10 Best Famous Inch Poems

Here is a collection of the top 10 all-time best famous Inch poems. This is a select list of the best famous Inch poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Inch poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of inch poems.

• All Famous Inch Poems

 One thing that literature would be greatly the better for
Would be a more restricted employment by the authors of simile and
metaphor.
Authors of all races, be they Greeks, Romans, Teutons or Celts,
Can't seem just to say that anything is the thing it is but have to
go out of their way to say that it is like something else.
What does it mean when we are told
That that Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold?
In the first place, George Gordon Byron had enough experience
To know that it probably wasn't just one Assyrian, it was a lot of
Assyrians.
However, as too many arguments are apt to induce apoplexy and
thus hinder longevity.
We'll let it pass as one Assyrian for the sake of brevity.
Now then, this particular Assyrian, the one whose cohorts were
gleaming in purple and gold,
Just what does the poet mean when he says he came down like a
wold on the fold?
In heaven and earth more than is dreamed of in our philosophy
there are great many things.
But I don't imagine that among them there is a wolf with purple
and gold cohorts or purple and gold anythings.
No, no, Lord Byron, before I'll believe that this Assyrian was
actually like a wolf I must have some kind of proof;
Did he run on all fours and did he have a hairy tail and a big red
mouth and big white teeth and did he say Woof Woof?
Frankly I think it is very unlikely, and all you were entitled to say,
at the very most,
Was that the Assyrian cohorts came down like a lot of Assyrian
cohorts about to destroy the Hebrew host.
But that wasn't fancy enough for Lord Byron, oh dear me no, he
had to invent a lot of figures of speech and then interpolate them,
With the result that whenever you mention Old Testament soldiers
to people they say Oh yes, they're the ones that a lot of
wolves dressed up in gold and purple ate them.
That's the kind of thing that's being done all the time by poets,
from Homer to Tennyson;
They're always comparing ladies to lilies and veal to venison,
And they always say things like that the snow is a white blanket
after a winter storm.
Oh it is, is it, all right then, you sleep under a six-inch blanket of
snow and I'll sleep under a half-inch blanket of unpoetical
blanket material and we'll see which one keeps warm,
And after that maybe you'll begin to comprehend dimly
What I mean by too much metaphor and simile.

Clay comes out to meet Liston 
and Liston starts to retreat, 
if Liston goes back an inch farther 
he'll end up in a ringside seat. 
Clay swings with his left, 
Clay swings with his right, 
Look at young Cassius 
carry the fight 
Liston keeps backing, but there's not enough room, 
It's a matter of time till Clay lowers the boom. 
Now Clay lands with a right, 
What a beautiful swing, 
and the punch raises the Bear 
clean out of the ring. 
Liston is still rising and the ref wears a frown, 
For he can't start counting 
till Sonny goes down. 
Now Liston is disappearing from view, 
The crowd is going frantic, 
But radar stations have picked him up, 
Somewhere over the Atlantic. 
Who would have thought 
when they came to the fight? 
That they'd witness the launching 
of a human satellite. 
Yes the crowd did not dream, 
when they put up the money, 
That they would see 
a total eclipse of the Sonny. 

Muhammad Ali Quotes Poems

Ding! Ali comes out to meet Frazier 
But Frazier starts to retreat 
If Frazier goes back any further 
He'll wind up in a ringside seat 

Ali swings to the left 
Ali swings to the right 
Look at the kid 
Carry the fight 

Frazier keeps backing 
But there's not enough room 
It's a matter of time 
Then Ali lowers the boom 

Now Ali lands to the right 
What a beautiful swing! 
And deposits Frazier 
Clean out of the ring 

Frazier's still rising 
But the referee wears a frown 
For he can't start counting 
Till Frazier comes down 

Now Frazier disappears from view 
The crowd is getting frantic 
But our radar stations have picked him up 
He's somewhere over the Atlantic 

Who would have thought that 
When they came to the fight 
That they would have witnessed 
The launching of a coloured satellite! 

