Resurrection: The 2006 Poetry Thread

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

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.