The Tunnel: Selected Poems

One's work involves the folding of paper, snipping here and there, and finally unfolding a self-portrait of insomniacs in a line of beds, each a night, arranged end to end.
Another ingenious design is a traffic of cars joined bumper to bumper, and so on, depending on how many folds one has made.
One dependable old woman with a rather unlovely stare, creates a masturbator pattern: a chain of lonely men holding their penises, ingeniously attached penis by penis; one long spit through all their groins.
There is the morning-bus motif, the public-toilet motif, any number of old favorites . . . Yet, I thought to give the factory a motif closer to the popular taste; and by this means prove myself worthy of executive station. I created a suicide motif: a chain of paper-doll factory workers attached elbow to elbow, cutting their wrists.
(The Mental Desert)

The book was blank, all the words had fallen out.
Her husband said, the book is blank.
His wife said, a funny thing happened to me on my way to the present moment. I was shaking the book, to get all the typos out, and all of a sudden all the words and punctuation fell out too. Maybe the whole book was a typo?
And what did you do with the words? said her husband. I made a package and mailed it to a fictitious address, she said.
But no one lives there. Don't you know, hardly anyone lives at fictitious addresses. There's barely enough reality there to provide even a mailing address, he said.
That's why I sent them there. Words all mixed up can suddenly coalesce into rumors and malicious gossip, she said.
But don't these blank pages also present a dangerous invitation to rumors and malicious gossip? Who knows what anyone might write in his absent-mindedness? Who knows what chance might do with such a dangerous invitation? he said.
Perhaps we shall have to send ourselves away to some fictitious address, she said.
Is it because words keep falling out of our mouths, words that could easily start rumors and malicious gossip? he said.
It is because, somehow, we keep falling out of ourselves, like detached shadows; shaking as if we could get all the typos out of our lives, she said.
Well, at least, if this doesn't hurt reality, it does, in fact, give reality a well earned rest.
(The Blank Book)

They have lost their baby down a sewer. They might run to the sea where the sewer empties. Or they might wait where they have lost him; perhaps he returns out of the future, having found his manhood under the city.
Surely they risk his having turned to garbage, an orange peel with a bag of chicken guts.
She is not sure she could love an orange peel with a bag of chicken guts.
It's okay, honey, because everything happens under the smile of God.
But why, in heaven's name, is He smiling?
Because He knows the end.
But aren't we still getting there?
Yes; but He's seen it several times.
Seen what several times?
This movie, the one He produced and directed. The one He starred in
. . . You know, the one where He plays all the parts in a cast of billions
. . . The story of a husband and wife losing their baby down a sewer. . .
Oh that movie; I cried through the whole thing.
(The Epic)