The theater was crowded and hot.
The movie is about war and the
nature of man.
One of the actors
gets over-excited and sprays
the audience with bullets. This,
Goat thinks, bleeding, is what
we can expect. He throws soda
in the soldier’s eyes, cracks
his skull with a kick, becomes
two dimensional.
Goat was throwing rocks
at the man in the moon
who kept smiling and
waving and then once
he pointed
and Goat
looked up: Sputnik,
dropping in flames,
enveloped the hill,
Goat laughing.
Emaciated Goat thought
the grill was a huge
honeycomb. He could not
eat, but he might as well
find food anyway.
The driver put Goat on ice
in the back.
Goat’s body is exposed
to hundreds of chickens.
Someone has Goat for Christmas.
from GOAT lies down on Broadway. For more info see here.
He dared the lightning,
carrying clamped between
teeth large metal poles.
The first bolt burst a tree
before him. He hooted. The
second scorched the fields.
The third struck the metal
directly. Goat swallowed
the pole, bit it in half.
He stumbled into the overflowing
canal & drowned.
Bathrooms never change. His
mother always sprayed Lysol
in it, three times a day.
Goat has an allergic reaction.
Father leaves him the classified
by his coffee each morning.
Mother keeps quiet, makes biscuits.
Goat stews.
He dreams he is a ram, his head
caught in thorns.
The sun rises like music
every morning. Wind goes
around the world and comes
back in a week or two. Goat
waits on top of a hill, judging
the wind for weeks, waiting for
one that looks to be heading
home. Then he cries lonely into it;
it comes back, unchanged. The sun
sets like a flat tambourine.
Goat was counting stars one night
when he sees the man on the moon.
He is standing, way up there, derby
hat angled on his chalk head.
Can you hear me? Goat shrills.
The man waves. Goat asks him many
questions. The man on the moon
answers all of them by waving.
Goat digs a hole in the earth
and buries his head in it.
Goat watches TV incognito.
The President is talking
about him. Johnny Carson
is talking about him.
Psychics everywhere contact
Elvis and ask about him.
Where is Goat? Why did
he do this? Where are
his manners? Everyone
expected something big & final.
Before spring came that year
Goat had locked up all the hills.
The grass would not come up; plants
were all trapped below. The water
table rose to drastic levels.
The animals had to go to grocery stores.
The sky became arid, a sick green brown
color. Goat leveled April and May beneath
thrashing rocks. A turtle finally found
the key in a brackish pond. Goat crept away.
Celebrity Goat goes on a rampage
and has many children. He tells
no one anything, he tells tabloids
the world is black and white,
if they can’t see that it is their
problem. Meanwhile the colors in
his head swirl. He commits himself.
He writes the names of his kids
on the Mexican postcards and drops
them in the mail, bleating.
Translations from the English 