Resurrection: The 2006 Poetry Thread

I realize as I
Cast out over the lake
At thirteen thousand feet -
I don't know where you are.
It has been years since we
Married and had children
By people neither of
Us knew in the old days.
But I still catch fish with flies
Made from your blonde pubic hair.

- Kenneth Rexroth -

This town is haunted by some good deed
that reappears like a country cousin, or truth
when language falters these days trying to lie,
because Aunt Mabel, an old lady gone now, would
accost even strangers to give bright flowers
away, quick as a striking snake. It's deeds like this
have weakened me, shaken by intermittent trust,
stricken with friendliness.

Our Senator talked like war, and Aunt Mabel
said, "He's a brilliant man,
but we didn't elect him that much."

Everyone's resolve weakens toward evening
or in a flash when a face melds - a stranger's, even -
reminded for an instant between menace and fear:
There are Aunt Mabels all over the world,
or their graves in the rain.

- William Stafford -

your a whore(and i shouldnt love you)
-----------------------------------------------------------
your a whore and i should not love you
but its kinda hard to stop
noone has the control in their thumbs that u exercise
and grapple my ass with
nobody slips it "under the mat" w plum filled ease that u display
i cant get anyone over tonight to speak in slime covered syllables,each one dropped onto th floor carving acid words into my carpet
your a whore and i love you for that
let knowledge of your seams be a secret
pussssss hyyyyyttt pusssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

slidey
----------------------------------------------------
Waiting in the bedroom for you to come out of the bathroom now.It's been 5 years since I've seen you
break apart the pillows like that.A low rider sits on the dresser staring at me,pretending to be a high roller.
All the dust on th floor is muddy from your showered feet,big blocks of rain steaming in your hair.Someone has
painted a big "2" on your back,intended to mark territory I guess,I wipe it off w some turpentine and spit out
the seedy taste.Massive sirens go off in the courtyard and I get up to look out the window,the old hotel
towel falling off of me.There is an old man filming some police trying to put a car fire out below.Clocks are
running low on batteries in here and I can hear you rustling your body into bed.Partly whipped,fresh splotches of
dew crud all over your eyelids.It can't be all this easy,positioned under you,beneath the lordloch,I see the light.
Seperating your legs,pulling down your boys size 4 underwear,why do you girls love them?You don't look boyish.Especially when
the tongue gets in there and performs,big dances up yur ass,all around that puffed ring o now whats that sound..drizzle drizzle lil sweet shirt
Harken to me now,make it tighter,What if I never get enough of it,and go crazy when it;s all gone,The hold on me the hole on me.Alright yur asleep.good.i need a rest too
I

there will come a day
-------------------------------
there will come a day when all yur hair is gone
pulled out by lovers not as tender as I
dry spots and hearing loss will mount you
and the hard lines u have gained
which i ignore in th light
can tell me where u have gone
before me


muffled black blanket
------------------------------
i was in th tub w lizzy
makin sexzy fizzys
when mama dropped a knocker
upon my lil stocking
grabbing up my doodles
i made sum soba noodles
and dreamed of u in rubber
again,in th tubber
the water was so stinky
til flower laid Ms Pibbsy
and poked it in the ribbsy
I can smell another gold coq


Perc(H)(S)
---------------
Terry was a middleman,he took a lil cut from each deal we made w him.Stacy made veal out
of him one night while he was counting his money in th hallway.I never got involved in th cutting cuzz I am afraid of teaching it to th kids.Stacy unzipped a boot,her last one,and cleaned the lip off of it.She was a nice lady,and I wanted her on fire.Her last job fired her for being plucky.Stacy never got off.It was horrible.I would fall asleep licking her cunt,my face covered in her phlegm,sleeping and dreaming of her cumming.But it never happened.She took me to the Tate and fucked me behind a painting.A horrible painting of a boy being thrown into a car full of dead wolves.She fucked me and smeared it on the painting.The guard caught her smoking in the bathroom and she put a mascara wand thru his eye.i still have it in a box,She is great.I love her

you promised me a piece of your memory

now i afraid i have come to collect on that debt

clip clop horsey go clip clipo horsey go in the morning light in the morninght light morning light morning light morning lighhhhht morrrning morninggggg morrrrninggggg mornnniiiingg ahhhhhh come youe tear the camberwell to chambermaid and the holes you made and the holes yo made in the tricia baked walls wells of (change mermaid and the morning you made all the halls you made in the ship shop shaped) in the tricia baked walls wolstencraft manor

wont you overlook the things that we do for love

HMS Pinafive-

UNMMM

ITSY BITSY

UHHN

ITSY BITSY SPIDER

AWW HOLD ON NOW

HER YA GO

DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

UUUUUUUUUUUUUUHJJJJJJJJJJJJJJ

CARRY ME TOI OLD DOMINION........CRACK UPOM TH SKIN AND HARDEN SHELL..WHERE TO TH SHOW SUMTHIN GOOD YA KNOW ..WHERE U LAND IS FINE W ME ILL BE SURE TO SEND U SOME SOMTHING COPMPLIMENTARY FROM TH EAIRPLANE IM ON THE TTIME I DO GET YUR MESSAGE..YUR THE VERY MAJOR MODEL OF A PERFEC T GENLTLMAN ITS IN TH CARDS.......WAIT TILL TUR SHIP COME SIN YULL BNE SAILIN WEAITT TILL YUR SHIP COMES IN YOUY'LL BE SAILIN""""""..""..":;......WIAT TILL YUR SHIP COMES IN YUOYIUYUUOUY'LL BNE SAILIN....,">>

all of the things you do make all afire

thrown on the pyre all inholding to my heart pieces of your char coal come into haeart pieces of your char

we'd f

tell me

tell me how you got here

please

oh cheryl my heart went out to you

oh sweet cheryl

my heart went out to you

im gonna give you all i get now

isnt that enough my friend im gonna show you waht i can do in the end im gonna

sundays come and gone

devils on your porch chewin up ypour bath tub devils on your saturady schedule hold me blankets are wrapped tight tighter than tight hold me blankets are wrapped quite tight

cold and lonely you were then

cold than lonely your were then

harder than rock you were then

hold me

to the rock and heart

crazy to even want to change me

than you w ill have a holey part to your heart

hard load out on the meadow can you believe i ve go t this far hard road out on the meadow

can you believe tht i go this far away wait!!!!!!!!crazy rain old macdonal(pullin me down) again and again

i feel for you

your like the ant

and i feel for you

stay away the frog hollow

meadow stay away the hog collr meadow

call me whenver you want call me

sure nuff you had some bad times

sure nuff there was some impermanent rhymes

sure nuff there was hard shu

ip

sure nuff there was courtship i

dont want to take anything away from you

something you worked so hard to build to

yur an aligator in the sewer

anything that gets you high gets you lower eventually

anything that gets you high gets you lower eventually

well i guess it coulda been worse

you coulda been fishin the last dimes out of my purse

but instead your just sitting here on the table

waiting fir operations

when were able

to hold the scalpel nice and neat

cut through the brain tissue t

hrough the meat

Mr. west, no, but we can misquote a variety of lines from it.

