good saxual relationship

 

                        Untitled                       

Art’s desire to get it all said
to all who thought him dead
in the joint & beside the point

Art’s struggle to sing it all
through jazz warfare & tell
everything he knew in brass
speed rap stir crazy utopia
of muscle chops push it in your face
rough unrelenting grace

fierce Art pitbull clamps down
pulls edges out in time to break through
scream knotty beauty
toe to toe w/ any joe
who thinks they know better

Art tattoos blue needles into moonlight skin
junk light makes mirrors perfect

Art’s smoke aches out of wounds

L.A. Art burritos & bebop
black guacamole serge zoots
Central Avenue cat copping

Pepper at Club Alabam
in Lee Young’s band
all the chicks & the hatcheck chick
have big eyes for Art’s horn

                  David Meltzer

....

Pelagria a un Labrador

                        by








                   Victor Jara













Stand up.
Look at the mountain,
source
of the wind, the sun, the water.
You who change
the course of rivers,
who with the seed sows
the flight of your soul.

Stand up,
look at your hands,
take your brother's hand
so you can grow,
we'll go together,
united by blood,
the future
can begin today.

Deliver us from the master who keeps us
in misery.
thy will be done, at last,
on earth.

Blow like the wind blows
the wild flower of the mountain pass.
clean the barrel of my gun
like fire.

Thy will be done, at last,
on earth,
give us the strength and courage
to struggle.

Blow like the wind blows
the wild flower of the mountain pass.
clean the barrel of my gun
like fire.

Stand up,
look at your hands,
take your brother's hand
so you can grow.
We'll go together,
united by blood,
now and in the hour
of our death. Amen.
Amen.
Amen.


Translated by Joan Jara and Adrian Mitchell


















.....

by Nicanor Parra - 103 yr old chilean antipoet

De Las Infalibles Palomas                                                                








                    No se libra la estatua de ningún presidente
Nos decía la Clara Sandoval

Las palomas saben múy bien lo que hacen
















No President's Statue Escapes                                                        










                    From those infallible pigeons
Clara Sandoval used to tell us:

Those pigeons know exactly what they’re doing














                                          translator:  Liz Werner








































//

from Seoul Bus Poems

The blood will come and go
as children will go
out of the hamlet by a flute
played once upon a time
for style is straight or slightly bent
souls follow crumbs to the hut
where the oven is with tasty children
wrung dry of echoes the town falls silent
hails never weaken corn
shrugged and lost its yellow its
green a fire consumed
our houses of redemption






                                       Jim Goar






















.....

mystic cognitions

                             PRAYER                                






Lord, in the day’s noise

Help us hear Your listening.

In the face of commotion

help us know the precedence of eternity.

Lord, give us the stature in our souls

not to reduce You to our thoughts.

Let our edges soften and dissolve

and our love for You expand

into Your limitless heart.

Amen.




                   Sally Read




















....

by Michael McClure

Hung midsea
Like a boat mid-air
The liners boiled their pastures:
The liners of flesh,
The Arctic steamers

Brains the size of a teacup
Mouths the size of a door

The sleek wolves
Mowers and reapers of sea kine. THE GIANT TADPOLES
(Meat their algae)
Lept
Like sheep or children. 

 Shot from the sea's bore.

Turned and twisted
(Goya!!)
Flung blood and sperm.
Incense.
Gnashed at their tails and brothers
Cursed Christ of mammals,
Snapped at the sun,
Ran for the Sea's floor.

Goya! Goya!
Oh Lawrence
No angels dance those bridges.
OH GUN! OH BOW!
There are no churches in the waves,
No holiness,
No passages or crossings
From the beasts' wet shore.

.

ahem! cough! cough! ahem !

                  Breaking Fish Necks                                            












The next afternoon we tried anal sex
and as you coaxed my neck with your thumbs

I thought of Wolf’s Creek
and the fish you wouldn’t catch,

plump trout necks you couldn’t bear to break
and take home dead to your mother.

In the warmth I knew my arse
was soft, the downy peach.

But what was beyond drew you in:
a core, sensitive, harsh

like a peachstone –
its coarse ridges, fine strings

caught in grooves
where flesh is torn raggedly away.

