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Mar. 2nd, 2004 09:20 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
kagomeshuko.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
greatpoetryThe Bitter Part of Heaven
They're all there: the man killed
by the pinball machine; the girl
who laughed to death; the dieting boy
who choked on a tapeworm wiggling up
in search of cakes and steak; and, of course, the babies -
the ones the ants, the mad chefs,
the anacondas, piranhas, and the threshing machines got.
This is heaven's bitter part
where all the dead from the Enquirer's pages
are housed whole again but in anger
at irony and excess. Their eyeballs
have turned right again, hacked heads
have found their proper bodies, the mountains
of dog food ground by angry sons
or husbands have reconstituted.
But they brood and play out of tune,
pluck the wrong strings and frown
at those no tabloid ever eulogized.
It is hard for them being here
even though it's heaven,
things having gone quite wrong once,
irony having intruded
into an ordinary afternoon
like a steering wheel through the chest
Some even say they would have done things
differently, things like sex, things
like that had they known it would have come to this:
a joke's butt reassmebled with wings;
gowns of gossamer and gold stitching but a body
smooth as a mannequin's' a feeling of having been
betrayed. In other neighborhoods, other who lived in fear of surprise,
waited on infected toenails and meteors,
the doors of saunas and freezers,
and then died boringly, old,
and on time, unable even to be surprised
that there was no surprise, fumble
through their songs like beginners,
though some have been at it for centuries.
They are distracted and equally bitter,
would have done things differently, too.
Of course, there are some areas
where hymns herald out of every window,
but there are few houses there
on those spare streets.
~ John August Wood
They're all there: the man killed
by the pinball machine; the girl
who laughed to death; the dieting boy
who choked on a tapeworm wiggling up
in search of cakes and steak; and, of course, the babies -
the ones the ants, the mad chefs,
the anacondas, piranhas, and the threshing machines got.
This is heaven's bitter part
where all the dead from the Enquirer's pages
are housed whole again but in anger
at irony and excess. Their eyeballs
have turned right again, hacked heads
have found their proper bodies, the mountains
of dog food ground by angry sons
or husbands have reconstituted.
But they brood and play out of tune,
pluck the wrong strings and frown
at those no tabloid ever eulogized.
It is hard for them being here
even though it's heaven,
things having gone quite wrong once,
irony having intruded
into an ordinary afternoon
like a steering wheel through the chest
Some even say they would have done things
differently, things like sex, things
like that had they known it would have come to this:
a joke's butt reassmebled with wings;
gowns of gossamer and gold stitching but a body
smooth as a mannequin's' a feeling of having been
betrayed. In other neighborhoods, other who lived in fear of surprise,
waited on infected toenails and meteors,
the doors of saunas and freezers,
and then died boringly, old,
and on time, unable even to be surprised
that there was no surprise, fumble
through their songs like beginners,
though some have been at it for centuries.
They are distracted and equally bitter,
would have done things differently, too.
Of course, there are some areas
where hymns herald out of every window,
but there are few houses there
on those spare streets.
~ John August Wood
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no subject
Date: 2004-03-03 03:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-03 02:42 pm (UTC)Stein Auf!
Bridget