Written by
Anne Sexton |
It is in the small things we see it.
The child's first step,
as awesome as an earthquake.
The first time you rode a bike,
wallowing up the sidewalk.
The first spanking when your heart
went on a journey all alone.
When they called you crybaby
or poor or fatty or crazy
and made you into an alien,
you drank their acid
and concealed it.
Later,
if you faced the death of bombs and bullets
you did not do it with a banner,
you did it with only a hat to
comver your heart.
You did not fondle the weakness inside you
though it was there.
Your courage was a small coal
that you kept swallowing.
If your buddy saved you
and died himself in so doing,
then his courage was not courage,
it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.
Later,
if you have endured a great despair,
then you did it alone,
getting a transfusion from the fire,
picking the scabs off your heart,
then wringing it out like a sock.
Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow,
you gave it a back rub
and then you covered it with a blanket
and after it had slept a while
it woke to the wings of the roses
and was transformed.
Later,
when you face old age and its natural conclusion
your courage will still be shown in the little ways,
each spring will be a sword you'll sharpen,
those you love will live in a fever of love,
and you'll bargain with the calendar
and at the last moment
when death opens the back door
you'll put on your carpet slippers
and stride out.
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Written by
Tony Hoagland |
They have little tractors in their blood
and all day the tractors climb up and down
inside their arms and legs, their
collarbones and heads.
That is why they yell and scream and slam the barbells
down into their clanking slots,
making the metal ring like sledgehammers on iron,
like dungeon prisoners rattling their chains.
That is why they shriek their tires at the stopsign,
why they turn the base up on the stereo
until it shakes the traffic light, until it
dryhumps the eardrum of the crossing guard.
Testosterone is a drug,
and they say No, No, No until
they are overwhelmed and punch
their buddy in the face for joy,
or make a joke about gravy and bottomless holes
to a middle-aged waitress who is gently
setting down the plate in front of them.
If they are grotesque, if
what they say and do is often nothing more
than a kind of psychopathic fart,
it is only because of the tractors,
the tractors in their blood,
revving their engines, chewing up the turf
inside their arteries and veins
It is the testosterone tractor
constantly climbing the mudhill of the world
and dragging the young man behind it
by a chain around his leg.
In the stink and the noise, in the clouds
of filthy exhaust
is where they live.
It is the tractors
that make them
what they are.
While they make being a man
look like a disease.
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Written by
Robert William Service |
Of all the boys with whom I fought
In Africa and Sicily,
Bill was the bravest of the lot
In our dare-devil Company.
That lad would rather die than yield;
His gore he glorified to spill,
And so in every battlefield
A hero in my eyes was Bill.
Then when the bloody war was done,
He moseyed back to our home town,
And there, a loving mother's son,
Like other kids he settled down.
His old girl seemed a shade straight-laced,
For when I called my buddy "Bill,"
She looked at me with some distaste,
Suggesting that his name was "Will.
"
And then he had to get engaged,
And took unto himself a wife;
And so inevitably caged,
He settled down to wedded life.
He introduced me to his Missis,
But oh I thought her rather silly,
For in between their frequent kisses
She called my hard-boiled here: "Willie.
"
Now he has long forgot the War,
The which he did a lot to win,
And feeling full of ginger for
He's happy Pop of cherubs twin.
Yet with his air: "Don't care a damn,"
On Main Street he's my hero still .
.
.
As proud he wheels a double pram
What guy has got the guts of Bill!
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Written by
David Lehman |
We have a name for it
in the South:
******* buddies.
It means we've known
each other so long
it doesn't matter
that he's an *******
in my opinion
or I'm an *******
in his opinion
or whatever
And I want you to know
I'm not from the South
and you're not my buddy
and it doesn't matter
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Written by
Philip Levine |
In Havana in 1948 I ate fried dog
believing it was Peking duck.
Later,
in Tampa I bunked with an insane sailor
who kept a .
38 Smith and Wesson in his shorts.
In the same room were twins, oilers
from Toledo, who argued for hours
each night whose turn it was
to get breakfast and should he turn
the eggs or not.
On the way north
I lived for three days on warm water
in a DC-6 with a burned out radio
on the runway at Athens, Georgia.
We sang
a song, "Georgia's Big Behind," and prayed
for WWIII and complete, unconditional surrender.
Napping in an open field near Newport News,
I chewed on grass while the shadows of September
lengthened; in the distance a man hammered
on the roof of a hangar and groaned how he
was out of luck and vittles.
Bummed a ride
in from Mitchell Field and had beet borscht
and white bread at 34th and 8th Avenue.
I threw up in the alley behind the YMCA
and slept until they turned me out.
I walked the bridge to Brooklyn
while the East River browned below.
A mile from Ebbetts Field, from all
that history, I found Murray, my papa's
buddy, in his greasy truck shop, polishing
replacement parts.
Short, unshaven, puffed,
he strutted the filthy aisles,
a tiny Ghengis Khan.