The Pier Aspiring

See if you can see how far out it goes; see? You can't see the end!
I'd take you out there
but it's a six hour walk
and the work redundant: one board laid down after another.
When the sun is high
the boards are hot.
Splinters always pose a problem walking any other way but straight.
What keeps me working on it, driving piles,
hauling timber, what's kept my hand
on the hammer, the barnacle scraper,
what keeps me working through the thirst,
the nights when the waves' tops pound
the pier from beneath, what keeps me glad
for the work, the theory is, despite the ridicule
at the lumberyard, the treks with pails
of nails (my arms
2cm longer each trip), the theory
is this: it's my body's habit,
hand over foot, pay check to pay check,
it's in the grain of my bones,
lunch box to lunch bucket.
It's good to wear an X
on my back, to bend my back to the sky, it's right
to use the hammer and the saw,
it's good to sleep
out there — attached at one distant end
and tomorrow adding to that distance.
The theory
is: It will be a bridge.

Thomas Lux

A Fragment of a Greek Tragedy

Chorus:

O suitably-attired-in-leather-boots
Head of a traveler, wherefore seeking whom
Whence by what way how purposed art thou come
To this well-nightengaled vicinity?
My object in enquiring is to know,
But if you happen to be deaf and dumb
And do not understand a word I say,
Then wave your hand, to signify as much.

Alcmaemon:

I journeyed hither a Boeotian road.

CHO: Sailing on horseback, or with feet for oars?
ALC: Plying with speed my partnership of legs.
CHO: Beneath a shining or a rainy Zeus?
ALC: Mud's sister, not himself, adorns my shoes.
CHO: To learn your name would not displease me much.
ALC: Not all that men desire do they obtain.
CHO: Might I then hear at what your presence shoots?
ALC: A shepard's questioned mouth informed me that-
CHO: What? for I know not yet what you will say-
ALC: Nor will you ever, if you interrupt.
CHO: Proceed, and I will hold my speechless tongue.
ALC: - This house was Eriphyla's, no one's else.
CHO: Nor did he shame his throat with hateful lies.
ALC: May I then enter, passing through the door?

Chorus:

Go, chase into the house a lucky foot.
And, O my son, be, on the one hand, good,
And do not, on the other hand, be bad;
For that is very much the safest plan.

Alcmaeon:

I go into the house with heels and speed...

[This parody continues, but I shall cut it short here.]

- A.E. Housman -

I have got to start working this moment into my everyday conversations.

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

e.e. cummings

I'm glad to see a ressurection of this thread! I've been sick with the flu, but today I am better--the ears of my ears are awake now and the eyes of my eyes are opened. (i who have died--almost--am alive again today!

Dedications
Pledges
Commitments

For the past.
For my own path.
For surprises.

For mistakes that worked so well.
For tomorrow if I'm there.
For the next real thing.

Then for carrying it all
through whatever is necessary.
For following the little god who speaks only to me.

Carapace

Hold in the hollow of your palm
this carapace so delicate
one breath would send it spinning down,
yet strong enough to bear the stress
of ebb, flow, metamorphosis
from skin to shell.

Seasons have scoured
this beautiful abandoned house
from which are gone eyes, sinews, all
taken-for-granted gifts.

I hold
in my unhoused continuing self
the memory that is wisdom's price
for what survives and grows beneath
old skies, old stars.

Fresh mornings rim
the carapace of night with gold.
The sandgrains shine, the rockpools brim
with tides that bring and bear away
new healing images of day.

Gwen Harwood

(Il ragazzo scrive...)

Voglio esaminare le profondità delle loro anime;
Voglio sapire tutti i particolari delle loro vite,
Affinchè possa capire quello che scrivono,
O, piutosto io sono troppo, troppo curioso!

Altre persone pensono che lui sia troppo ambizioso,
volendo scrivere come Dante o Petrarca...
Infatti quello che ha scritto non è maestoso,
Anche lui lo sa!

Se tu volessi altre poesie da lui, forse...
Lui scriverebbe di più!
In un giorno, in una settimana, in un mese
O, piutosto forse lui guarda il tivu!

I dashed off this rather nonsensical verse
In the hopes that, maybe, I might disperse
Some…..of……this….damn…..inclination
To write in Italian for your eyes' vacillations!

Myself

Well, to give this thread a more significant contribution, here is John Donne's "The Undertaking":

I HAVE done one braver thing
Than all the Worthies did ;
And yet a braver thence doth spring,
Which is, to keep that hid.

It were but madness now to impart
The skill of specular stone,
When he, which can have learn'd the art
To cut it, can find none.

So, if I now should utter this,
Others—because no more
Such stuff to work upon, there is—
Would love but as before.

But he who loveliness within
Hath found, all outward loathes,
For he who color loves, and skin,
Loves but their oldest clothes.

If, as I have, you also do
Virtue in woman see,
And dare love that, and say so too,
And forget the He and She ;

And if this love, though placèd so,
From profane men you hide,
Which will no faith on this bestow,
Or, if they do, deride ;

Then you have done a braver thing
Than all the Worthies did ;
And a braver thence will spring,
Which is, to keep that hid.

Commotion

Tom asked, Are those sharks? and I looked.
We were teetering warily along a narrow strip
of planks laid in a long arc on top of the water.

With each step the planks sunk a bit beneath
the surface but still seemed firm, vanishing
in front and behind, spanning the bay. It was

almost sunset after a day of unsettled weather.
Ahead through a split in thick clouds the sun
hung a few inches over the water, pouring forth

its red and golden radiance. My feet were wet
but I felt calm as I scanned the horizon for sharks.
Most nights my dreams are all work, a ditch

I keep digging in my sleep, but this one came
as a gift, for far to the south I saw a commotion
in the water—row after row of some creature,

plunging ahead, rising and sinking, like horses,
but not horses, with ears flapping behind them
and their muzzles raised. The day's last light

shone on their wet fur—brindle or tan, black
or spotted with white—hundreds, stretching off
in the distance, a furious energy of forward motion

as their paws broke the surface and they arced
through the white froth. They had nothing to do
with us, but would cross our path a short way

farther on. Tom and I had paused in our careful
progression. No, I said, they're not sharks. They're
Great Danes. Oh, said my friend, I was wondering.

For Thomas Lux
Stephen Dobyns

Before the fog comes in,
Obscuring an unfinished moon
And no stars,
And landlocked figures moving
In and out of sight
Heads bent like grey ghosts
In scarves and boots
Down slick well-lit streets,
Pepek, my Uncle,
Measures his life
Through the iced fishbone window
Of a Volkswagon
With a defunct defroster
And a dead battery.
His eye is frozen
On this wide white river
Of hooded strangers hurrying off.
His only company.
What shall Pepek do but sit here
And stare? What
Would Cobra Commander do?
For three days, Bata his beloved
Has praised death, that glacier
Of night, praised the fever,
Praised the pervasive sweat
That drains into the black hole
Of her Hereafter.
Death is the bellowing bull Muse
That comes at the end.
All day she bears its fumbling weight
Between her breasts, belly to belly,
While the priest pronounces Christ.
What should Pepek do
But wait here where he is,
Since all his Allelulias stink
Like so much garbage.
What would Cobra Commander do?

It was like a church to me.
I entered it on soft foot,
Breath held like a cap in the hand.
It was quiet.
What God was there made himself felt,
Not listened to, in clean colours
That brought a moistening to the eye,
In movement of the wind over grass.

There were no prayers said. But stillness
Of the heart's passions - that was praise
Enough ; and the mind's cession
Of its kingdom. I walked on,
Simple and poor, while the air crumbled
And broke on me generously as bread.

- R.S. Thomas -

Interesting guy. I didn't know about him. Amazing how that bread image works. Why would it work? It just does. After the more abstract associations (which are more to the point) my skittering brain moved on to an image of breadcrumb-fed pond ducks. Not that it's aprpopriate to the feel of the poem. Far from being warmed by gratitude, ducks just get frantic and greedy. In a better world, ducks would feel like we feel at the end of that poem. Ah! A benificent rain of bread!

