Classic Poem

Deep in the library
built like a dictionary
are vital organs black lungs
where young men suffer
suffocating among dust books
thick with history dried-up balls
stone intestines dense hearts
nuclear kidneys stomachs perforated
like practice golf balls like collanders
through whose hundred holes pours hot hydrochloric acid
& big wet brains
held red in gleaming jars
wrinkled like piles of spaghetti
with bubbling helical tubes & artillery
of electric arcs & sparks
dramatic in the technical equipment
where young men suffocate almost completely

Almost but not quite
for they catch themselves in time come to
& use their very last microvolt to escape rush
out the throat through the mouth
along the tongue between the teeth & swinging lips
free at last & rush into the fair fresh air

Partly fresh at any rate
but partly My Sin garlic Yardley farts DDT bad dreams
blue True fumes car monoxide strontium ninety
cesium one thirty seven iodine one thirty one SO x
& thingsome muck that lacks a scientific designation
but scribbles a sort of scorpiony millionaire's X for signature
across black city halls & busted department houses
& fire plugs salted with orange crystals of poodle pee
& the tears old men distil from muscatel

Into fresh air free
along the straight Chicago sidewalk for instance
an endless wide-gauge stick of chew-gum
through the pedicured well-to-do neighborhood of mansions around a lake
which drains at last into a sink-sump swamp of stews & slums
where the gum stick cracks & melts into a protozoon
ooze of dogshit & gluelike involving politics
extending across the almost clean oceans
to bloody places with nasty names like Long Phuoc
where Major Dong obeys Lieutenant Colonel Dung
by administering capital punishment automatically to Corporal Hung
without gagging

Young men partly released from the vines of Marx's big beard
breathing the atmosphere of protest
do not sign their checks with X's
nor move their lips when they read
resist parade weep & get punched out
coldcocked by klansmen maumaus teamsters
Ronald Reagan or waitresses who moonlight wrestling on television
for pin money
& Odorono & Tootsie Roll money & chew-gum dough

—You didn't get that walking into no doorknob young feller
—Yes you're right Doc
I must admit it was a thirty-eight magnum dumdum

& get their curious revolving tongues stuck fast to the trays
in the white frozen food compartment & get their asses flattened on the freeway's oceanic heartbeat prosody
& get

& get what? Nothing
much. Fucked