He sent out for soup
and sandwiches.
The world turned on barley,
pickled meats, yellow mustard, kasha,
rye breads.
It rained in October, rained
so hard I couldn't walk and smoke, so I
chewed pepsin chewing gum.
The rain
spoiled Armistice Day in Lancaster, Pa.
The open cars overflowed, girls cried,
the tubas and trombones went dumb,
the floral displays shredded, the gutters
clogged with petals.
Afterwards had ham
on buttered whole-wheat bread, ham
and butter for the first time
on the same day in Zanesville with snow
forecast, snow, high winds, closed roads,
solid darkness before 5 p.
m.
These were not
the labors of Hercules, these were not
of meat or moment to anyone but me
or destined for story or to learn from
or to make me fit to take the hand
of a toad or a toad princess or to stand
in line for food stamps.
One quiet morning
at the end of my thirteenth year a little bird
with a dark head and tattered tail feathers
had come to the bedroom window and commanded
me to pass through the winding miles
of narrow dark corridors and passageways
of my growing body the filth and glory
of the palatable world.
Since then I've
been going out and coming back
the way a swallow does with unerring grace
and foreknowledge because all of this
was prophesied in the final, unread book
of the Midrash and because I have to
grow up and because it pleases me.
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Written by
Maggie Estep |
Liner Notes - (from No More Mister Nice Girl)
I was having a foul day.
Some
geezer harrassed me on the street and I got completely bent out of shape,
but the guy was huge so I just stuffed my retort.
Went home to drink
coffee.
No milk.
I ripped through the cupboards and found Non Dairy Creamer.
It tasted like ****.
I got into one of those senseless rages where you
throw stuff.
I hurled the Non Dairy Creamer and it fell into the tub where
I was running some bath water.
The creamer erupted and made this bathing
gel of Non Dairy Creamer.
I was ready to kill myself.
Instead I wrote Hey
Baby.
So I'm walking down the street
minding my own business
when this guy starts with me
he's suckin' his lips goin'
Hey Baby
Yo Baby
Hey Baby
Yo
and I get a little tense and nervous
but I keep walking
but the guy, he's dogging my every move
hey Miss, he says,
Don't miss this!
And he grabs his crotch and sneers ear to ear
so finally, I turn around
Hey Buddy, I say
I'm feelin' kinda tense, Buddy
I got a fuckin' song in my heart
so come on,
Let's go
I got a huge bucket of non-dairy creamer
and some time to kill
so let's do it
we'll make some foul-smelling artifical milk
and drink gallons and gallons and gallons of it
Get our bladders exceedingly full then
sit on the toilet together and let
the water run in the shower
and torture ourselves by not letting ourselves urinate
as the water rushes loudly
into the bathrub, okay?
We'll do it together
writhe in utter agony
Just you and me
and I'll even spring for some of that blue ****
for the toilet bowl, all right?
I mean, that's my idea of a good time
so how bout it, you wanna?
The guy backs up a bit
Whatsa matter, Baby?
You got somethin' against men?, he says
No, I say
I don't have anything against men
Just STUPID men
|
Written by
William Butler Yeats |
I walked among the seven woods of Coole:
Shan-walla, where a willow-hordered pond
Gathers the wild duck from the winter dawn;
Shady Kyle-dortha; sunnier Kyle-na-no,
Where many hundred squirrels are as happy
As though they had been hidden hy green houghs
Where old age cannot find them; Paire-na-lee,
Where hazel and ash and privet hlind the paths:
Dim Pairc-na-carraig, where the wild bees fling
Their sudden fragrances on the green air;
Dim Pairc-na-tarav, where enchanted eyes
Have seen immortal, mild, proud shadows walk;
Dim Inchy wood, that hides badger and fox
And marten-cat, and borders that old wood
Wise Buddy Early called the wicked wood:
Seven odours, seven murmurs, seven woods.
I had not eyes like those enchanted eyes,
Yet dreamed that beings happier than men
Moved round me in the shadows, and at night
My dreams were clown hy voices and by fires;
And the images I have woven in this story
Of Forgael and Dectora and the empty waters
Moved round me in the voices and the fires,
And more I may not write of, for they that cleave
The waters of sleep can make a chattering tongue
Heavy like stone, their wisdom being half silence.
How shall I name you, immortal, mild, proud shadows?
I only know that all we know comes from you,
And that you come from Eden on flying feet.
Is Eden far away, or do you hide
From human thought, as hares and mice and coneys
That run before the reaping-hook and lie
In the last ridge of the barley? Do our woods
And winds and ponds cover more quiet woods,
More shining winds, more star-glimmering ponds?
Is Eden out of time and out of space?
And do you gather about us when pale light
Shining on water and fallen among leaves,
And winds blowing from flowers, and whirr of feathers
And the green quiet, have uplifted the heart?
I have made this poem for you, that men may read it
Before they read of Forgael and Dectora,
As men in the old times, before the harps began,
Poured out wine for the high invisible ones.
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