 To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.
A dove-house filled with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell through all its regions.
A dog starved at his master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.
A horse misused upon the road
Calls to heaven for human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain does tear.
A skylark wounded in the wing,
A cherubim does cease to sing.
The game-cock clipped and armed for fight
Does the rising sun affright.
Every wolf's and lion's howl
Raises from hell a human soul.
The wild deer wandering here and there
Keeps the human soul from care.
The lamb misused breeds public strife,
And yet forgives the butcher's knife.
The bat that flits at close of eve
Has left the brain that won't believe.
The owl that calls upon the night
Speaks the unbeliever's fright.
He who shall hurt the little wren
Shall never be beloved by men.
He who the ox to wrath has moved
Shall never be by woman loved.
The wanton boy that kills the fly
Shall feel the spider's enmity.
He who torments the chafer's sprite
Weaves a bower in endless night.
The caterpillar on the leaf
Repeats to thee thy mother's grief.
Kill not the moth nor butterfly,
For the Last Judgment draweth nigh.
He who shall train the horse to war
Shall never pass the polar bar.
The beggar's dog and widow's cat,
Feed them, and thou wilt grow fat.
The gnat that sings his summer's song
Poison gets from Slander's tongue.
The poison of the snake and newt
Is the sweat of Envy's foot.
The poison of the honey-bee
Is the artist's jealousy.
The prince's robes and beggar's rags
Are toadstools on the miser's bags.
A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.
It is right it should be so:
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know
Through the world we safely go.
Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.
The babe is more than swaddling bands,
Throughout all these human lands;
Tools were made and born were hands,
Every farmer understands.
Every tear from every eye
Becomes a babe in eternity;
This is caught by females bright
And returned to its own delight.
The bleat, the bark, bellow, and roar
Are waves that beat on heaven's shore.
The babe that weeps the rod beneath
Writes Revenge! in realms of death.
The beggar's rags fluttering in air
Does to rags the heavens tear.
The soldier armed with sword and gun
Palsied strikes the summer's sun.
The poor man's farthing is worth more
Than all the gold on Afric's shore.
One mite wrung from the labourer's hands
Shall buy and sell the miser's lands,
Or if protected from on high
Does that whole nation sell and buy.
He who mocks the infant's faith
Shall be mocked in age and death.
He who shall teach the child to doubt
The rotting grave shall ne'er get out.
He who respects the infant's faith
Triumphs over hell and death.
The child's toys and the old man's reasons
Are the fruits of the two seasons.
The questioner who sits so sly
Shall never know how to reply.
He who replies to words of doubt
Doth put the light of knowledge out.
The strongest poison ever known
Came from Caesar's laurel crown.
Nought can deform the human race
Like to the armour's iron brace.
When gold and gems adorn the plough
To peaceful arts shall Envy bow.
A riddle or the cricket's cry
Is to doubt a fit reply.
The emmet's inch and eagle's mile
Make lame philosophy to smile.
He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne'er believe, do what you please.
If the sun and moon should doubt,
They'd immediately go out.
To be in a passion you good may do,
But no good if a passion is in you.
The whore and gambler, by the state
Licensed, build that nation's fate.
The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave old England's winding sheet.
The winner's shout, the loser's curse,
Dance before dead England's hearse.
Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born.
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
We are led to believe a lie
When we see not through the eye
Which was born in a night to perish in a night,
When the soul slept in beams of light.
God appears, and God is light
To those poor souls who dwell in night,
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and from moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

 If you were only one inch tall, you'd ride a worm to school.
The teardrop of a crying ant would be your swimming pool.
A crumb of cake would be a feast
And last you seven days at least,
A flea would be a frightening beast
If you were one inch tall.

If you were only one inch tall, you'd walk beneath the door,
And it would take about a month to get down to the store.
A bit of fluff would be your bed,
You'd swing upon a spider's thread,
And wear a thimble on your head
If you were one inch tall.

You'd surf across the kitchen sink upon a stick of gum.
You couldn't hug your mama, you'd just have to hug her thumb.
You'd run from people's feet in fright,
To move a pen would take all night,
(This poem took fourteen years to write--
'Cause I'm just one inch tall).

 1
SAUNTERING the pavement, or riding the country by-road—lo! such faces! 
Faces of friendship, precision, caution, suavity, ideality; 
The spiritual, prescient face—the always welcome, common, benevolent face, 
The face of the singing of music—the grand faces of natural lawyers and judges, broad
 at
 the
 back-top; 
The faces of hunters and fishers, bulged at the brows—the shaved blanch’d faces
 of
 orthodox citizens;
The pure, extravagant, yearning, questioning artist’s face; 
The ugly face of some beautiful Soul, the handsome detested or despised face; 
The sacred faces of infants, the illuminated face of the mother of many children; 
The face of an amour, the face of veneration; 
The face as of a dream, the face of an immobile rock;
The face withdrawn of its good and bad, a castrated face; 
A wild hawk, his wings clipp’d by the clipper; 
A stallion that yielded at last to the thongs and knife of the gelder. 

