Steven David Justin Sills

“ The night is full of impulses To live and to run and seep heavily Into its dark robes of Silence and morbid rightness; And as I, again, try to thrust on dryly-- A log without a river traveling it To the product of lumber-- and hope to create love in The smackings of night, Like anyone else, I know that soon I am to apologize for lack Of an ejaculation, And will promise to have a counselor Tame me to the exclusion of All but work and lust. Sounds of people Kicking around the Night of early morning Beneath my lover's window ”

“ Most of those early mornings some train Would pour its breath to the weeds At the edge of the tracks, losing them In sound and mist of a voice Screaming out, alone, Through the cold and the living. His arms would tremble With the body weakening, and then demobilized, to the floor Before the count of fifty. Through the fogged condensation Of the upper corners to a window He would glance up at the train-- Each car imagined as the girlfriend, Cindy, Or the seminary, which he never Grasped or rejected and so They slipped away ”

“ But now years on top of each other, Uncountable to her, She continues guiding The few of the masses of cars That turn into the lot Where to park: in winters Conscious of the visibility Of her cold breathing, And summers with the scents Of greased telephone poles And sights of light gleaming off Car windows, she thinks Of buying old junk from garage sales For her yard sales, with the same prices, So as to recall the sounds of human voices Other than her own. ”

“ He desires to clasp the gate That is around the Hispanic cemetery And watches the cars on Allen Parkway, below, Curve and toward the sun Become a gleam moving endlessly And instantly gone. He desires to arrive there and Read a few tombstones Before and after watching. She desires to imagine horses Carrying her away from here to the West, And other horses following with her family behind. She desires to follow the Cuban that she fears Since he is moving away from the refugee houses. There are no horses in inner-city; and The Hispanic cemetery cannot be found To souls wanting to rest there. ”

“ In the bus window he sees his diaphanous face--the windows Of the Hilton, where he has a job in maintenance, Piercing solidly through its head. He rings the bell. The idea of her not home, and legally annulled From his life--her small crotch not tightened to his desperate Thrusts--makes him feel sick. He gets down from the bus. He goes to work. He suddenly knows that being in love is not love. ”

“ Saltillo in Mexican mountains when the land shivers in shadow And the sun stretches through the air and beyond it With an intent to overpower what is closer to man-- The River-walk and the Alamo and between both where A Philipino in green shorts eats the grass Where sidewalk and road intersect. There is a city where I Thought I could find myself less lonely, And so I have returned home. Snow embraces Springfield's earth to its death. ”

“ And as he stood up the mattress of his bed may have Raised to touch his rear, again, Like a quick and soothing give-me-five handshake; And opening a window of the embassy To escape the stuffy dryness Of electric heat to his suite, He may have let the cool American air Attack him with the smells and sights Of its diplomatic car exhausts, Grey and orange from street lamps And store lights...and how The nation breathed for once as it moved. The third: road; cows, like islanders; Multi-tinted bladed fields broken by acres Of forests and pastures; a black-sun scene with Car lights ”

“ A voice below bellows Your name, Dave, Into the settling air of coal dust. After you shut off the engines And descend beneath the dragline's skeletal Nose which canopies like a skyscraper on Its side in mid-air You confront a face You cannot see in the descending sun. ”

“ There is no circulation Beneath the steering wheel for my feet. Outside myself There is the last of the sun at dusk But like the conquering Hsuing-Nu Pushing themselves beyond a Great Wall and through an eternal Gathering, it is hardly felt. ”

“ She understood money With its charm of a cocaine high-- Although the need for dominance And the breaking of rules Made her love him Who still did not supply her with all of her needs-- But the composite smell of the factory and the drugs That he sold after each shift Would lessen the good feelings that made That understanding. ”

“ Sunlight, stripped silver from the grey Clouds, pours through the window to the table. To your right a nine of swords card of a man pierced in the Back gleams as it walls the card of your future lovers., And the redness of Doctrines and Covenants to the far left of That table also looks pure in the light. ”