Here, at the kernel
of spine, cat’s-cradle of muscle,

you tried to undo me, cupping my hips
with your hands, breaking me patiently.

As we paused, I did loosen
but held together

around this hardness,
in the brace of your arms

till we rolled apart
and I healed slowly over.

You stopped fishing years ago.
You only used the stillness,

the bronze film of water
to will the fish deeper.

You couldn’t watch them
choke on air or feel the snap

of delicate bones
between forefinger and thumb.

Or walk the mile home
swigging a beer

with a wet chill on your hands,
and flashes of silver skin

too easily become
the dead weight of flesh

slung at the bottom
of your pack.






                    Sally Read - poetess convert  to Catholicism
                              - a stunning recent find


























...

prose poem...from...death of a lady's man

Take the word butterfly. To use this word it is not necessary to make the voice weigh less than an ounce or equip it with small dusty wings. It is not necessary to invent a sunny day or a field of daffodils. It is not necessary to be in love, or to be in love with butterflies. The word butterfly is not a real butterfly. There is the word and there is the butterfly. If you confuse these two items people have the right to laugh at you. Do not make so much of the word. Are you trying to suggest that you love butterflies more perfectly than anyone else, or really understand their nature? The word butterfly is merely data. It is not an opportunity for you to hover, soar, befriend flowers, symbolize beauty and frailty, or in any way impersonate a butterfly. Do not act out words. Never act out words. Never try to leave the floor when you talk about flying. Never close your eyes and jerk your head to one side when you talk about death. Do not fix your burning eyes on me when you speak about love. If you want to impress me when you speak about love put your hand in your pocket or under your dress and play with yourself. If ambition and the hunger for applause have driven you to speak about love you should learn how to do it without disgracing yourself or the material.
What is the expression which the age demands? The age demands no expression whatever. We have seen photographs of bereaved Asian mothers. We are not interested in the agony of your fumbled organs. There is nothing you can show on your face that can match the horror of this time. Do not even try. You will only hold yourself up to the scorn of those who have felt things deeply. We have seen newsreels of humans in the extremities of pain and dislocation. Everyone knows you are eating well and are even being paid to stand up there. You are playing to people who have experienced a catastrophe. This should make you very quiet.  Speak the words, convey the data, step aside. Everyone knows you are in pain. You cannot tell the audience everything you know about love in every line of love you speak. Step aside and they will know what you know because you know it already. You have nothing to teach them. You are not more beautiful than they are. You are not wiser. Do not shout at them. Do not force a dry entry. That is bad sex. If you show the lines of your genitals, then deliver what you promise. And remember that people do not really want an acrobat in bed. What is our need? To be close to the natural man, to be close to the natural woman. Do not pretend that you are a beloved singer with a vast loyal audience which has followed the ups and downs of your life to this very moment. The bombs, flame-throwers, and all the shit have destroyed more than just the trees and villages. They have also destroyed the stage. Did you think that your profession would escape the general destruction? There is no more stage. There are no more footlights. You are among the people. Then be modest. Speak the words, convey the data, step aside. Be by yourself. Be in your own room. Do not put yourself on.
This is an interior landscape. It is inside. It is private. Respect the privacy of the material. These pieces were written in silence. The courage of the play is to speak them. The discipline of the play is not to violate them. Let the audience feel your love of privacy even though there is no privacy. Be good whores. The poem is not a slogan. It cannot advertise you. It cannot promote your reputation for sensitivity. You are not a stud. You are not a killer lady. All this junk about the gangsters of love. You are students of discipline. Do not act out the words. The words die when you act them out, they wither, and we are left with nothing but your ambition.
Speak the words with the exact precision with which you would check out a laundry list. Do not become emotional about the lace blouse. Do not get a hard-on when you say panties. Do not get all shivery just because of the towel. The sheets should not provoke a dreamy expression about the eyes. There is no need to weep into the handkerchief. The socks are not there to remind you of strange and distant voyages. It is just your laundry. It is just your clothes. Don't peep through them. Just wear them.
The poem is nothing but information. It is the Constitution of the inner country. If you declaim it and blow it up with noble intentions then you are no better than the politicians whom you despise. You are just someone waving a flag and making the cheapest kind of appeal to a kind of emotional patriotism. Think of the words as science, not as art. They are a report. You are speaking before a meeting of the Explorers' Club of the National Geographic Society. These people know all the risks of mountain climbing. They honour you by taking this for granted. If you rub their faces in it that is an insult to their hospitality. Tell them about the height of the mountain, the equipment you used, be specific about the surfaces and the time it took to scale it. Do not work the audience for gasps and sighs. If you are worthy of gasps and sighs it will not be from your appreciation of the event but from theirs. It will be in the statistics and not the trembling of the voice or the cutting of the air with your hands. It will be in the data and the quiet organization of your presence.
Avoid the flourish. Do not be afraid to be weak. Do not be ashamed to be tired. You look good when you're tired. You look like you could go on forever. Now come into my arms. You are the image of my beauty.












