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Bill Knott (1940-1966) has described
himself as "a virgin and a suicide," but
he continues miraculously to write and
read his poems to amazed audiences. As
Saint Geraud, he authored CORPSE AND
BEANS: THE NAOMI POEMS (Follett:
Big Table), which according to John Logan,
"give asylum to the orphan in each of us."
TWO POEMS BY BILL KNOTT (1940-1966):
INVITATION TO BRASILIA
for Vivien Leone
Follow me we will die in semen shores
We will float upon the tremor caused by an underground kiss
The sidelong world
With fortune-wheel sister asleep at the hurricane of fawns
Destination: your eyelash propellors
If you will just open your house-of-mirrors
Inside the echo-chamber and come
You may come my magic wallpaper ride
With our nakedness still clustered on branches
Of the lost and foundry
Brush the closets from your lips
428        Empty your pores into mine
I am the only one who can say:
"I have never been in anyone's dreams"
And I alone have escaped to tell thee: nothing
A thousand babies were just born
They all got the same shape birthmark
It looks like your silence when you speak babeloins
To the knifemare plasme city
Ah Brasilia same distance below
The equator as cunt below the waist
Follow me
How old are you
Mach-sex 1000
Where the nevers run into the no
The clock is extemporizing
Past heaps of scrap-love
You shall inherit your children
When my nape-hairs speak to Big Chief Cheekbone-Stroke-Heliostrophes
Look Rodin's Thinker drinks from your seeing-eye blouse
Rock 'n' roll cave-paintings on the walls of your womb
Even suicides, the pulse of time, find a
Calm
At the eye of the orgasm
Follow me
Lean over the night's instrument-panel
Press the right star we'll be there