“ Cars' casketed phantoms of people Chasing up and down Dunlavy Street of Houston After something--their whole lives after something-- Come and go from consciousness like respiration. The people plant and reap. ”

“ He does not wish to think of them Or the vaginas that are not his to put on Or the illusive woman who would be sick with him like a child lying on the sofa in fever and hoping That in the shadows on the wall and the Passing sounds that are concentrated on her mind One will bring deliverance--only placing the deliverance On him and yet loving him for himself Beyond that need. ”

“ Sit, Keith; go back to bed, Keith; Go to the bathroom, Keith: In this camp I shape the minutes of his life To some acceptable pattern. He rubs his hands together As if trying to spark fire For the inhabitants Of his imaginary world. Stop that, Keith, I say. Sit, Keith. Keith sits: There is no coming out For him after twenty years This way, Or perhaps for me. The pale gas lamps are strewn around A small area of limbs In a corner of the sky-- All but patches are aflame Like a roof of a tent around The stakes, ready to break off And fall. ”

“ Skin peeling under the fur, hidden, But not from the last hot beams ahead Of emerging dusk, becoming crisp And then soaking up the hot blood, as the trachea, With the last of the air drawing in, begins to fold its walls ”

“ In bitterness that shakes my intestines, I laugh! Another hillbilly man Has lifted his head above the rest--a foot up from the jug-- And has blown his breath into the air Which 'naps another young and fragmented one To the call of being holy. ”

“ Gabriele, held together by the stitching of hate-- The plastic-eyed polar bear with the stiff arms That the factory of the human race mutantly created-- This time it will be you who shall feel the wall of artificial Fur ripped from its threads, and your stuffing falling out. For a little maddog on top of four joints Makes a person see the unsealed human fragments That had been smoothed over in time Like a million and some bone fractures The milk of approval had swum into and covered over for looks. ”

“ And then, planted and repulsed, Only the seam of backbone minutely faces her, That bed of earth. With all conscious force I breathe the aloneness that intangibly defines the Air. I swallow its ambrosia Of depth and ask myself Why I ever married the woman. There is void. ”

“ Farmers wishing the seeds To suddenly open to be plucked up faster So that they are not The last ones laid in By their hands; Little "third-world" nations of people hoping For the great debtor nation to continental-drift To bankruptcy, painless and alone; And nearly empty of thoughts--Herb's woman, Jeanie, Behind the Ellison Building standing With concrete drilling its stiffness Through her soles. ”

“ In Houston Cubans pack From refugee houses And plan to fly away into America, and depart Far from the Castilian hot-dog vender Of Herman Park waiting for The thirsty and hungered And those ignorant of what they want But know that they want something And so come to buy from her Who wants people to come to her For more than the chips Because the hotdogs are overpriced, Who formulates That she is unskilled And that a computer course would answer it all ”

“ For there were no friends to affect Mutually and faggishly in embraces; And the young and sensitive Were Oriental and fonder Of the cigarettes They put in their faces And the beers that suddenly appeared Before them. This would not do: Mouth-hugging the earth On its bulge of life Or moving to songs Where the dances never end. He was an old fag and must retain A square orbit. It, at least, Was a gentleman's right And in accordance with the Manner of the fags. ”

“ Hand-limp, His broom dance sweeps Upended under an empty park bench-- Dirt caught under The tongues of his feet-- So his paycheck Will come in the mail And become bank figures He can suck from To keep he and his woman Housed and fed, and well enough To legally rape each other in embraces, Forgetful of their lives. The man has a son, and stands nights aching behind an assembly line, Sleeping the days away While his son goes to school. ”

“ Men fuck virgins; a child-worker Is born and all is holy. There is nothing great to trouble me: The rains that drop and drift next To streets in gutters, take away Smashed Pepsi cups and beer cans Without intent, bound God knows where, But out of sight. ”

