid association to prior or pending
Cambridge excesses in vicinity of Harvard

Militia action maintain clinic reporters
au compagne duress as stated Walter Milli

probe IRA nippon mirror jewels radioed
design Dresden classic Elgin refuted Novena

garb anticipatoryrobot news coverage
due vendors civic observations from

hard knocks park squat the bells rang twelve
times in town two years here, must be Washington.

Dipping in agression surfeit real estate express
two confessions blameless ignorance Athaneum Trans­

E U R O P E A N Coin.
...

I have never stopped loving him
from the first moment I cast eyes upon him
although they made us rob Brink's
whether up the chimney.

he stopped loving me
over their atrocities
allegedly he never did
over two years before
even one Earlier Easter

say two or more likely
projected Jesuit patricide;
at one permanent

As. ante Yanagi, unmrd. edn.
...

Death is an unforgiven
That's what we have in common

language an act of sharing words.

Coming tears will do it

Where there's smoke
THERe's a suitcase

fairies never change

into fire

It's so hard to get to the top.

Death is a failure

there are so many of them.

Dont trust her
I don't care how old the races are.

And I never have.

for Cher.
...

Gas. A marriage that never existed, a death under investigation,
and a Fortune stolen from M a d women in custody of itinerants.

Who could say wealth provides security, when the truth of one's
income
lies upon inferiors, inferring supposed secretaries stoop against

truth serums, unpatentd innoculations' dictum of an i mousity,
valid
jealousy beyond single trust. L E T I T B E S A I D
goldberg Mellons

make M o n e y, without reason, though attenuation begets
square dollar
c R U S T.

from E U S T A C E M U L L I N S—inc*
to ARTHur Burns, a few flattulences can bankrupt a relationship
but Never

sink the N A T I O N I n t e n t.
Upon ousting Frederick Engels Marx, Einstein, Freud and Darwin.
...

A quart of champagne, one pill too many
and a paper from the state saying I am "a mentally ill person."
Was it the pills or champagne no

simply some orange roses in a glass of water
on the bureau to transport myth from the pillowcase
into black and white orders
on a piece of paper.!f I tread the straight and narrow
I should no trouble, do what's
expected of me, realize my friends
are not my enemies, and get rid of

them both, as the orange flowers tomorrow
the pills will be digested, champagne evaporated
and only paper left, along with old friends
that shall drift down as absent orange juice.

to cascade stair feeble central system, lovingly, longingly
with heartfelt consternation of how to examine
the doubtful belief that good is God, and God the only love
or awaking, alone in bed, has it ever been any different or
shall it be?
...

And when that music starts
there is no time, she takes you back
over fifteen years, as if yesterday
a song immortalized. Do you know her name

I met her once, with my lover: "You must be Jack!
and saw her twice afterwards, at Storyville and
The Black Hawk. Sunday in the rain, "He's funny
that Way', and I went crazy afterwards, woman's

sorrow her legacy holding hands under the table.
Billie's grey—hair was Parisian style and her
singing Big Apple. She's still rotting nectarines.
...

'You Talk Of Going But Don't ‘
' Even Have A Suitcase''

(A Series of Repetitions)

I will be an old man sometime
And live in a dark room somewhere.

I will think of this night someplace
the rain falling on stone.

There will be no one near
no whisper on the street

only this song of old yearning
and the longing to be young

with you together on some street.

Now is the time for retreat,
This is the last chance.

This is not the last chance.
Why only yesterday I lay drugged
on the dark bed while they came
and went as the wind

and they shall come again
to bear me down into that pit
there is no returning from.

Old age, disaster, doom.

It shall be as this room.
With you by the sink, pinching your face

in the mirror. Time is as a river

and I shall forget this night,
its joy.

You shall disappear down the road
and I shall moan your name

in the pillow, while candles burn outside
in windows of strange houses
to mark our fame.
...

A simple poem
About love is what I want
To write: words
Without mystery, but
Shoulders touching
In a slow song,
Watching the
Words come out,
Like a snake
From its box, it winds
About our shoulders and
Neck like a noose.
We wait on the bed
Scaffold
To drop
Into its pit and hang
Hung up there.

7.12.59
...

From Ellen Needham, indicted for their slaying
to Alan Myronwitz' interdit we got to clean up poor classes
"Kill them off", as his unproduced revue, "Shoot the President"
barely two decades late, with Uncle Eddie's "Oh, Oh" was he
Earl Warren
then? we got nothing to say this morning, after returning
from New York.

When the Maid of Mistd Orleans vacationd off The Y in
Room 517, with Charlie
at the wheel, both ways
under
orange lights, does an initial replace a proper name, does a Judge ressurrect codes, can Anna
'h live, Elizabeth Short, will Cyril join John give orders, or take
them.

The death of hard—working women allowing some a cup of
coffee surprises us, that their slayings
pass unnotc­
ied, yes the fields of Brewster, Willimantic embankments,
now Buddy,
no more Treason in the
telephoneless rooms, on the Eighth Street billboard display.
...

It is Friday night, a lone bird hollers
in the sky. And there is desire here
in my heart to go to town and mingle
with the crowds.

Sailors in white suits, barflies
and B—girls at the lower end
of Washington Street. I remember
Wednesday afternoon when we walked

in the sun and heard the girl sing
Stormy Weather. Mere description
but spirit of the night, teach us
to bear despair.

As the dark spreads out
its blot against the sky, or day
becomes night, the lassitude and
apathy increase

until at last there is left only
the moon in the devil's eye, and key
his crotch to divinity. Divulge
the secret whereby we may become

stars and glow in the night
with a brightness of our own.
In his left hand he holds
a cone of flame in a saucer.

In his right a torch.
Two devils pay him homage
at the foot of his pedestal.
One touches a gold hoof.

Bare breasts, the breasts of a woman
Bat wings, but more like the wings of a griffin
Goat's face with beard and cow ears.
He is Lucifer, supreme.

And to him I implore the light
to transmit the flame he holds
and lighten my days, not with drugs
but a divine halo to show his eyes.

And if to die is to move
from the ugliness of this world
then let it be; should I
welcome spring; turn summer down, and fall

from my hands; the serpent's slow unwinding,
agate eyes, and blue bushes now
in flower; spice smells undo the lament
of tree leaves on the cement.

But if this cannot be
then let it die with the singing
of one brown bird, at twilight
crook the hand, crawl over, cover us with leaves.
...