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Permission granted by Julia Vinograd for anyone to
redistribute her poems free of charge...under condition
that poetry remains intact and complete, including
title and credit to the original author.
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FOR THE YOUNG MEN WHO DIED OF AIDS
copyright 1996 by Julia Vinograd
The dead lovers are almost as beautiful
as razor-edged spaces in the air where they used to walk.
Do you remember his hand lazily playing
with the rim of a glass, making the ghost of a bell sound
for his own ghost, and the talk didn't even pause?
That glass is whole. Break it; break it now.
Break everything.
How can people go on buying toothpaste
and planning their summer vacations?
Vegetables would care more.
The potato has a thousand eyes all mourning for the lovers
who lived in their deaths like a country
foreign to everywhere for a long time before dying.
A long time watching people look away.
The potato only met them under the earth
after their deaths and still it wept. And we do not.
The ghost bell makes barely a sound forever.
The dead lovers are still in love, but no one else is.
He took his hand with him, a grave is as good
as a briefcase to keep the essentials in:
a smile, bones, a way of biting his lip
just before looking into your eyes.
Shoulder blades cutting into summer like butter.
All the commuters in a rush hour traffic jam
are cursing because the lovers are dying
faster than their cars.
The child sent to bed without dinner cries
for the lovers, also sent to bed early and without.
Unfair. Throw the dishes against the wall. Break them.
The dead lovers are almost as beautiful
as when they were alive.
You can hear the rim of a glass
tolling for the ghosts to come home.
Break the glass, break the ghosts. Pull down the sky.
Break everything.
Dance on the fragments. Scream their names.
Get splinters of ghosts under your skin
torn and bleeding because it hurts,
because it hurts so bad.
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NOT EXACTLY THE WAY IT HAPPENED, BUT CLOSE ENOUGH
(for a poem by Tim Dlugos)
copyright 1996 by Julia Vinograd
This morning a friend read me a poem
by a guy with AIDS
describing his life as a dead man.
And I recognized it.
I'd made myself forget that form postcard
from one of Berkeley's larger hospitals
telling me the transfusion I had some years ago
was before anyone knew
and now they were running all the appropriate tests,
they would let me know in 2 weeks,
it was absolutely free
and they were sure I appreciated their position.
I didn't mention the word AIDS.
2 weeks.
I put my entire mind in the deep freeze
and didn't think at all;
it was frightening the way no one noticed.
I left a tape-recording in my mouth
to handle conversations.
I told one guy who went to the same hospital.
He'd had a card too.
"Keep your mouth shut," he said.
If it were an ordinary secret
he would've made threats about my body parts
and where he'd mail them if I talked,
but this was serious.
I just nodded.
I don't remember the next 2 weeks;
it wasn't awful because I wasn't there.
I didn't look at everything for the last time;
the concept of time was the first thing to go.
Dead people have a short attention span.
Finally I got a card from the hospital
congratulating themselves for their thoroughness,
their blood had always been flawless,
and how would I like to donate some of mine?
When I started thinking again it hurt,
like trying to think with someone else's mind
that wouldn't take my orders.
Half of Berkeley went to that hospital.
Had half the town spent 2 weeks as the walking dead?
I'd learned something so valuable
that I forgot it immediately.
The guy's poem brought it back. I owe him this.
I know as little as possible.
But I do know a little.
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ALLEN GINSBERG
copyright 1997 by Julia Vinograd
Little boy playing hide and seek in the afterwood.
You found your beard growing on the north side of a tree
but you left it behind,
also a tie that didn't quite fit.
In a green clearing twin poppies burst open,
splintering, cracked.
They used to be your glasses.
You're it.
You're hiding in the afterwood as applause
blows thru the leaves over your head.
Where's Allen? the voices call.
Is he snuggled under a blanket of furry kisses?
Is he excavating Buddha's bellybutton with a single lantern
looking for an honest lover?
Are his hands full of rusty fire escapes
he plays like a folding accordion
while the moon ticks in his pocket?
Is he chasing policemen with a butterfly net?
Has he climbed a giant poem and pulled it up behind him
like the Indian rope trick?
Where's Allen?
You sit on a fallen branch for a moment
and your mother's corset comes up to you
wagging its tail and panting.
You reach down to your ribs and throw it a bone to chase.
There's not only applause overhead
but the sound of big trucks handsome men drive
with their own muscled engines.
And construction workers tearing down banks and boutiques
with their bare hands,
laughing and tipping beer down sweaty throats.
And billboards crash into one another way overhead
like clumsy clouds. "Like a cigarette should".
"Uncle Sam Wants You."
"You'll wonder where the yellow went."
And you, Allen, what do you wonder in the afterwood?
Where have you gone?
We search your books calling your name,
trying to pull you out by wrapping your long lines
around an ear and yanking.
We look under your bed.
We design a better Allen trap and wait for the world
to beat a path to our door.
We look at the doors you opened standing wide
with light streaming
and we talk about them.
No more discussion groups;
we've got to go thru those doors.
Little boy who grew up and changed the world;
we've got to grow up.
You hit the sides of glass skyscrapers with a twig
making them sing.
Making them sing but we can't hear your new songs.
The taste of tomorrow waits for our mouths.
Little boy playing hide and seek in the afterwood
while we look for ourselves.
We've got to find ourselves.
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