“ And he wonders if embracing a world Of ideas can be done When all things cannot be believed; If humanism is Energy vented To avoid futility; And what grossness He would have to justify next-- All on those nights When self-perspectives Are swept under in change. ”

“ One of their hearts shall give in And their marriage will be a farce... Even in car accidents the married Die separately. And then the widowed Mother, smoking the cigars of her husband, And coughing them as the husband had done But in the apartment of the son, might Visit away her life: I would Bring her there, thanking God for a reason Not to try hiding all of me in some pussy As in daylight the main part Goes into underwear. ”

“ And while unlocking the door of his car He feels that the recreation in life is also a routine: A routine of sharing and parting, And at the end one is grounded and tossed Before the validity of his own Perceptions is resolved. ”

“ I realize myself in movement, parting the scene. I use what has been planted for the reaping-- My suit tucks me into its structure of cotton; And soon a building will be again the structure Around men of cotton suits, pushing a product. ”

“ Grabbing the already read letter, Slipping out hot and wet From the bare mattress-- Like Sweet Pea's turds Right before His psychomotor seizures, Only without a softness to stub myself Into--stiff and hard I drop From the cold rim of the bunk (Even if I awaken The idiots below) . With non-syllables and vowellessness A pitch that is language enough To keep this man, Jim, From wherever The unassimilated disappear Howls "He does not want me here" While its flesh of Jim beats the plastic urinal On the walls barricading a pillowed head. ”

“ Fuck so hard that the penis would Knive through the condom And spray-paint the man's name On the dull walls of the vagina. They had that freedom--those inalienable rights-- Her to be banged and to squeal To her friends that she was in love And him to white pussy And a gal that he could call his own... ”

“ No woman to drag him from The pot, After she has had his body bent Toward her for the wiping, And flop him onto the bench In the shower; no woman... She sits, cigarette limp in her mouth, Thinking that the day has almost ended. And the stars she stares out at From the living room of the group home She remembers are other earths limping Half-free in the grips of other Dying suns. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Houston In Houston's summers the gods Use the clouds as urinals For three minutes daily. In Houston the Boat-People Come from planes. ”

“ The Great God may also await for his eviction. Two hundred Indians in Houston bow down to Krishna as the gates Men lock around him are opened and closed. But in Springfield he probably awaits, His red-sock feet on his sofa As the furnace blows The Soviet flag on the wall before his feet. His walls may have many flags, And his mind thoughts of glasnost and communism Intermixed.. impractical thoughts He must sacrifice so that He can exist together more easily With the community of the dead, Unalone. ”

“ The son thinks his father Is thoughtless and dirty And his mother a grease-bitch For marrying him. The son grows up Between his college books, And begins to put it together: A society of men Wanting to take a variety Of stimulating produce-- Though some were more the makers Than the takers; The image of rightness In a man putting his hormones To the making of a company In a family; a family That needs a provider to survive; A man honorable and trapped And there are nights He awakens, gagging at the Sudden thought of a man Next to him Who had engaged his body In a lower form of sharing. ”

“ We invested our capital In the Silicon Valleys of this great nation. Third-world bitches, in factories, became sick for our chips. We held power. We bred metals and bought the ownership titles Of properties, but could not find a home of the world. ”

“ Cracked and peeled back from a boot a portion Of the snow is removed but refreezes more heavily On one area of the dead. I stand as an outsider Imagining myself to allow a job section of today's newspaper To become the thoughts that crash along in the mind of the wind. I need money but cannot find anything worth doing. ”

“ Lessen the speed at the train tracks; Stumble his car over their ribs; Swerve closely to the drive At a slower pace, and hope That where men dodge the bumping Of their tails from Parks For a private club, That one would come Out from the doors, partnerless. If not, he would have To go around the block Another time Like other old fags before-- The railway crippling with Its iron in each return raising, Cracking up from the skin of the street ”