                                                                       Leonard Cohen
























.....
                                                                                                  

if more than two know it is not a secret

THE SECRET KISS                         

As the darkness slowly surrounded the day
We gossiped and enjoyed the time
But I never thought things would end up that way
Where I had the heart to say you were mine


I didn’t want you to be anything else but a friend
You were not allowed to know what I really did feel
I didn’t want our friendship to come to an end
Until that day when everything seemed so real


Suddenly silence surrounded the dark
What you were thinking about I did ask
As I looked into your eyes I saw a deceiving spark
“I want to kiss you” you replied at last


I pretended what you said I did not hear
But just then my heart must have missed a beat
To say something back I did not dare
I tried to pretend it was all a joke...
                                                 ... even though I found it sweet




Not soon after your imagination became so true
A word to nobody I shall say about this
The truth shall always remain between me and you
Now hush…. I shall write no more about the secret kiss




                                                 Sonila Reka

immigration via dance

    (Sergey) (Yesenin) Speaking (Isadora) (Duncan)                                     





                                   by








                             Bill Knott






I love Russia; and Isadora in her dance.
When I put my arms around her, she’s like
Wheat that sways in the very midst of a bloody battle,
-Un-hearkened to, but piling up peace for the earth
(Though my self-war juggles no nimbus) Earthquakes; shoulders
A-lit with birthdays of doves; piety of the unwashable
Creases in my mother’s gaze and hands. Isadora “becalmed”
Isadora the ray sky one tastes on the skin of justborn babies
(Remember, Isadora
When you took me to America
I went, as one visits a grave, to
The place where Bill Knott would be born 20 years in the future
I embraced: the pastures, the abandoned quarry, where he would play
With children of your aura and my sapling eye
Where bees brought honey to dying flowers I sprinkled
Childhood upon the horizons, the cows
Who licked my heart like a block of salt)
Isadora I write this poem
On my shroud, when my home-village walks out to harvest.
Bread weeps as you break it gently into years.






























.

a pilgrim's song

 THE TEXAS PLEASER                                                                       

 

The sunset is focused and red

as a post-pugilist's solar plexus:

a pain never jet-lagged or

caught without a thread

in conversation: the bus

is a timeline of its own

and when we're on the road

we won't speak for hours;

our needs are all bandaged up

and clicked shut in a tight

white box, lickety-slick with

a red X on the side, and

at night we know

if we pulled over we'd cry.

The next town is an "oh,

what did you say?" and

the town after that is

the ring, and the town

after that is the card girl,

and the town after that is

a bucketful of spit.