Sauntering the pavement, thus, or crossing the ceaseless ferry, faces, and faces, and
 faces: 
I see them, and complain not, and am content with all.

2
Do you suppose I could be content with all, if I thought them their own finale? 

This now is too lamentable a face for a man; 
Some abject louse, asking leave to be—cringing for it; 
Some milk-nosed maggot, blessing what lets it wrig to its hole. 

This face is a dog’s snout, sniffing for garbage;
Snakes nest in that mouth—I hear the sibilant threat. 

This face is a haze more chill than the arctic sea; 
Its sleepy and wobbling icebergs crunch as they go. 

This is a face of bitter herbs—this an emetic—they need no label; 
And more of the drug-shelf, laudanum, caoutchouc, or hog’s-lard.

This face is an epilepsy, its wordless tongue gives out the unearthly cry, 
Its veins down the neck distended, its eyes roll till they show nothing but their whites, 
Its teeth grit, the palms of the hands are cut by the turn’d-in nails, 
The man falls struggling and foaming to the ground while he speculates well. 

This face is bitten by vermin and worms,
And this is some murderer’s knife, with a half-pull’d scabbard. 

This face owes to the sexton his dismalest fee; 
An unceasing death-bell tolls there. 

3
Those then are really men—the bosses and tufts of the great round globe! 

Features of my equals, would you trick me with your creas’d and cadaverous march?
Well, you cannot trick me. 

I see your rounded, never-erased flow; 
I see neath the rims of your haggard and mean disguises. 

Splay and twist as you like—poke with the tangling fores of fishes or rats; 
You’ll be unmuzzled, you certainly will.

I saw the face of the most smear’d and slobbering idiot they had at the asylum; 
And I knew for my consolation what they knew not; 
I knew of the agents that emptied and broke my brother, 
The same wait to clear the rubbish from the fallen tenement; 
And I shall look again in a score or two of ages,
And I shall meet the real landlord, perfect and unharm’d, every inch as good as
 myself. 

4
The Lord advances, and yet advances; 
Always the shadow in front—always the reach’d hand bringing up the laggards. 

Out of this face emerge banners and horses—O superb! I see what is coming; 
I see the high pioneer-caps—I see the staves of runners clearing the way,
I hear victorious drums. 

This face is a life-boat; 
This is the face commanding and bearded, it asks no odds of the rest; 
This face is flavor’d fruit, ready for eating; 
This face of a healthy honest boy is the programme of all good.

These faces bear testimony, slumbering or awake; 
They show their descent from the Master himself. 

Off the word I have spoken, I except not one—red, white, black, are all deific; 
In each house is the ovum—it comes forth after a thousand years. 

Spots or cracks at the windows do not disturb me;
Tall and sufficient stand behind, and make signs to me; 
I read the promise, and patiently wait. 

This is a full-grown lily’s face, 
She speaks to the limber-hipp’d man near the garden pickets, 
Come here, she blushingly cries—Come nigh to me, limber-hipp’d
 man,
Stand at my side till I lean as high as I can upon you, 
Fill me with albescent honey, bend down to me, 
Rub to me with your chafing beard, rub to my breast and shoulders. 

5
The old face of the mother of many children! 
Whist! I am fully content.

Lull’d and late is the smoke of the First-day morning, 
It hangs low over the rows of trees by the fences, 
It hangs thin by the sassafras, the wild-cherry, and the cat-brier under them. 

I saw the rich ladies in full dress at the soiree, 
I heard what the singers were singing so long,
Heard who sprang in crimson youth from the white froth and the water-blue, 

Behold a woman! 
She looks out from her quaker cap—her face is clearer and more beautiful than the
 sky. 

She sits in an arm-chair, under the shaded porch of the farmhouse, 
The sun just shines on her old white head.

Her ample gown is of cream-hued linen, 
Her grandsons raised the flax, and her granddaughters spun it with the distaff and the
 wheel. 

The melodious character of the earth, 
The finish beyond which philosophy cannot go, and does not wish to go, 
The justified mother of men.