I love R.S. Thomas. Can I post some too?

The furies are at home
in the mirror; it is their address.
Even the clearest water,
if deep enough can drown.

Never think to surprise them.
Your face approaching ever
so friendly is the white flag
they ignore. There is no truce

with the furies. A mirror's temperature
is always at zero. It is ice
in the veins. Its camera
is an X-ray. It is a chalice

held out to you in
silent communion, where gaspingly
you partake of a shifting
identity never your own.

There is just something about it—
standing here in nothing but my gunbelt—
that I like.

Ron Koertge

yur an aligator in the sewer

This is good I think! I also really like the Housman and Cummings.

E detto l’ho perché doler ti debbia!
Inferno, xxiv, 151

Snow coming in parallel to the street,
a cab spinning its tires (a rising whine
like a domestic argument, and then
the words get said that never get forgot),

slush and back-up runoff waters at each
corner, clogged buses smelling of wet wool...
The acrid anger of the homeless swells
like wet rice. This slop is where I live, bitch,

a sogged panhandler shrieks to whom it may
concern. But none of us slows down for scorn;
there’s someone’s misery in all we earn.
But like a bur in a dog’s coat his rage

has borrowed legs. We bring it home. It lives
like kin among the angers of the house,
and leaves the same sharp zinc taste in the mouth:
And I have told you this to make you grieve.

—William Matthews

A Czeck museum,
Skewered on the point
Of a Krupina policeman's bayonette
Like a pearl onion on a shish-ka-bob.
The policeman, who was beating
His horse,
Swapped his life
For Pepek's eye, a poor trade.

...

Within this black hive to-night
There swarm a million bees;
Bees passing in and out the moon,
Bees escaping out the moon,
Bees returning through the moon,
Silver bees intently buzzing,
Silver honey dripping from the swarm of bees
Earth is a waxen cell of the world comb,
And I, a drone,
Lying on my back,
Lipping honey,
Getting drunk with silver honey,
Wish that I might fly out past the moon
And curl forever in some far-off farmyard flower.

--Jean Toomer

"Even"

Nothing
is sorry
sameness
a trap called
no dream remembered.

There are no iron creases
in the mind's coat
no past season's shelter
against tonight's rain
every stain
the same
sin of unlonging
lying
pouring
like windless brown rags
of summer falling
away from the trees.

--Audre Lorde.

Thanne schel I flitte
From bedde to flore,
From flore to here,
From here to bere,
From bere to pitte,
And te pitt fordit.
Thanne lyd mine hus uppe mine nose.
Of al this world ne give I it a pese.

- Anonymous Middle English Poem -

The above translates as:

When my eyes fog over,
And my hearing sizzles [hisses],
And my nose gets cold,
And my tongue folds up,
And my face slackens
And my lips blacken,
And my mouth grins,
And my spittle runs,
And my hair rises,
And my heart trembles,
And my hands shake,
And my feet grow stiff -
All too late! All too late!
When the bier is at the gate.

Then I shall flit
From bed to floor,
From floor to shroud [hair shirt]
From shroud to bier,
From bier to pit [grave],
And the pit closed up.
Then my house rest upon my nose.
As for the world, it won't be worth a pea.

...And you thought Mondays were bad!

Mingus in Diaspora

You could say, I suppose, that he ate his way out,
like the prisoner who starts a tunnel with a spoon,
or you could say he was one in whom nothing was lost,
who took it all in, or that he was big as a bus.
He would say, and he did, in one of those blurred
melismatic slaloms his sentences ran—for all
the music was in his speech: swift switches of tempo,
stop-time, double time (he could talk in 6/8),
“I just ruined my body.” And there, Exhibit A,
it stood, the Parthenon of fat, the tenant voice
lifted, as we say, since words are a weight, and music.
Silence is lighter than air, for the air we know
rises but to the edge of the atmosphere.
You have to pick up The Bass, as Mingus called
his, with audible capitals, and think of the slow years
the wood spent as a tree, which might well have been
enough for wood, and think of the skill the bassmaker
carried without great thought of it from home
to the shop and back for decades, and know
what bassists before you have played, and know
how much of this is stored in The Bass like energy
in a spring and know how much you must coax out.
How easy it would be, instead, to pull a sword
from a stone. But what?s inside the bass wants out,
the way one day you will. Religious stories are rich
in symmetry. You must release as much of this hoard
as you can, little by little, in perfect time,
as the work of the body becomes a body of work.

—William Matthews

Go, bring back the worthless stick.
“Of memory,” I almost added.
But she wouldn?t understand, naturally.
There is the word and the thing
adhering. So far so good.
Metaphor, drawer of drafting tools—
spill it on the study floor, animal says,
that we might at least see
how an expensive ruler tastes.
Yesterday I pissed and barked and ate
because that's what waking means.
Thus has God solved time
for me—here, here. What you call
memory is a long and sweet,
delicious crack of wood in my teeth
I bring back and bring back and bring back.

—Jeffrey Skinner

Letting his wisdom be the whole of love,
The father tiptoes out, backwards. A gleam
Falls on the child awake and wearied of,

Then, as the door clicks shut, is snuffed. The glove-
Gray afterglow appalls him. It would seem
That letting wisdom be the whole of love

Were pastime even for the bitter grove
Outside, whose owl's white hoot of disesteem
Falls on the child awake and wearied of.

He lies awake in pain, he does not move,
He will not scream. Any who heard him scream
Would let their wisdom be the whole of love.

People have filled the room he lies above.
Their talk, mild variation, chilling theme,
Falls on the child. Awake and wearied of

Mere pain, mere wisdom also, he would have
All the world waking from its winter dream,
Letting its wisdom be. The whole of love
Falls on the child awake and wearied of.

-- James Merrill --

The moon slides out
and after it
the bone slides out

The stars
stop in the dark
and arrange themselves

To love someone now
is to sail the ship
away in the bottle

To love someone now
is to understand how
the diamond is formed
under great pressure

See how it works

The night falls first
above the shadows

The heart slides out
and after it
the beast slides out

To love someone now
is to close one hand
and open the other

To love someone now
is to understand that
the sun burns itself up
for light

--Beau Beausoleil

When I come down to sleep death's endless night,
The threshold of the unknown dark to cross,
What to me then will be the keenest loss,
When this bright world blurs on my fading sight?
Will it be that no more I shall see the trees
Or smell the flowers or hear the singing birds
Or watch the flashing streams or patient herds?
No, I am sure it will be none of these.

But, ah! Manhattan's sights and sounds, her smells,
Her crowds, her throbbing force, the thrill that comes
From being of her a part, her subtle spells,
Her shining towers, her avenues, her slums--
O God! the stark, unutterable pity,
To be dead, and never again behold my city!

--James Weldon Johnson

When I throw back my head and howl
People (women mostly) say
But you've always done what you want,
You always get your own way
— A perfectly vile and foul
Inversion of all that's been.
What the old ratbags mean
Is I've never done what I don't.

So the shit in the shuttered chateau
Who does his five hundred words
Then parts out the rest of the day
Between bathing and booze and birds
Is far off as ever, but so
Is that spectacled schoolteaching sod
(six kids and the wife in pod,
And her parents coming to stay)...

Life is an immobile, locked,
Three-handed struggle between
Your wants, the world's for you, and (worse)
The unbeatable slow machine
That brings what you'll get. Blocked,
They strain round a hollow stasis
Of havings-to, fear, faces.
Days sift down it constantly. Years.