                    Shafer Hall

.....

indigenous witness

 

 
     AS RED MEN DIE                                                                                                         










CAPTIVE! Is there a hell to him like this?
A taunt more galling than the Huron's hiss?
He–proud and scornful, he–who laughed at law,
He–scion of the deadly Iroquois,
He–the bloodthirsty, he–the Mohawk chief,
He–who despises pain and sneers at grief,
Here in the hated Huron's vicious clutch,
That even captive he disdains to touch!
Captive! But never conquered; Mohawk brave
Stoops not to be to any man a slave;
Least, to the puny tribe his soul abhors,
The tribe whose wigwams sprinkle Simcoe's shores.
With scowling brow he stands and courage high,
Watching with haughty and defiant eye
His captors, as they counsel o'er his fate,
Or strive his boldness to intimidate.
Then flung they unto him the choice:   
            'Wilt thou
Walk o'er the bed of fire that waits thee now–
Walk with uncovered feet upon the coals,
Until thou reach the ghostly Land of Souls,
And, with thy Mohawk death-song please our ear?
Or wilt thou with the women rest thee here?'
His eyes flash like an eagle's, and his hands
Clench at the insult. Like a god he stands.
'Prepare the fire!' he scornfully demands.


  He knoweth not that this same jeering band
Will bite the dust–will lick the Mohawk's hand;
Will kneel and cower at the Mohawk's feet;
Will shrink when Mohawk war drums wildly beat.
His death will be avenged with hideous hate
By Iroquois, swift to annihilate
His vile detested captors, that now flaunt
Their war clubs in his face with sneer and taunt,
Not thinking, soon that reeking, red and raw,
Their scalps will deck the belts of Iroquois.
The path of coals outstretches, white with heat,
A forest fir's length–ready for his feet.
Unflinching as a rock he steps along
The burning mass, and sings his wild war song;
Sings, as he sang when once he used to roam
Throughout the forests of his southern home,
Where, down the Genesee, the water roars,
Where gentle Mohawk purls between its shores,
Songs, that of exploit and of prowess tell;
Songs of the Iroquois invincible.
 Up the long trail of fire he boasting goes,
Dancing a war dance to defy his foes.
His flesh is scorched, his muscles burn and shrink,
But still he dances to death's awful brink.
The eagle plume that crests his haughty head
Will never droop until his heart be dead.
Slower and slower yet his footstep swings,
Wilder and wilder still his death-song rings,
Fiercer and fiercer through the forest bounds
His voice that leaps to Happier Hunting Grounds.
One savage yell–       
        Then loyal to his race,
He bends to death–but never to disgrace.






                       Emily Pauline Johnson  - Mohawk/Canadian poetess
                            (  +   1913   )
























.

*

winter moon --
bowing to a monk
on the bridge

               Buson

.

the game changer for the metis

 

THE LAST BISSON                                                                                                                                                             

EIGHT years have fled since, in the wilderness,
I drew the rein to rest my comrade there–
My supple, clean-limbed pony of the plains.
He was a runner of pure Indian blood,
Yet in his eye still gleamed the desert's fire,
And form and action both bespoke the Barb.
A wondrous creature is the Indian's horse;
Degenerate now, but from the 'Centaurs' drawn–
The apparitions which dissolved with fear
Montezuma's plumed Children of the Sun,
And throned rough Cortez in his realm of gold.

A gentle vale, with rippling aspens clad,
Yet open to the breeze, invited rest.
So there I lay, and watched the sun's fierce beams
Reverberate in wreathed ethereal flame;
Or gazed upon the leaves which buzzed o'erhead,
Like tiny wings in simulated flight.




Within the vale a lakelet, lashed with flowers,
Lay like a liquid eye among the hills,
Revealing in its depths the fulgent light
Of snowy cloud-land and cerulean skies.
And rising, falling, fading far around,
The homeless and unfurrowed prairies spread
In solitude and idleness eternal.

And all was silent save the rustling leaf,
The gadding insect, or the grebe's lone cry,
Or where Saskatchewan, with turbid moan,
Deep-sunken in the plain, his torrent poured.
Here Loneliness possessed her realm supreme,
Her prairies all about her, undeflowered,
Pulsing beneath the summer sun, and sweet
With virgin air and waters undefiled.
Inviolate still! Bright solitudes, with power
To charm the spirit-bruised, where ways are foul,
Into forgetfulness of chuckling wrong
And all the weary clangour of the world.

