QUEEN OF THE DAMNED

TRAGIC RABBIT

Tragic rabbit, a painting.
The caked ears green like rolled corn.
The black forehead pointing to the stars.
A painting on my wall, alone

as rabbits are
and aren't. Fat red cheek,
all Art, trembling nose,
a habit hard to break as not.

You too can be a tragic rabbit; green and red
your back, blue your manly little chest.
But if you're ever goaded into being one
beware the True Flesh, it

will knock you off your tragic horse
and break your tragic colors like a ghost
breaks marble; your wounds will heal
so quickly water

will be jealous.
Rabbits on white paper painted
outgrown all charms against their breeding wild;
and their rolled corn ears become horns.

So watch out if the tragic life feels fine -
caught in that rabbit trap
all colors look like sunlight's swords,
and scissors like The Living Lord.

STAN RICE
Some Lamb (1975)

*****

Tempting to place in coherent collage
the bee, the mountain range, the
shadow
of my hoof -
tempting to join them, enlaced by logical
vast & shining molecular
thought-thread
thru all Substance -
….
Tempting
to say I see in all I see
the place where the needle
began in the tapestry - but ah,
it all looks whole and part -
long live the eyeball and the lucid heart.

STAN RICE
from "Four Days in Another City"
Some Lamb (1975)

*****

Tell it
in rhythmic
continuity
Detail by detail
the living creatures.
Tell it
as must, the rhythm
solid in the shape.
Woman. Arms lifted. Shadow eater.

STAN RICE
from "Elegy"
Whiteboy (1976)

*****

The Murder Burger
is served right here.
You need not wait
at the gate of Heaven
for unleavened death.
You can be a goner
on this very corner.
Mayonnaise, onions, dominance of flesh.
If you wish to eat it
you must feed it.
"Yall come back."
"You bet."

STAN RICE
from "Texas Suite"
Some Lamb (1975)

*****

Once we had the words. There was clarity.
Savage as horns
curved.
We lived in stone rooms.
We hung our hair out the windows and up it climbed the men.
A garden behind the ears, the curls.
On each hill a king
of that hill. At night the threads were pulled out
of the tapestries. The unraveled men screamed.
All moons revealed. We had the words.
….

STAN RICE
from "The Words Once"
White boy (1976)

*****

Who are these shades we wait for and believe
will come some evening in limousines
from Heaven?
The rose
though it knows
is throat less
and cannot say.
My mortal half laughs.
The code and the message are not the same.
And what is an angel
but a ghost in drag?

STAN RICE
from "Of Heaven"
Body of Work (1983)

*****

No one is listening.
Now you may sing the selfsong,
as the bird does, not for territory or dominance
but for self-enlargement.
Let something come from nothing.
…
STAN RICE
from "Texas Suite" Body of Work (1983)

*****

The dead don't share.
Though they reach towards us
from the grave (I swear
they do) they do not hand their hearts to you.
They hand their heads,
the part that stares.

STAN RICE
from "Their Share"
Body of Work (1983)

*****

Very little is
more worth our time
than understanding
the talent of Substance.
…
A bee, a living bee,
at the windowglass, trying to get out, doomed.
it can't understand.

STAN RICE
Untitled Poem
from
Pig's Progress (1976)

*****

CANNIBAL

Hide me
from me
Fill these
holes with eyes
for mine are not
mine. Hide
me head & need So dead in life
So much in time.
Be wing, and
shade my me
from my desire
to be
hooked fish.
That worm
wine
looks sweet and
makes my me
blind. And, too,
my heart hide this rate it also
eat in time.

STAN RICE
Some Lamb (1975)

*****

Wings stir the sunlit dust
of the cathedral in which
the Past is buried
to its chin in marble.

STAN RICE
from
"Poem on Crawling into Bed: Bitterness"
Body of Work (1983)

*****

In the glazed greenery of hedge,
and ivy,
and inedible strawberries
the lilies are white; remote; extreme.
Would they were our guardians.
They are barbarians.

STAN RICE
from
"Greek Fragments"
Body of Work (1983)

*****

Some things lighten nightfall
and make a Rembrandt of a grief.
But mostly the swiftness of time
is a joke; on us. The flame-moth
is unable to laugh. What luck.
The myths are dead.
….

STAN RICE
"Poem on Crawling into Bed: Bitterness"
Body of Work (1983)

MEMNOCH THE DEVIL

*****

WHAT GOD DID NOT PLAN ON

Sleep well,
Weep well,
Go to the deep well
As often as possible.
Bring back the water,
Jostling and gleaming.
God did not plan on consciousness
Developing so
Well. Well,
Tell Him our
Pail is full
And He can
Go to Hell.

Stan Rice
24 June '93

*****

THE OFFSRPING

To the somethingness
Which prevents the nothingness
Like Homer's wild boar
From thrashing this way and that
It's white tusks
Through human beings
Like crackling stalks
And to nothing less
I offer this suffering of my father.

Stan Rice
16 October '93

******

DUET ON IBERVILLE STREET

The man in black leather
Buying a rat to feed his python
Does not dwell on particulars.
Any rat will do.
While walking back from the pet store
I see a man in a hotel garage
Carrying a swan in a block of ice
With a chain saw.

Stan Rice
30 January '94