—Philip Larkin

    THE SENDER OF THIS
    POSTCARD IS SECRETLY
(STILL) UNSURE OF YOUR WORTH
AS (EITHER) A FRIEND OR A
HUMAN BEING. YOU COCKSUCKER.

—Ted Berrigan

Uh, a cloudy, chilly, and brisk day, uh, temperature this afternoon will only be in the forties, the wind will still be gusting to about twenty miles an hour. There can be a bit of drizzle, there can be a bit of rain, the same goes for tonight, and on into tomorrow morning. After that we do look for a slow improvement, the sky brightens tomorrow afternoon, the sun may come out, temperatures get into the fifties, and then Easter Sunday looks OK, mixed clouds and sun, the sunrise temperature about forty-five, the afternoon high on Sunday should be in the sixties. Right now, though, it's thirty-eight and cloudy in Central Park, humidity at ninety-two percent, wind from the east, gusting to twenty-one miles an hour. Repeating the current temperature thirty-eight, going up to forty-eight today.

from The Maniac Box, #17

I have prepared a smile formula from ten-thousand distortions | alertness in laboratory animals | unfortunately terrorizing the local rock n' rollers was a way of life in that town | the wiggling blue made me twist like crazy | he puts a cat brain into an angel and has spirit orgasms | I extended my hand with the meat cupped in it | the smell at the sink trap at the old janitor's basin | Yukiko was more valuable—she could get the unkown world to smash ITSELF up | I read that book last | Soviet said no | beating the kid from the foot up | I decided it's up to things to come in threes don't force it | the company turns out to class—prayer class | superachiever, pg. 298 | the pill had snoopy on it playing a saxophone | hours spent looking straight through my own hand | some very good magazines have only 8 pages | every dog | the side effects are mild except for the crazies

—C.E. Putnam

a lil' pill, Calliope

Clap ice, opal peace
OPEC oil papal lapel
OPP cloacal pee-pee à loo

A PC pet per clip laps
Los poco loco cops
Local police ape PLO pep

A pale caller leap
Capo a cola allele
Poplar calla lei, a loss
Pec elope, a polar cape

—Lee Ann Brown

Will you please?
and have it delivered like a pineapple today
not yesterday's pineapple but really I would prefer
a daily pineapple if you can arrange it I mean
with a telegram not always a telegram a yearly
one will be sure if it reaches me
if first it goes on an air land and later comes
to me by foot I will like it better than a telegram
read to me over a telephone I would like this
new and fresh telegram to arrive with an old-
fashioned person dressed in a delivery suit
the words will be so contemporary so avant-garde
it being you who shall send it but I can discard
that idea I should like an ordinary person to deliver
my telegram not necessarily in a delivery-suit one
must respect tastes and not parenthesize them as
telegrams do not risk punctuation and my joy in
receiving your words hardly needs embellishment
I almost forgot oh genuine you of delicious pineapples
thank you in advance as you have always wished.

—Barbara Guest [RIP]

E
it almost twelve

oh it is twelve

all the creatures are comin' out

(le)
jazz
simple

actually it's the drummer

E
Charlie?

how else would they
know where they were

he's
bettern a
metronome

but
then
they're
songs
without
anything but
instrumentation

that sounds like Dylan
under some funny ('funky'?)
echoing cover

this one is actually
really good

we got
ta get a
machine
Emily though

Emily
said Bob
Dylan said
to Mick Jagger

'I
could've written
Satisfaction but you
could never have written
Tambourine Man'

it said
in Rolling Stone
so
Sister Morphine

E
I should've
married
Keith Richard

instead of Mick?

Keith Richard
is starting to
overshadow Mick

do you think they
do it with each other

E
I hope so they're
a group

I didn't know Keith Richard
could sing

Oh

I didn't know Mick could sing

Charlie
Watts

that's a
little
bit
faster

just a
little
bit

you see the drummer controls it etc.

it produces a different dream in
everybody it
touches

can you hear the words in this

did it say Daniel Boone

E
No
I don't
think

'click click'

is it over

or play it again

E
shd think of the
people next door what if
they came in and
smelled it

there's
part of this
record can't be played
on this machine

I'd
really like
to hear that
somewhere

sometime

'poor'
rhymes with
'low'?

gee I like it

don't you
(despite)

E
I like it best

should send it to
Rolling Stone

probably too square
too 'straight'

E
send it to
Erma Bombeck

are you really tired of this

huh?

'buttoned
yr lip?'

Barbie Boobie
Barbie Boobie
Barbie Boobie
Barbie Boobie

'how come ya dance so good'

E
don't you feel
cozy toward
Keith

I feel cozy
toward the whole group

that's too much / just the same old Stones

let's go to bed Emily

E
not yet

E
I'm a
finish
my green

that guitar is just
so
so good

it's
disgustingly good

like Keith Richard

somebody
should give them

some reward

this is the
flip side

that's like some sort of
athletic
marathon for
the
drummer

odda
bum

odda
bum

odda
bum

odda
bum

stealin' the
trumpets from

James Brown

what a bruiser

E
I adore her

E
when we're over to Janet's
Janet's mother
reads it aloud to us

E
I was
young once

you were?

E
in the end
she disappears into the weeds
or he does

it's
two o'clock

we got to go to bed Emily

people are going to
be here tomorrow at twelve

E
remember when you used to
actually
it didn't get really good until
around Revolver

around 1965

cuca
cucaracha

Desi Arnaz

E
Ozzie
Nelson

trash

to dance to

come &
get in Emily

E
bring it in

(oops)

Shall I compare thee, China, to Peru?
That is no country! Amid the alien corn.,
The woods' decay, the yielding place to new,
The old order changeth: blow his wreathed horn!
They that have power to (men, lend me your ears!)
Could to my sight that plods his weary way
Rage, rage against the lie too deep for tears,
The feathered glory of an April day.
That's my last Duchess dying of the light -
Put out the light and gaze toward paradise,
A thing of beauty loved not at first sight
(The uncertain glory from her loosening thighs...)
Something there is that is a joy forever.
Friends, "Romans", country? Never, never, never.

(gah)

http://www.albany.edu/~litmag/resources/images/work/2005/grenier/01.gif

there should be a barbara guest thread in light of recent news

I have had Guest on my "to read" list for ages, and perhaps I should finally get around to being more familiar with her. The telegram poem I copied from a friend's blog.

(Also influenced by weather reports)

"Our sex is a toy weather. It is the clear, magnificent, misunderstood morning; we pick up the connections. Toy weathers mean less than we assume. IT is the regular dripping of twigs; we deal with technical problems. It is too strange for sorrow; we tried to make the past. It leaves behind fragments; we repeat the embarrassment. It screams sensation; we must be vast and blank. It seems moister; the web bing folds. It strives to pierce the fog which shuts the view; we flow through the loops. We duck into the tink." etc.

A Day Unlike Any Other

When Rutherford B. Hayes comes to town,
Squirrels are charmed out of the eaves.
The editor breaks down and sobs.
It's a rare day. So rare we almost want it back.
But we give it to Mr. Hayes, the man
Elected by the skin of his teeth.
We honor his teeth. We wish he were king.
We live in a different world, the right world,
The world of mules and Rutherford B. Hayes.
Our inventory of beards has been replenished.
His unrecorded remarks fill the air.
It's impossible to breathe, without breathing
The ether around him. He's the world's
Slowest speaker. He addressed us yesterday,
And look here, he addresses us today.
Our township rises on his tide.
The police sleep the sleep of the innocent;
The river is sweet, the catfish mighty.