Yet, Sorrow, too, had here its kindred place,
As o'er my spirit swept the sense of change.
Here sympathy could sigh o'er man's decay;
For here, but yesterday, the warrior dwelt
Whose faded nation had for ages held,
In fealty to Nature, these domains.
Around me were the relics of his race:
The grassy circlets where his village stood,
Well-ruled by custom's immemorial law.
Along these slopes his happy offspring roved
In days gone by, and dusky mothers plied
Their summer tasks, or loitered in the shade.
Here the magician howled his demons up,
And here the lodge of council had its seat,
Once resonant with oratory wild.
All vanished! perished in the swelling sea
And stayless tide of an enroaching power
Whose civil fiat, man-devouring still,
Will leave, at last, no wilding on the earth
To wonder at or love!


                            With them had fled
The bison-breed which overflowed the plains,
And, undiminished, fed uncounted tribes.
Its vestiges were here–its wallows, paths,
And skulls and shining ribs and vertebrae:
Gray bones of monarchs from the herds, perchance,
Descended, by De Vaca first beheld,
Or Coronada, in mad quest of gold.
Here hosts had had their home; here had they roamed,
Endless and infinite–vast herds which seemed
Exhaustless as the sea. All vanished now!
Of that wild tumult not a hoof remained
To scour the countless paths where myriads trod.

Long had I lain 'twixt dreams and waking, thus,
Musing on change and mutability,
And endless evanescence, when a burst
Of sudden roaring filled the vale with sound.
Perplexed and startled, to my feet I sprang,
And in amazement from my covert gazed,
For, presently, into the valley came
A mighty bison, which, with stately tread
And gleaming eyes, descended to the shore.
Spell-bound I stood. Was this a living form,
Or but an image by the fancy drawn?
But no–he breathed! and from a wound blood flowed,
And trickled with the frothing from his lips.
Uneasily he gazed, yet saw me not,
Haply concealed; then, with a roar so loud
That all the echoes rent their valley-horns,
He stood and listened; but no voice replied!
Deeply he drank, then, lashed his quivering flanks,
And roared again, and hearkened, but no sound,
No tongue congenial answered to his call–
He was the last survivor of his clan!

Huge was his frame! the famed Burdash, so grown
To that enormous bulk whose presence filled
The very vale with awe. His shining horns
Gleamed black amidst his fell of floating hair–
His neck and shoulders, of the lion's build,


Were framed to toss the world. Now stood he there
And stared, with head uplifted, at the skies,
Slow-yielding to his deep and mortal wound.
He seemed to pour his mighty spirit out
As thus he gazed, till my own spirit burned,
And teeming fancy, charmed and overwrought
By all the wildering glamour of the scene,
Gave to that glorious attitude a voice,
And, rapt, endowed the noble beast with song.








                          Charles Mair


                          - he evidently despised Louis Riel...
                             but showed great charity to the metis
                              of British Columbia






















.....

the birth of the metis

                                                 THE SONG                                                                      






Here me, ye smokeless skies and grass-green earth,
Since by your sufferance still I breathe and live!
Through you fond Nature gave me birth,
And food and freedom–all she had to give.
Enough! I grew, and with my kindred ranged
Their realm stupendous, changeless and unchanged,
Save by the toil of nations primitive,
Who throve on us, and loved our life-stream's roar,
And lived beside its wave, and camped upon its shore.

They loved us, and they wasted not. They slew,
With pious hand, but for their daily need;
Not wantonly, but as the due
Of stern necessity which Life doth breed.
Yea, even as earth gave us herbage meet,
So yielded we, in turn, our substance sweet
To quit the claims of hunger, not of greed.
So stood it with us that what either did
Could not be on the earth foregone, nor Heaven forbid.

And, so companioned in the blameless strife
Enjoined upon all creatures, small and great,
Our ways were venial, and our life
Ended in fair fulfilment of our fate.
No gold to them by sordid hands was passed;
No greedy herdsman housed us from the blast;
Ours was the liberty of regions rife
In winter's snow, in summer's fruits and flowers–
Ours were the virgin prairies, and their rapture ours!


So fared it with us both; yea, thus it stood
In all our wanderings from place to place,
Until the red man mixed his blood
With paler currents. Then arose a race–
The reckless hunters of the plains–who vied
In wanton slaughter for the tongue and hide,
To satisfy vain ends and longings base.
Thus grew; and yet we flourished, and our name
Prospered until the pale destroyer's concourse came.

