Let's be happy!

america


i

my new machine arrived today
i was getting ready for a rehearsal of japanese music or
was blind as is the custom therefore
did not read the directions
but got into it
with all the rows of pipes
around my tractorlike seat
it worked very well

now it was past use
in the dry clay fields
where a poet girl came to write

now it was chain mail
in the transfused light

it had the same proportions approximately
as my blood

how i was happy me and my machine
and now like a wounded soldier without significance

ii

while my head defined surprise
my old child man fingers were touched with new a resinous grease
an alloyed sound issued otherwise

i have spent a life time in the desert

gathering up antlers to make me a breast plate
against what
like a foot soldier who has lost his horse

light anoints me full of girls

iii

i was like a juvenile delinquent separated from his scene
on the one hand ill at ease on the other hand wanting to continue his
search for black shoe polish for his sea turtle leather jacket
or thinking of giving up juvenile delinquency

the voice told me
sudden nike gesture
the way the light folds fall
between that girls thighs
i would measure it with cambers
were i diatomaceous enough

iv

if i were to go back again to that country
how could i face the prayers in my body
when most of the time i would be alone

--Piero Heliczer