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THE HONEST POEMS
1.
S
ex
started in an upstairs room 1953afraid of horror movies
The Thing 
waiting in the cubbyholesentient vegetableA communist from outer spaceafraid to touchafraid to look you cannot hide in pleasurecrumpled picturesfrom
True Confession
magazineBoston winter and a radiator soaked in the smell of urine(afraid to go downstairsto the hallway bathroomalone in the room alone)yes, started: flesh, obsessionthe inescapable climaxyou cannot hide in pleasureand
Richard Puluso
on the roof shedsurrounded by summer corn and rhubarb,crooked elbow, half an eye,led to prison, a victim of lust:“My father’s a friend of 
Rocky Marciano
!” he said but no one wanted to help himget out of going to jail Notthe mayor who bought his childrenor the car dealer who bought his childrenor the banker who bought his childrenor the mechanic who bought his childrennone of them went to jailonly
Richard Puluso
you cannot hide in pleasure
 
and
Don
in the baths,
New York, Miami
,the shadow bodies in a maze of truckssearching for flesh and self-hatredsemi-trailers cramped with male copulationsass-fucked, fist-fucked, pissed on, whipped,and the book shops with back roomsand everyone sucking or being suckedand no one, no one, talking, not one soundand
Don
,
my
Brother,
dead from
AIDS
ten years later you cannot hide in pleasureand the
Times Square
circle of boothstwenty-five cents for a sliding windowlarge enough for 
Henry’s
hands to touch plump anonymous breasts,“Put in another quarter, put in another quarter,”and the metal window trapped his handsand he had to pull them out before they were cut off you cannot hide in pleasureand the live sex show on a bare stage,and a voice in the audience screams“You two don’t know how to fuck!”and the reply“You want to come up here and try?”and later, outside the theater,the couple who fucked greets their fans:“Did you like our performance tonight?”She has thin fingers and black hair and she laughs and she is beautifuland again it startsflesh, obsessionyou cannot hide in pleasure
 
2.
T
here was war,
Vietnam
and he was skinny and morose and hating
America,
he stabbed at dummies stuffed with cotton in Georgiaas bees swarmed over their leathery skinand he shot at treetops in the damp swamps of Virginiawhere the mothball fleet waited in the white mist of the St. James River and he slept on rooftops in Saigon on the other side of the worldknowing his soul would never go home again.There was war, Vietnam,Part of the lie. A Mongol invader.and he knew the boy who hanged himself and the boy who carried frogs on the end of his bayonetand the boy who pretended to be a conscientious objector and the boy who would loose both his legs in a mortar attack and the boy who deserted into Canadaand the booby traps ripping out of treesand punjab sticks ripping through the feetand the best way to hide in the jungleand the best way to die in an ambushand the slow march to burn down a villageand the admonition “Don’t touch the women and children.”and the city of skinless monkeysand the silent rockets dropping out of the sun,and bodies floating in the Saigon River,hands pointing to TuDo Streetand the moneychangers, legless pimps,and the dwarf whores with tits filled with milk and the bargirls crowded at plate glass windows:“Buy me tea, GI, buy me tea,”and metal stairways to steam bath rooms,hand jobs, blowjobs, jack offs,and fucking above the narrow alleywayswhere the steel faced Korean smelled like a dead fish ,(he was shot in the face by white mice)and the whore’s voice behind a gauze curtainwhispered so her father couldn’t hear:“GI numba one, no numba ten.”Oh! Johnson promised Rolling Thunder 
of 00

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omardix135

An excellent glimpse into a past that was unpretentious but most times complicated to the innocent mind

reply02 / 14 / 2010
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