Resurrection: The 2006 Poetry Thread

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

                    "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.