James Haug

my career continues
I fill in for every guitarist whose notes squeak out of that box
the box dies, I go on, guitarists die, I go on
I am the expert fake, I do Townshend, I do Belew, I do Prince,
I do it just like them but in my own way, just like them but better,
I branch out and thump bass like Bootsy, wham drum like Bonham,
my silent rendition of Janet Joplin would make tears leak from a rutabaga,
I do every song on any radio station, every solo on "Radar Love"
my all-time record is one afternoon
I do all four sides of Tales From Topographic Oceans
all four sides of Songs in the Key of Life
and the first three and a half sides of Jethro Tull live
until I collapse during the drum solo
my brothers find me twitching, manaical, prideful like Satan

and my career continues
in high school I fake my way through my day
pound hands with everybody, I'm down for anything anyone says,
I know I can do it, I can handle anything, I can speak any language,
I get summer jobs working in warehouses with Mexican dudes,
end up with the most authentic accent of us all
then go to golf lessons at the country club, chip onto the green with my smile,
I am the universal solvent, I can fake anything
fake my job, fake my friendships, my marriage, my hatreds, beliefs, unbeliefs
pull it all off with high style, with flourishes,
twirl my sticks cause it looks cool, throw my pick out into the audience
smash my guitar, don't worry, got another one right here, never gonna run out.

Weatherman

When he cried, it rained.
When he sighed, the wind swelled.
When he stared into the sun, it snowed and snowed and snowed and snowed.
And when he closed his eyes, my weatherman, night fell.

Pat Boran

IN THE VILLAGE OF MY ANCESTORS, by Vasko Popa

One hugs me
One looks at me with wolf-eyes
One takes off his hat
So I can see him better

Each one of them asks me
Do you know who I am

Unknown men and women
Take on the names
Of boys and girls buried in my memory

And I ask one of them
Tell me venerable sir
Is George Wol still alive

That's me he answers
In a voice from the Otherworld

I stroke his cheek with my hand
And beg him with my eyes to tell me
If I am still alive too

I wonder how you are going to feel
when you find out
that I wrote this instead of you.

that it was I who got up early
to sit in the kitchen
and mention with a pen

the rain-soaked windows,
the ivy wallpaper,
and the goldfish circling in its bowl.

Go ahead and turn aside,
bite your lip and tear out the page,
but, listen--it was just a matter of time

before one of us happened
to notice the unlit candles
and the clock humming on the wall.

Plus, nothing happened that morning--
a song on the radio,
a car whistling along the road outside--

and I was only thinking
about the shakers of salt and pepper
that were standing side by side on a place mat.

I wondered if they had become friends
after all these years
or if they were still strangers to one another

like you and I
who manage to be known and unknown
to each other at the same time--

me at this table with a bowl of pears.
you leaning in a doorway somewhere
near some blue hydrangeas, reading this.

--Billy Collins

This is sort of a found poem, a telegram my uncle got from an actress he had apparently insulted in his newspaper column. He framed it.

Try again.

http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/perloff/anth.html

When the rain-whelmed sky
drove the birds in low flight
I decided
I would search for saints.

In coffee shops I kept my ear cocked
for the bell poised over the door
to bounce,
in case a saint came in with
a wet umbrella.
On the street my eyes ran after
the backs of walkers.

All winter
I entered empty phone booths
to read the pencilled messages.
I tried alleys
where bottle glass, webbed on labels
sat, limp,
lashed in related green bits.
But always the saints were
elsewhere just then,
or I'd have noticed them standing about.

Holy figures billowed through my dreams
as vanes, their faces grey-veiled,
holding staves tall as themselves,
drifting away as day began.

I would have settled for one black eyelash,
any holy mite as evidence.
But the city emptied where I looked.

Eating cold bread on a bench one day
a paltry truth popped into my head.
As the bread mess rested in my teeth
I thought,
a saint can have no saintly life
until his bones are shaved of flesh.
I ran my tongue along my hard crowns
about an hour
before I decided
to spend the spring
running with dogs in the park.

-- Written by me in (I think) 1977, resurrected for this thread

Here is "Facing It" by Yusef Komunyakaa:

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't,
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way--the stone lets me go.
I turn that way--I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman's trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

The chandelier of stars
hung low above the field
when the angel closed on him.
He could not pry
porphyritic fingers
from his thigh,
nor break the granite hold.
Stone has no heart for pity.
He was lamed before night's end,
named before dawn;
shriven, driven, broken, repaired.
The angel could have gone on and on.
God asks much for little,
little for much.
We who have no choice must choose:
to win, to lose,
to wrestle with angels.

--Jane Yolen

we bad news force fly? similar side sandwich not.
wife am edge similar. news immediate purpose back.
slow whom music make pretty, bad wanted force window servants night. teach servants being goes companion?
drew carefully she rich why reference, principle wanted next immediate off, thus reply across,
letters a somewhere why servants music. how nothing studied speaking allow. added arms mentioned development shining anybody?

That one, though, is really exceptional. Hm.

All the time they were praying
He watched the shadow of a tree
Flicker on the wall.

There is no need of prayer,
He said,
No need at all.

The kin-folk thought it strange
That he should ask them from a dying bed.
But they left all in a row
And it seemed to ease him
To see them go.

There were some who kept on praying
In a room across the hall
And some who listened to the breeze
That made the shadows waver
On the wall.

He tried his nerve
On a song he knew
And made an empty note
That might have come,
From a bird's harsh throat.

And all the time it worried him
That they were in there praying
And all the time he wondered
What it was they could be saying.

--Waring Cuney

54.

ere
upboi ncheeose

idira,
toap t, stima
        disopera    teoxc

firty oeur pofour

paosleys lbecua

orusis vocm

mucis

              cham

[David Melnick, from PCOET]

I didn't even realize he was still alive. Oh well.

http://static.flickr.com/53/119009857_fbce943275.jpg

Wanting one good organic line
I wrote a thousand sonnets

Wanting a little peace,
I folded a thousand cranes.

Every discipline a new evasion;
every crane a dodge:

Basho didn't know a thing about water
until he heard the frog.

My Father Christmas passed away
When I was barely seven.
At twenty-one, alack-a-day,
I lost my hope of heaven.

Yet not in either lies the curse:
The hell of it's because
I don't know which loss hurts the worse -
My God or Santa Claus.

- Robert Service -

(just to show another side of him than Sam McGee and Dan McGrew)

-- Stephen Crane (poem 37, from The Black Riders)

The Holy Time

(1)

Like timid girls the shades are pacing down
The slopes of evening, trailing soberly
Their vestments grey:

Far, far away,
The last, red tinge
Is fading into brown;

So far!
So faint!
Seen but surmisingly!

And now the dusk of evening draws upon
That memory of light,
And light is gone!

(2)

The bee
Speeds
Home!

The beetle's
Wing of horn
Is booming by!

The darkness,
Every side,
Gathers around

On air,
And sky,
And ground!

The trees
Sing in the darkness,
Far and wide,

In cadenced lift of leaves,
A tale of morn!
And the moon's circle,

Silver-faint, and thin,
Birds lovely on the earth:
- There is no sin!

-- James Stephens

Note: Please try to overlook the overpunctuation of this poem, especially (!) the many (!) exclamation (!) marks! Ignoring these improves this poem immensely.

The Emancipators

When you ground the lenses and the moons swam free
From that great wanderer; when the apple shone
Like a sea-shell through your prism, voyager;
When, dancing in pure flame, the Roman mercy,
Your doctrines blew like ashes from your bones;

Did you think, for an instant, past the numerals
Jellied in Latin like bacteria in broth,
Snatched for by holy Europe like a sign?
Past somber tables inched out with the lives
Forgotten or clapped for by the wigged Societies?

