from The Life Death and Long Silence of Sweedeedee

1  

As a young girl she married a giant black dog
that walked behind her solemnly
            as though she were a coffin.
In the tabloids, Sweedeedee was dancing
at the end of a rope to no music. Closer

and closer to God swayed the girl
in the public gaze.  

            Her body was a dark and selfless decal
that made suicide superfluous.  
The dance floor was a furnace.  Neither here nor there!
sang Satan. Then, where? Then, where? went His song.  

In response, she burned the girl and rode the black dog
to her funeral.

 

2  

The mourners were jurors. Black umbrellas
blocked the sky.  Call me Joan of Arc! she called, 
                        call me anytime!  She cut off all her hair.  

She was quoted in the papers saying
                        Though found guilty, I find comfort in the fact
                        that I've been found!  They tied her to the stake. 
                        When the fires died, the ropes lay
in unbroken coils 'round its base. But how did I escape?
Swee has a cloud instead of a face. 

She hums The Temptations' I Wish It Would Rain.
                        Swee has a storm instead of a face. 

In the middle of the town square the empty stake
points toward the storm in accusation. Bells ring
around the elephantine finger. Trembling
                        jurors burn in tower windows
like distant galaxies or gases. Bells
ring. Towers shake. I wish it would rain!   

3   

Cows are men
at their best. 
Every donkey
is a mother.
When the donkey 
brays it's because 
you're sleepless 
with bronchitis.
It's because
you are sad
and sleepless
the donkey speaks.    

Goats' eyes
are the eyes
of children
yet to be conceived. 
A goat goes blind
every time
a newborn infant's
slapped on the behind.  

The goat's world
goes black
after the doctor's plastic  

wack!  No windows
overlook
the warm soft thing
of being human 
as it grazes 
through daisies 
hammered by the rain
on the hillside.    

Its hooves
are shoed in mud. 
Poor shoeless animal
lives the lamentation
poor man!
and man
is more
golden for its
grieving. Great  

Cow, Donkey,
Doe, Goat,
God, God,
God.   

4  

It's Sweedeedee's first day in Heaven. She rides a waterfall 
that's also a rainbow from cloud to cloud with other initiates.    

She bangs on pots and pans
and somewhere muffled tambourine
players csh-csh-csh  

on a sleigh through snow that's not cold; that's more like
lilliputian laundry dropping from roof-top clothes-lines.    

There are no bells
in Heaven, bells are remembered
as sexual innuendos.  

There are no wine-swilling divorcees to meet at hotel bars
in Heaven.   This decadence is so pure it seems innocent.    

It's set in the 70's.  She expects to catch her mom carrying on
on the dance floor as she did before Swee was born.  

She remembers her fans all cracked and hopeful holding headshots
to be autographed while signing something called   

the "Reincarnation Waiting List."  When asked
what she'd like to come back
as she whispers
pillow

 

5  

The set was fashioned after Fragonard's "The Swing." Sweedeedee pumps
her little feet beneath the Sycamore tree.

Staid her pet greyhound, brazen her face, big her breasts, heavy

            the necklaces that hang from her neck.
Some balloons slip behind the clouds. Tut-tut  

Too close to the sun! Brightly colored birds
disperse as though from a single
            exploded balloon.  

Of a child splashing into the sea; of Brueghel's
"Landscape with the Fall of Icarus," she thinks
 
But where are we? From a sunless alcove she sings
            It's not that serious to the missing child.

6  

At the racetrack she's earned
the reputation of a level-head
with her stop-at-a-winner strategy.  

She never bets on a maiden racer.  

Though she's never won twice
in a row, she's never known
a losing streak.  She shows fidelity

to her betting method.  Though
she's all "breasts and necklaces,"
her aspect weds respectability  

and fertility, high finance and light.  

Her children are named after
"time dogs" whose progress
she'd marked and made money on  

in The Daily Racing Form.
Sweedeedee runs her hand
over her buttons.  I'm getting plumb!

She seems almost pleased.

A balloon bursts, a child disrupts
the sea for an instant before sinking.

She thinks The bucket had come
up empty! and drops it back down the well.

7

Sweedeedee swings the car door open.  She's wearing
no underwear.  The camera sees straight through
to her soul. 

What were you expecting? It was unprotected.  

In the middle of the day, Swee sees
it's the middle of the day, and can't account for what came
before.  Shhhhhhh she sympathizes No one has come
to take out order!

Lou Reed's on the radio asking a fat blond actress for her autograph.

Swee nods.  It's easy to believe what comes is better
than what came before.  There are Cheerios
everywhere.  One is affixed to his forehead.

It looks like a button or a black hole manufactured by Acme.

She pushes it but doesn't pick him up.
You look frightened!  It's impossible to tell
what's worth protecting.  She frowns.  Impossible to tell.

8

Swee cries and cries They shot him three times!
He didn't die.  Shot in the throat and still alive!  Inexplicably,
sources at the scene say he
caught on fire.  Doused with a bucket of darkish waters.  In short,
it was put out.  After some confusion, a final shot, and his moans had at last gone-off.
Even those who loved him were relieved.
"The most curious of the seven was the commanding officer
of the firing squad; not yet 18."  Oh Officer! Cried Swee.
I thought he'd never leave!

9  

mortality is the thumbprint
of the gift just to have lived  

Swee produces a rope-ladder
from her suitcase, paints  

a black circle on the ceiling
and affixes one rope-end  

in its center.  Will it hold?
asks the man she kept waiting  

half-an-hour in the hotel lobby.
Just to have lived the universe  

organizes avalanches
of formlessness in ropes, ropes  

of flesh, ropes of love.  As a
natural result of being itself,  

the body must one day become
something else.  

They lay
in the shadow of the ladder

on the mattress.  They resemble
windsocks tangled in the wind.  

Eyeing the ceiling he wonders
aloud Could we have missed him?

10

Swee went mad while making the picture. No Music! she cried. But the noise
outdoors became music. Engine, footstep, elevator doors

opening. Ding! Then, No music except
by visible instruments! She ushered a string quartet into the restaurant. Lunch hour

at the Grand Prix. She cried Solo! and quoted Napoleon
accompanied by a single violin; "I make my battle
plans from the spirit of my sleeping soldiers."

On the track, the horses thwarted rhythm sings
a fallen chord, while indoors forks
sink through the pastries.  Clink!

clinks the porcelain saucers at the core of the whipped cream.  "Courage

is like love: it must have hope for nourishment."—Napoleon. Henceforth
we shall eat hope! Swee assures the ladies; The weight'll just fall away!