Anne Waldmanfrom "Marriage: A Sentence"
Thinking you want to secure "on an even keel" is not enough in this bedroom. Curtains closed sheets are warm o yes you await "the touch." O yes it is the designated room where you lie prone. The bed is sound & made for ache and consummation of please marry this marrying feeling to the seduction of please marry this feeling to the desire of your head. Yet love is an enemy you need to get you off the track off back of possession & desire. Hear me out stake me now in the obligations of marrying love. Obsequies. How many years. Been to the desert (of love) lay down with scorpions mutated heat waves mirages old fellows of the carriage trade I tracked silk routes of abandon & commerce drunk on gold & other alchemical substances I fought the evil fight the desert fox the desert storm. I deserted my country for this one way out with sand way out with sand that blinds founded a kingdom there dreamed the enemy was the I I adjusted my psyche to locked to the pleasure of his company. It was a mitigated curse no it was blameless. If there ever was a good idea it was conceived in love, but a kind of paranoia sets in to make you think in reverse. Because love won't stop his whips was coming around with a harness on with a scorpion ready to sting. Stay the lashes love always brings bring them on of outrageous activity realms all the corners of the sensual universe. Because you want no one to touch you because you are the inexplicit virgin young & afraid. Steals your power. Or you might think that: hide form nuptials. And then be sacrificed the next day to a tutelary deity with your feather headdress on.--even keel
Meant to be proud meant to be astonished & full of surprise at the mere winking of flattery's sexual eye meant to be inexhaustible at the front range or outermost perimeters of underclass meant to be insurmountable meaning you couldn't climb on top of me with britches on meant a display meant a horror of violence meant destabilizing the economy downsizing wherever it is you want to stand for or on someone else's abundant shadow meant realizing the heart's always on a preternatural sleeve meant it glows in the dark meant it's mine but meant for you meant radiation counts for all that means you are about to be homeless it's a split hair way if you fight like that the system & all dear hubby meant a way out when you were needy meant slumming when you needed me meant driving home a wifey point about environmentally sound architecture meant the storm would not abate that the hurricane would cost many lives that life is not cheap though some say so who are at war let's eject them out the human kingdom the animal kingdom the kingdom of beauty and parity & divorce them from their home & that small organism the kingdom of languages & their extensive extended families meant originally trying her on for size meant he got down on his knees at last in a kind supplication for nuptial vow meant it could last it might last could it last could it possibly last & were they to breed & how many more does the coupling planet hold & were it to last would it really last & have meant something does last in the name of Allah, how many billions a planet can hold as the residue on the sleeve lasts chanting I do I do I do I do I do I do I do I do I do I do I do I do I do I do do I & I do lasts & I do not last I am impermanent in the name of Buddha meant to point out it's the same sleeve in an ancient poem she wept over and was inside of lasting meant that the one who was a kind of trope for the poem, the Genji of it, would never n'er be faithful meant to be faithful meant to be, couldn't but was ultimately faithful to himself to all of them himself the beauties the troubled ones of himself the awesome beauteous troubling ones of himself all tied in knots that nuptial means political but also under stars and placating doesn't necessarily mean that means attrition meant collusion means decision meant the disappointment of large sectors of grace meant she was fit to be tied meant she was not to be witched in her marriage trial meant that clouds would part the sea would part meant it was expected that one could be loved be wowed be vowed could be lamented meant the labels don't count they're all fraternizing fascinating with the enemy, what enemy? Say it, I do. I do what. Espouse.
--Heuristically speaking
Anne Waldman was an assistant director and director of the Poetry Project at St. Mark's-in-the-Bowery Church from 1966 to 1978, founded (with Allen Ginsberg) the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, in 1974, and has published more than thirty pamphlets and books of poetry. These poems are from her book Marriage: A Sentence, forthcoming from Penguin.