You guessed this? The earth's face altering with iron,
The smoke ranged like a wall against the day?
- The equations metamorphose into use: the free
Drag their slight bones from tenements to vote
To die with their children in your factories.

Man is born in chains, and everywhere we see him dead.
On your earth they sell nothing but our lives.
You knew that what you died for was our deaths?
You learned, those years, that what men wish is Trade?
It was you who understood; it is we who change.

-- Randall Jarrell

"April 15, 2:30 pm. Experience Poetland — an experiment in poetic energy, featuring ten readings of ten poets. Arlo Voorhees presides over Brittany Bladwin, John Hogl, Lisa Steinman, Pat Hathaway, Jim Shugrue, Hazel Dodge, Geraldine Foote, Jeffrey Bershaw, and Tom Blood."

Are you a last minute stand-in, or have you changed your performing name to Tom Blood -- for artistic purposes, of course?

--------------

Anyways: Sarah Lawrence! I don't want to blab on too much, but some categories?

Famous old people of varying degrees of experimentalness: Eleanor Wilner, Gerald Stern, Marie Ponsot, Frank Bidart, Jean Valentine (http://www.jeanvalentine.com/poems.html).

Young Famouse semi-avants: Claudia Rankin, Martha Rhodes.

I don't know the other people as well. I'd say the best way is to just google or look at the Amazon "Look Inside" for these people and see who you'd like. If I were going, I'd check out Bidard, Valentine, and Rankin.

My reading went well. Or, at least, I think it did. I don't know if it was as shall-we-say "magical" as January's reading was but it was somewhat difficult and somewhat accessible material read very, very fast that people were able to get things out of. People seemed to especially like my emceeing, which is really what I'm known for. There was something of a fight at the end of the part I emceed, which was awkward and kinda fun and kinda not at all. It was "memorable".

In all, a reminder that I really have no clue what most people are thinking of when they talk about "poetry".

His poetry, to my mind, left something to be desired, perhaps because he thought that communication happened outside the space of the poem, or that a poem was something that one should be able to respond to immediately, intelligibly, and without your interruption doing damage to its sense or effect.

I have to say Chris that your emceeing was delightful, as were your 125 poems read with astonishing speed and dexterity. Also, thank you for putting us on to Lindsay Hill.

Yeah, I meant to post some of Lindsay's book here, but it was late. If there was a part you liked, feel free to post it...

Here I was able to read that The Poet Known to ILB as Casuistry...

"...began the 5 p.m. session at New American Art Union gallery, a block from East Burnside in inner Southeast. His piece compiled 125 poems, each five words long. No. 41: "Now now now no now" [others presented greater transcription challenges]."

Thus endeth the lesson. Sorry I wasn't able to make it.

do you have it written down?

"The Light Above Cities"

Sitting in darkness,
I see how the light of the city
fills the clouds, rosewater light
poured into the sky
like the single body we are. It is the sum
of a million lives; a man drinking beer
beneath a light bulb, a dancer spinning
in a fluorescent room, a girl reading a book
beneath a lamp.

Yet there are others—astronomers,
thieves, lovers—whose work is only done
in darkness. Sometimes
I don't want to show these poems
to anyone, sometimes
I want to remain hidden, deep in the coals
with the one who pulls the stars
through a telescope's glass, the one who listens
for the click of the lock, the one
who kisses softly a woman's eyes.

--Jay Leeming

For some folks "poetry" might mean words
that rise up corbelled and corniced,
elaborately carven as Corinthian capitols,
a sort of awful edifice of frozen music
or the death mask of a majestic thought.

For others "poetry" might mean words
that fall all pat and neatly done
patterned in rows as do the pleats
in a schoolgirl uniform's skirt,
which repeat, repeat and repeat.

For others "poetry" might mean words
dark, static, stark and few,
croaks, barks and stutters, bitter as gall;
not dead (you understand) because still jerking,
and yet too dry and hard to have much life.

With the best luck "poetry" means words
that turn and turn and turn about again,
continuing to describe a shape
the mind and lips and heart accept
as easily as leaves drink of the sun.

-- Aimless

Under the eglantine
The fretful concubine
Said, "Phooey! Phoo!"
She whispered, "Pfui!"

The demi-monde
On the mezzanine
Said, Phooey!" too,
And a "Hey-de-i-do!"

The bee may have all sweet
For his honey-hive-o,
From the eglantine-o.

And the chandeliers are neat...
But their mignon, marblish glare!
We are cold, the parrots cried,
In a place so debonair.

The Johannisberger, Hans.
I love the metal grapes,
The rusty, battered shapes
Of the pears and of the cheese

And the window's lemon light,
The very will of the nerves,
The crack across the pane,
The dirt along the sill.

-- Wallace Stevens (The Cat With the Mouse's Tail Between His Lips)

Although 'the window's lemon light' wow.

My skin is pemiced to fault
I am down to hair-roots, down to fibre filters
Of the raw tobacco nerve

Your net is spun of sitar strings
To hold the griefs of gods: I wander long
In tear vaults of the sublime

Queen of night torments, you strain
Sutures of song to bear imposition of the rites
Of living and of death. You

Pluck strange dirges from the storm
Sift rare stones from ashes of the moon, and rise
Night errands to the throne of anguish

Oh there is too much crush of petals
For perfume, too heavy tread of air on mothwing
For a cup of rainbow dust

Too much pain, oh midwife at the cry
Of severance, fingers at the cosmic cord, too vast
The pains of easters for a hint of the eternal.

I wiould be free of your tyranny, free
From sudden plunges of the flesh in earthquake
Beyond all subsidence of sense

I would be free from headlong rides
In rock seams and volcanic veins, drawn by dark steeds
On grey melodic reins.

--Wole Soyinka

I do think Aimless's poem about what poetry means to people doesn't address the people that the original poet might have been confused by. All those meanings make sense.

'Pomology', Anselm Hollo

An apple a day
is 365 apples.
A poem a day
is 365 poems.
Most years.
Any doctor will tell you
it is easier to eat an apple
than to make a poem.
It is also easier
to eat a poem
than to make an apple
but only
just. But here
is what you do
to keep the doctor
out of it: publish a poem
on your appletree.
Have an apple
in your next book.

-- Edna St. Vincent Millay

I thought this hovered very nicely between the formal language of traditional sonnetry and the informality of speech, which nicely suits the non-traditional approach to the traditional theme of love. It has a very Cavalier feeling to it and would snuggle up beautifully next to anything written by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester.

1.

I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.
I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do
and its wooden beams were so inviting.

2.

We laughed at the hollyhocks together
and then I sprayed them with lye.
Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.

3.

I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the next ten years.
The man who asked for it was shabby
and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.

4.

Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.
Forgive me. I was clumsy, and
I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!

Enda really likes those monosyllabic words.

The following is a poem by a German Minnesinger named Hess von Rinach. If you have a fair idea of how modern German sounds, you can probably figure out how this Middle German ought to sound:

Klageliche not
klage ich von der minne,
daz si mir gebot,
daz ich minne sinne
dar bewante da man mich verderben wil.
hey minnen spil,
durch dich lide ichsende kumbers alze vil.

Wengel rosenvar,
wolgestellet kinne,
ougen luter klar,
minneclichiu tinne
hat si, diu mir krenket leben unde lip.
hey saelic wip,
dur din besten tugende mir min leit vertrip.

