Read Online Poems 1959-2009 by Frederick Seidel - Free Book Online Page A

field was full of them.
    Suddenly the field is filled with ancestors.
    The hippopotamuses became friendly with the villagers.
    Along came white hunters who shot the friendly hippos dead.
    If they had known that friendship would end like that,
    They never would have entered into it.
    Suddenly the field is filled with souls.
    The field of sugarcane is filled with hippopotamus cane toads.
    They always complained
    Our xylophones were too loud.
    The Crocodile King is dead.
    The world has no end.
    The crocodile explodes out of the water and screams at the crowd
    That one of them has stolen his mobile phone.
    On the banks of the muddy Waddo,
ooga-booga!
    What about a Christmas tree in a steamy lobby on the Gulf of Guinea!
    Because in Africa there are Africans
    And they are Africans and are in charge.
    Even obstipation
    Can’t stop a mighty nation.
    The tragic magic makes lightning.
    Some of the young captives are unspeakable
    In their beauty, and their urine makes lightning, black and gold.
    The heat is so hot
    It will boil you in a pot.
    Diarrhea in a condom is the outcome.
    The former president completely loses it and screams from the stage
    That someone fucking stole his fucking phone.
    The audience of party faithful is terrified and giggles.
    This was their man who brought the crime rate down
    By executing everyone.
    The crocodile staged a coup
    And ended up in prison himself
    And then became the president.
    He stood for quality of life and clitorectomy.
    But in his second term, in order to secure those international loans,
    The crocodile changed his spots to free speech.
    Lightning sentences them at birth to life without parole
    With no time off for good behavior.
    At that point in the voyage the ocean turns deeper.
    People actually suffered severe optical damage from the blinding effects
    Of the white roads in full sunlight.
    It is the island roads so white you can’t see,
    Made of crushed limestone snow.
    It is the tropical rain the color of grapefruit
    Hovering in the figure of the goddess Niscah
    Above the tile roof of the plantation house.
    She dangles her baited lines.
    It is the black of the orchids in a vase.
    The goddess overpowers the uprising
    And
I
is the first one hacked to pieces.
    The asteroid is coming to the local cinema.
    It is a moonlit night with the smell of rain in the air.
    Thump thump
, speed bump.
    The most expensive hotel in the world ignites
    As many orgasms as there are virgins in paradise.
    These epileptic foaming fits dehydrate one,
    But justify the cost of a honeymoon.
    The Caribbean is room temperature,
    Rippling over sand as rich as cream.
    The beach chair has the thighs of a convertible with the top down.
    You wave a paddle and the boy
    Runs to take your order.
    Many things are still done barefoot.
    Others have the breakout colors of a parrot.
    In paradise it never rains, but smells as if it could.
    Two who could catapulted themselves overboard into the equator.
    I die of thirst and drown in chains, in love.
    Into the coconut grove they go.
Into the coconut grove they go
.
    The car in the parking lot is theirs.
The car in the parking lot is theirs
.
    The groves of lemon trees give light.
Ooga-booga!
    The hotel sheds light.
Ooga-booga!
    The long pink-shell sky of meaning wanted it to be, but really,
    The precious thing is that they voted.
Ooga-booga!
And there we were,
    The cane toads and the smell of rain about to fall.
    The crocodiles and spiders are
    The hippos and their friends who shot them dead.
    The xylophone is playing too loud
    Under the coconut palms, which go to the end of the world.
    The slave is screaming too loud and we
    Can’t help hearing
    Our tribal chant and getting up to dance under the mushroom cloud.
    Â 
CLIMBING EVEREST
    The young keep getting younger, but the old keep getting younger.
    But this young woman is young. We kiss.
    It’s almost incest when it gets to this.
    This is the consensual, national, metrosexual hunger-for-younger.
    I’m getting