Then fell a double terror on the plains,
The swift inspreading of destruction dire–
Strange men, who ravaged our domains
On every hand, and ringed us round with fire;
Pale enemies who slew with equal mirth
The harmless or the hurtful things of earth,
In dead fruition of their mad desire:
The ministers of mischief and of might,
Who yearn for havoc as the world's supreme delight.

So waned the myriads which had waxed before
When subject to the simple needs of men.
As yields to eating seas the shore,
So yielded our vast multitude, and then–
It scattered! Meagre bands, in wild dismay,
Were parted and, for shelter, fled away
To barren wastes, to mountain gorge and glen.
A respite brief from stern pursuit and care,
For still the spoiler sought, and still he slew us there.

Hear me, thou grass-green earth, ye smokeless skies,
Since by your sufferance still I breathe and live!
The charity which man denies
Ye still would tender to the fugitive!
I feel your mercy in my veins–at length
My heart revives, and strengthens with your strength–
Too late, too late, the courage ye would give!
Naught can avail these wounds, this failing breath,
This frame which feels, at last, the wily touch of death.

Here must the last of all his kindred fall;
Yet, midst these gathering shadows, ere I die–

Responsive to an inward call,
My spirit fain would rise and prophesy.
I see our spoilers build their cities great
Upon our plains–I see their rich estate:
The centuries in dim procession fly!
Long ages roll, and then at length is bared
The time when they who spared not are no longer spared.

Once more my vision sweeps the prairies wide,
But now no peopled cities greet the sight;
All perished, now, their pomp and pride:
In solitude the wild wind takes delight.
Naught but the vacant wilderness is seen,
And grassy mounds, where cities once had been.
The earth smiles as of yore, the skies are bright,
Wild cattle graze and bellow on the plain,
And savage nations roam o'er native wilds again.

The burden ceased, and now, with head bowed down,
The bison smelt, then grinned into the air.
An awful anguish seized his giant frame,
Cold shudderings and indrawn gaspings deep–
The spasms of illimitable pain.
One stride he took, and sank upon his knees,
Glared stern defiance where I stood revealed,
Then swayed to earth, and, with convulsive groan,
Turned heavily upon his side, .....and died.






     Charles Mair -      late 19th century Canadian poet
























.....

What Says the Sea. O Little Shell

What says the sea, little shell?
What says the sea?
Long has our brother been silent to us,
Kept his message for the ships,
Awkward ships, stupid ships."

"The sea bids you mourn, O Pines,
Sing low in the moonlight.
He sends tale of the land of doom,
Of place where endless falls
A rain of women's tears,
And men in grey robes --
Men in grey robes --
Chant the unknown pain."

"What says the sea, little shell?
What says the sea?
Long has our brother been silent to us,
Kept his message for the ships,
Puny ships, silly ships."

"The sea bids you teach, O Pines,
Sing low in the moonlight;
Teach the gold of patience,
Cry gospel of gentle hands,
Cry a brotherhood of hearts.
The sea bids you teach, O Pines."

"And where is the reward, little shell?
What says the sea?
Long has our brother been silent to us,
Kept his message for the ships,
Puny ships, silly ships."

"No word says the sea, O Pines,
No word says the sea.
Long will your brother be silent to you,
Keep his message for the ships,
O puny pines, silly pines."  








                     Stephen Crane  
























.....                   

might as well try to be honest

 














            a  sad  state  of  freedom                                                        














You waste the attention of your eyes,
the glittering labour of your hands,
and knead the dough enough for dozens of loaves
of which you'll taste not a morsel;
you are free to slave for others--
you are free to make the rich richer.

The moment you're born
they plant around you
mills that grind lies
lies to last you a lifetime.
You keep thinking in your great freedom
a finger on your temple
free to have a free conscience.

Your head bent as if half-cut from the nape,
your arms long, hanging,
your saunter about in your great freedom:
you're free
with the freedom of being unemployed.

You love your country
as the nearest, most precious thing to you.
But one day, for example,
they may endorse it over to America,
and you, too, with your great freedom--
you have the freedom to become an air-base.

