Chinese Sonnets

I

These days I forgive myself everything. After all

I'm alone and unhappy so I give myself a little treat

whenever possible. On summer nights I remember

the good women who loved me but live with their husbands now.

This is not an easy life but I'm not afraid. Despair

leads me to talk too much about myself rather than

be transcendent. I trade push for shove with the world

and sitting above the river feel I could move the globe.

If I could stay out here on the roof all day,

get stoned and read the I Ching, write a few lines

and forget my troubles, I could be happy

today. Then I would go to work tomorrow.

But I rise at dawn and drink some orange juice.

It is good with ice. Buy a newspaper going to the train.

II

In this lousy life we work five days a week.

An Indian could gather a week's food in three days

and go swimming in the hot afternoon. The pleasure

civilization offers is a drive past fast food joints

on Merrick Avenue to a sea food restaurant in Freeport.

Almost everyone I know is dissatisfied with life

as we have been pressed into it. The system gives us

cancer and heart attacks and repressed sexuality when

I was born to be sensuous and enjoy another's body.

Instead I slug the world and the world slugs back.

I have five minutes to finish this poem. I remember

the smooth women I have known, remaining in bed

all morning. Our big ambitions are our curse.

We uphold our end of the society.

III

While it's true that I'm not happy, I'm very amused

at the craziness I have let myself in for.

Hopefully it's only one year of sleeping in my clothes

without a woman and drinking plenty of wine after work.

I listen to someone start a car downstairs, but that

is not my world, nor do I know any of these eight million

I live beside in the crotch of many waters. Above

Broadway Saturday, the geese fly south for winter.

This morning, in twenty minutes, I will go downstairs wearing

a shirt and tie and jacket and carrying a briefcase.

I will tear myself from the pleasures of tea and breakfast

to arrive at the office where each day my happiness is challenged.

I accepted humanity as a natural part of nature. When

I did that I had to pay the rent and get a job, too.

IV

A famous samurai crosses a plain in winter

looking for work. He comes to a farm community

but the farmers have no use for his skills. So

he removes his swordbelt and sets to work digging.

It is temporary employment while the seasons change.

The sky is gray and all of the women are occupied

warming their homes. None look up from their work

except to glance at the strong samurai digging.

Why is he digging in the frozen ground? The poet

knows little about farming and less about fighting.

He has put the samurai to work at a pointless task.

It is too early in the year to begin digging.

Nobody pities the pointless samurai or gives him food.

He ties on his sword and starts chopping wood.

V

These bird songs, this January morning, I look

for a way out of life. The Texas woman tells Marc

stories about the football players she's fucked.

Although I complain like a blue jay about it, life

has accepted me. Walking uptown with Stephanie it's clear

how much the Empire State Building I've become.

Nevertheless, we make our own decisions. To fight war

or not. They are all my friends, I work for their success,

but choose my poison independently. For me, laziness

and anonymity when I could have been a star.

Newspapers indicate there is much to discuss besides myself

but the Muse seems to disagree. My few friends and the age

will look quaint as a daguerreotype in the light

of the holocaust. I kiss the girl of my dreams.

VI

Again it is almost Spring. It gives me only pain

to think back on past Springs when I seem to have been

someone else. The people who lived then live today

in the same bodies but changed in every other way.

Of course I must continue, with or without good humor.

What was amusing in my youth, that God's finger

could move me to another square, now makes me fear

old friends who are dead to me and yet still here.

The veil of life is thin if one doesn't believe in mystery.

Frequently it blows and reveals the thickening body,

alone, without a soul. One hopes for a consort who

through her own pain has become gentle and simple too.

If only I could share this life with a good wife.

But she would only be unhappy and bring me grief.