Sueze troesterin,
troeste mine sinne
dur die minne din.
in der minne ich brinne,
von der minne fiure lide ich sende not.
hey mundel rot,
wilt du mich niht troesten, sich, so bin ich tot.
--

Since I certainly can't expect any one here to understand that Middle German, I append this clumsy prose translation:

From love I bemoan my pitiful state, that she has disordered all my senses, so as to wreck me. Hey, love's passion! For your sake I feel love's pain all too much.

Rose red cheeks, full-formed chin, and a lovely brow she has, who weakens me in my life and limb. Hey, blessed woman! With your best strength banish my sickness.

Sweet consoler, comfort my senses through your love. In love I burn. In love's fires I suffer from yearning. Hey, mouth so red! If you don't comfort me, then (you'll see) I'm dead.
--

Finally, here is my verse translation:

I sing a lament,
love's message set twisted,
since I've become bent
and my senses misted
by a passion that misled me into ruin.
Hey, love's tune!
I sing its sorrowed service late and soon.

Cheeks of petal red,
soft by a lovely chin,
with faultless forhead,
and lucid eyes set in.
At her bypassage I breathe faintly.
Hey, so saintly!
Use your beauty to restore, not pain me.

My one consoler
consent to heal me,
cure me of dolor.
I am burned with love's heat
and my song's warmth comes from an ember bed.
Hey, lips of red!
Send no kind of comfort and you pronounce me dead.

-- Aimless

At last you yielded up the album, which
Once open, sent me distracted. All your ages
Matte and glossy on the thick black pages!
Too much confectionery, too rich:
I choke on such nutritious images.

My swivel eye hungers from pose to pose --
In pigtails, clutching a reluctant cat;
Or furred yourself, a sweet girl-graduate;
Or lifting a heavy-headed rose
Beneath a trellis, or in a trilby-hat

(Faintly disturbing, that, in several ways) --
From every side you strike at my control,
Not least through those these disquieting chaps who loll
At ease about your earlier days:
Not quite your class, I'd say, dear, on the whole.

But o, photography! as no art is,
Faithful and disappointing! that records
Dull days as dull, and hold-it smiles as frauds,
And will not censor blemishes
Like washing-lines, and Hall's-Distemper boards,

But shows a cat as disinclined, and shades
A chin as doubled when it is, what grace
Your candour thus confers upon her face!
How overwhelmingly persuades
That this is a real girl in a real place,

In every sense empirically true!
Or is it just the past? Those flowers, that gate,
These misty parks and motors, lacerate
Simply by being over; you
Contract my heart by looking out of date.

Yes, true; but in the end, surely, we cry
Not only at exclusion, but because
It leaves us free to cry. We know what was
Won't call on us to justify
Our grief, however hard we yowl across

The gap from eye to page. So I am left
To mourn (without a chance of consequence)
You, balanced on a bike against a fence;
To wonder if you'd spot the theft
Of this one of you bathing; to condense,

In short, a past that no one now can share,
No matter whose your future; calm and dry,
It holds you like a heaven, and you lie
Unvariably lovely there,
Smaller and clearer as the years go by.

-- Philip Larkin

Your luna moths bring poems to my eyes,
Your oriflamme brings banners to my slums;
You are fat and beautiful, rich and ugly,
A boiler with gold leaf floral decorations;
You are a hard plush chair with sloping shoulders
In which Victoria, like a kangaroo,
Raises her blazing arms to a poem by Mr. Tennyson.

In the sewing machine of your mind you mend my flags,
Under your forehead fatted sheep are feeding,
Falcons are climbing at unwritten speeds,
Adding machines are singing your arias,
Your motor playing chess with continents,
With Quincy, Illinois, with Hell, New Jersey,
Halting on Oriental rugs in Fez.
Beautiful are your fine cartouches,
Your organ pipes externalized like tusks.

If only I could put my arm around you,
If only I could look you in the eye,
I would tell you a grave joke about turtles' eggs,
But there are always your ostrich plumes,
The hydrangeas drooping between your breasts.
I am afraid of your prosthetic wrists,
The mason jars of your white corpuscles.

For Christmas I will send you Maeterlinck's Life of the Bee.

Priests are praying for your beautiful passengers;
Sacraments are burning in your barley-sugar lighthouses;
You carry wild lawyers over yellow bridges;
Your soul as slow as honey coils in vats.

Voluptuous feather-plated Pegasus,
You carry the horizontal thoughtful dead
To gold greens and to sculpture yards of peace.
On leafy springs, O Love, O Death,
Your footfall is the silence that perfects.

I see you everywhere except in dreams.

-- Karl Shapiro --

[Several wonderful images (tusks!) and a quite deft demonstration of the proper use of irony.]

They will chitter to attract mates
And offer tasty meals of rot.
Crows kiss with clacking
And though feathers are well spit-slicked sleek
Their stubby little wings can't hug.

From those high up separate carrion nests
They perch and observe this Saturday night.
Monocled heads cocked and sporting suede vests--
On the watch for rotten food,
They'll ignore the bewildering plumaged sights
As people, idiot creatures, flock.

                    "I have exciting news for you and all Webbs."
                                                            — Miles. S. Webb

The brochure shows a boat passing the Statue of Liberty
while its cargo of immigrants stand gaping,
and one small boy — dressed better than the rest —
watches from a director's chair. He,
obviously, is the Webb. Simple but aristocratic.
Poor, but destined for greatness. Set apart

from the Smiths and Joneses, the Rothblatts
and Steins, the Schmidts and Hampys, the Mancusos
and Malvinos and Mendozas and Tatsuis
and Chus, by "the distinguished Webb name."
Excitement steams from Miles S. Webb's letter to me.
The very type leaps up and down. Just buy

his book, and I will learn (I'm guessing)
about Thomas Webb, famous for his kippered
herring jokes, and Dan Webb of the talking armpits,
and Genevieve Webb, convinced her left
and right feet were reversed. I'll learn the inside story
of Solomon Webb, Dover's greatest circus geek,

and Lady Messalina Webb, transported to Australia
with her husband, Sir Caleb Webb,
son of the merkin-maker Jemmie Webb of Kent.
Best of all, inside the bonus Webb International Directory,
one among 104,352 Webb households in the world,
there I'll be: the very Webb who woke this morning

at 5:53 when his new sprinklers ratcheted on
with the screech of strangled grebes — the Webb
who lolled in bed, loving the artificial rain, then cracked
his drapes and saw fat drops annoint his porch,
and a hummingbird light on a hair-thin twig,
then buzz away when the sprinklers hissed off.

The lawn lay drinking, then — each blade
with its own history, each listed in the Book of Heaven
(Grandma Webb from Yorkshire used to say),
each destined to be cut later this morning by José,
one of 98,998 people to bear (his letter states)
the "brave and glory-dripping name Cortez."

Charles Harper Webb
Amplified Dog
Red Hen Press

Country Song For Fuck You

There are things that are true
And there are things that are cool
Everything's interesting when still in school
Everything's right when nothing moves

Some trains you relay back and
Some trains you loop round the track
Some trains you walk away from
And trains you close right goddamn down

There are things worth doing
and things because fuck you
Stories with a thousand endings
and stories you'll clutch when you're through

Yeah theres this and that babe
and viewpoints I guess you can see
and there's some shit that ain't absolute
but it's still eternal enough for me

Hometown

There are no stars in my home town tonight.
Erased as the past has been, with
only
the smudge of their memory
remaining.

There is not sky in my home town tonight.
Blackness has coated the houses
leaving
impressions of lives in the
empty
streets.