You may proclaim that one must live
not as a tool, a number or a link
but as a human being--
then at once they handcuff your wrists.
You are free to be arrested, imprisoned
and even hanged.

There's neither an iron, wooden
nor a tulle curtain
in your life;
there's no need to choose freedom:
you are free.
But this kind of freedom
is a sad affair under the stars.








                     Nazim Hikmet


















....

ode to love and its problems

KINGFISHER FLAT                                                                  












In the long drought
Impotence clutched on the veins of passion
Encircles our bed, a serpent of stone.

        . . . . . . .


I think of the Fisher King,
All his domain parched in a sterile fixation of purpose,
Clenched on the core of the burning question
Gone unasked.

        . . . . . . .


Oh, wife and companion!
The ancient taboo hangs over us,
A long suspension tightens its grip
On the seed of my passion and the flower of your hope.
Masks of drought deceive us. An inexorable forbearance
Falsifies the face of things, and makes inflexible
The flow of this life, the movement of this love.

        . . . . . . .


I hear quaking grass
Shiver under the windowsill, and out along the road
The ripe mallow and the wild oat
Rustle in the wind. Deeper than the strict
Interdiction of denial or the serpentine coiling of time,
Woman and earth lie sunk in sleep, unsatisfied.
Each holds that bruise to her heart like a stone
And aches for rain.












                                        William Everson
































....

ANOTHER COWBOY POEM - from Montana

WRECKS                                                         








Well, I’ve seen some wrecks ahorseback
An’ quite a few with cars,
An’ I’ve even seen the carnage
Of some awful wrecks in bars.
But the worst wrecks in my mem’ry
Was the ones a comin’ on
When there come a perfumed letter
That started off "Dear John."








                  Mike Logan




















....

where brooklyn trout swim

 












  The Lordly Hudson                                                            














"Driver, what stream is it?" I asked, well knowing
it was our lordly Hudson hardly flowing.
"It is our lordly Hudson hardly flowing,"
he said, under the green-grown cliffs."


Be still, heart! No one needs
your passionate suffrage to select this glory,
this is our lordly Hudson hardly flowing
under the green-grown cliffs.


"Driver, has this a peer in Europe or the East?"
"No, no!" he said. Home! Home!
Be quiet, heart! This is our lordly Hudson
and has no peer in Europe or the east.


This is our lordly Hudson hardly flowing
under the green-grown cliffs
and has no peer in Europe or the East.
Be quiet, heart! Home! Home!








                               – Paul Goodman




















....

latin candor

pablo neruda's confession                                                                                                               

And it was at that age... Poetry arrived in search of me.
I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating planations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars, my heart broke free on the open sky.








                    tr. A. Kerrigan

..

i dare say this poem was written by a woman

.

“What does Woman want?”
is not a question
you need to ask.
Instead, ask: How can
woman be curbed, how
kept at her task?

How can she be made
to know her place? Must
her ears be cropped?
The way she uses
her wits, her wiles! How
can she be stopped?

Was it wise to let
this genie out of
the bottle? See
man in chains, woman
his master! Is this
how things should be?

                   anonymous

                   - most famous poet

.

love at first sight

The Yawn                                                    

The black-haired girl
with the big
                     brown
                                eyes
on the Queens train coming
                     in to work, so
opens her mouth so beautifully
                     wide
                                in a ya-aawn, that
two stops after she has left the train
I have only to think of her          and I

                                      o-oh-aaaww-hm
                                                wow !








                      Paul Blackburn










































....

honestly

i  long  to  hold  some  lady                 

















I long to hold some lady
For my love is far away,
And will not come tomorrow
And was not here today.

There is no flesh so perfect
As on my lady's bone,
And yet it seems so distant
When I am all alone:


As though she were a masterpiece
In some castled town,
That pilgrims come to visit
And priests to copy down.

Alas, I cannot travel
To a love I have so deep
Or sleep too close beside
A love I want to keep.


But I long to hold some lady,
For flesh is warm and sweet.
Cold skeletons go marching
Each night beside my feet.






                   Leonard Cohen (   +  Nov. 7- 2016  )
















...