There is no air in my home town tonight -
And there need not be.
Exodus is not an exaggeration
and thos
left
no longer
breathe.

There is nothing in my home town tonight.
There is no more reason.

The desert stretches out in copper rust
star-blossoms travel in the river's stream
my mouth is bitter with the taste of dust
my eyes too dry to dream

Alight upon this gold encrusted breast;
fold your enamel wings
under the lettered scarab, rest,
for darkness brings

Jackal and robber to the gleam of gold,
give me but one more night
to lie among my toys these tomb walls hold,
take flight,

when in the East you see the green day break
flooding the waking trees with living light -
return, enamelled bird, do not forsake
this dust-dry frame tonight.

-- C.A. Trypanis

Giant whispering and coughing from
Vast Sunday-full and organ-frowned-on spaces
Precede a sudden scuttle on the drum,
'The Queen', and a huge resettling. Then begins
A snivel on the violins:
I think of your face among all those faces,

Beautiful and devout before
Cascades of monumental slithering,
One of your gloves unnoticed on the floor
Beside those new, slightly outmoded shoes.
Here it goes quickly dark. I lose
All but the outline of the still and withering

Leaves on half-emptied trees. Behind
The glowing wavebands, rabid storms of chording
By being distant overpower my mind
All the more shamelessly, their cut-off shout
Leaving me desperate to pick out
Your hands, tiny in all that air, applauding.

-- Philip Larkin

8.

Your lover sits
dejected
scratching figures in the dirt outside.
Your friends won't eat
their eyes are swollen from crying.
There's no silly chatter from the
household parrots
and you're a wreck.
Stubborn girl, isn't it
time to quit
sulking?

40.

With dark eyes
not blue lotus
she fashions a welcome garland.
Petals she strews --
not various species of jasmine
but smiles.
Water she offers from ripe
sweating breasts
rather than cermonial jars.
With only her own body
she makes for her
lover a
propitious arrival.

69.

Tilted his head
when she cast a vine-knotted
brow at her rival.
Saluted and stood
abstractly off
when somebody noticed.
Her cheeks flashed like copper.
He stared at her feet.
Yet in front of the parents they
managed to keep up
appearances.

-- Poems traditionally attributed to the poet, Amaru --

For My Lover, Returning to His Wife
by Anne Sexton

She is all there.
She was melted carefully down for you
and cast up from your childhood,
cast up from your one hundred favorite aggies.

She has always been there, my darling.
She is, in fact, exquisite.
Fireworks in the dull middle of February
and as real as a cast-iron pot.

Let's face it, I have been momentary.
A luxury. A bright red sloop in the harbor.
My hair rising like smoke from the car window.
Littleneck clams out of season.

She is more than that. She is your have to have,
has grown you your practical your tropical growth.
This is not an experiment. She is all harmony.
She sees to oars and oarlocks for the dinghy,

has placed wild flowers at the window at breakfast,
sat by the potter's wheel at midday,
set forth three children under the moon,
three cherubs drawn by Michelangelo,

done this with her legs spread out
in the terrible months in the chapel.
If you glance up, the children are there
like delicate balloons resting on the ceiling.

She has also carried each one down the hall
after supper, their heads privately bent,
two legs protesting, person to person,
her face flushed with a song and their little sleep.

I give you back your heart.
I give you permission --

for the fuse inside her, throbbing
angrily in the dirt, for the bitch in her
and the burying of her wound --
for the burying of her small red wound alive --

for the pale flickering flare under her ribs,
for the drunken sailor who waits in her left pulse,
for the mother's knee, for the stocking,
for the garter belt, for the call --

the curious call
when you will burrow in arms and breasts
and tug at the orange ribbon in her hair
and answer the call, the curious call.

She is so naked and singular.
She is the sum of yourself and your dream.
Climb her like a monument, step after step.
She is solid.

As for me, I am a watercolor.
I wash off.

IOW, she wants Casuistry! Let us plan our campaign to bring this to pass.

A Riddle

I am not a picket fence,
And I am not a perfect bore,
And I am not pure ignorance,
And I am not a bloody war,

But I am always making sense,
By making like a picket fence,
And making like a perfect bore,
And making like pure ignorance,
And making like a bloody war.

Say my name, which I adore.

To Be Written on the Mirror in Whitewash

I live only here, between your eyes and you,
But I live in your world. What do I do?
--Collect no interest--otherwise what I can;
Above all I am not that staring man.

Last Stand of the Unknown Shipping Clerk

The man was slim and slightly stooped
On the sidewalk of the sodden street.
His mask-like face, as clamped by irons;
Toned sepia and scored by dust,
Whispered faint scatters of confetti
Into the horizontal rain.

It seemed that he could scarcely stand
The weather seeped into his skin.
As I passed him on my way to work,
Some citizens had gathered round.
When I returned at half-past five
He lay in pulp upon the ground.

Save for his crumpled trilby hat;
A name inside, under the brim.
But as I stopped to take a look,
A dustcart drove away with him.

the piling up of figurements and entanglements could proceed from
the tiny working of the small, if persistent, faculty: as if the
world could be brought to flow by and take the bent of

that single bend: and immediately flip over into the
mirrored world
of permanence, another place trans-shaped with knackery: a brook in
the mind that will eventually glitter away the seas:"

A.R. Ammons - Sphere

Paul Celan: Death Fugue

Black milk of daybreak we drink it at sundown
we drink it at noon in the morning we drink it at night
we drink it and drink it
we dig a grave in the breezes there one lies unconfined
A man lives in the house he plays with the serpents he writes
he writes when dusk falls to Germany your golden hair Margarete
he writes it ans steps out of doors and the stars are flashing he whistles his pack out
he whistles his Jews out in earth has them dig for a grave
he commands us strike up for the dance

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you in the morning at noon we drink you at sundown
we drink and we drink you
A man lives in the house he plays with the serpents he writes
he writes when dusk falls to Germany your golden hair Margarete
your ashen hair Sulamith we dig a grave in the breezes there one lies unconfined

He calls out jab deeper into the earth you lot you others sing now and play
he grabs at teh iron in his belt he waves it his eyes are blue
jab deper you lot with your spades you others play on for the dance

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at at noon in the morning we drink you at sundown
we drink and we drink you
a man lives in the house your golden hair Margarete
your ashen hair Sulamith he plays with the serpents
He calls out more sweetly play death death is a master from Germany
he calls out more darkly now stroke your strings then as smoke you will rise into air
then a grave you will have in the clouds there one lies unconfined

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at noon death is a master from Germany
we drink you at sundown and in the morning we drink and we drink you
death is a master from Germany his eyes are blue
he strikes you with leaden bullets his aim is true
a man lives in the house your golden hair Margarete
he sets his pack on to us he grants us a grave in the air
He plays with the serpents and daydreams death is a master from Germany

your golden hair Margarete
your ashen hair Shulamith

The buzzard never says it is to blame.
The panther wouldn't know what scruples mean.
When the piranha strikes, it feels no shame.
If snakes had hands, they'd claim their hands were clean.

A jackal doesn't understand remorse.
Lions and lice don't waver in their course.
Why should they, when they know they're right?

Though hearts of killer whales may weigh a ton,
in every other way they're light.

On this third planet of the sun
among the signs of bestiality
a clear conscience is Number One.

I met up on a small Yeats poem yesterday.

A Poet to his Beloved

I bring you with reverent hands
The books of my numberless dreams;
White woman that passion has worn
As the tide wears the dove-gray sands,
And with heart more old than the horn
That is brimmed from the pale fire of time:
White woman with numberless dreams
I bring you my passionate rhyme.