 "Lord, being dark," I said, "I cannot bear
The further touch of earth, the scented air;
Lord, being dark, forewilled to that despair
My color shrouds me in, I am as dirt
Beneath my brother's heel; there is a hurt
In all the simple joys which to a child
Are sweet; they are contaminate, defiled
By truths of wrongs the childish vision fails
To see; too great a cost this birth entails.
I strangle in this yoke drawn tighter than
The worth of bearing it, just to be man.
I am not brave enough to pay the price
In full; I lack the strength to sacrifice
I who have burned my hands upon a star,
And climbed high hills at dawn to view the far
Illimitable wonderments of earth,
For whom all cups have dripped the wine of mirth,
For whom the sea has strained her honeyed throat
Till all the world was sea, and I a boat
Unmoored, on what strange quest I willed to float;
Who wore a many-colored coat of dreams,
Thy gift, O Lord--I whom sun-dabbled streams
Have washed, whose bare brown thighs have held the sun
Incarcerate until his course was run,
I who considered man a high-perfected
Glass where loveliness could lie reflected,
Now that I sway athwart Truth's deep abyss,
Denuding man for what he was and is,
Shall breath and being so inveigle me
That I can damn my dreams to hell, and be
Content, each new-born day, anew to see
The steaming crimson vintage of my youth
Incarnadine the altar-slab of Truth?

Or hast Thou, Lord, somewhere I cannot see,
A lamb imprisoned in a bush for me?
Not so?Then let me render one by one
Thy gifts, while still they shine; some little sun
Yet gilds these thighs; my coat, albeit worn,
Still hold its colors fast; albeit torn.
My heart will laugh a little yet, if I
May win of Thee this grace, Lord:on this high
And sacrificial hill 'twixt earth and sky,
To dream still pure all that I loved, and die.
There is no other way to keep secure
My wild chimeras, grave-locked against the lure
Of Truth, the small hard teeth of worms, yet less
Envenomed than the mouth of Truth, will bless
Them into dust and happy nothingness.
Lord, Thou art God; and I, Lord, what am I
But dust?With dust my place.Lord, let me die."

Across earth's warm, palpitating crust
I flung my body in embrace; I thrust
My mouth into the grass and sucked the dew,
Then gave it back in tears my anguish drew;
So hard I pressed against the ground, I felt
The smallest sandgrain like a knife, and smelt
The next year's flowering; all this to speed
My body's dissolution, fain to feed
The worms.And so I groaned, and spent my strength
Until, all passion spent, I lay full length
And quivered like a flayed and bleeding thing.

So lay till lifted on a great black wing
That had no mate nor flesh-apparent trunk
To hamper it; with me all time had sunk
Into oblivion; when I awoke
The wing hung poised above two cliffs that broke
The bowels of the earth in twain, and cleft
The seas apart.Below, above, to left,
To right, I saw what no man saw before:
Earth, hell, and heaven; sinew, vein, and core.
All things that swim or walk or creep or fly,
All things that live and hunger, faint and die,
Were made majestic then and magnified
By sight so clearly purged and deified.
The smallest bug that crawls was taller than
A tree, the mustard seed loomed like a man.
The earth that writhes eternally with pain
Of birth, and woe of taking back her slain,
Laid bare her teeming bosom to my sight,
And all was struggle, gasping breath, and fight.
A blind worm here dug tunnels to the light,
And there a seed, racked with heroic pain,
Thrust eager tentacles to sun and rain:
It climbed; it died; the old love conquered me
To weep the blossom it would never be.
But here a bud won light; it burst and flowered
Into a rose whose beauty challenged, "Coward!"
There was no thing alive save only I
That held life in contempt and longed to die.
And still I writhed and moaned, "The curse, the curse,
Than animated death, can death be worse?"

"Dark child of sorrow, mine no less, what art Of mine can make thee see
and play thy part? The key to all strange things is in thy heart."

What voice was this that coursed like liquid fire
Along my flesh, and turned my hair to wire?

I raised my burning eyes, beheld a field
All multitudinous with carnal yield,
A grim ensanguined mead whereon I saw
Evolve the ancient fundamental law
Of tooth and talon, fist and nail and claw.
There with the force of living, hostile hills
Whose clash the hemmed-in vale with clamor fills,
With greater din contended fierce majestic wills
Of beast with beast, of man with man, in strife
For love of what my heart despised, for life
That unto me at dawn was now a prayer
For night, at night a bloody heart-wrung tear
For day again; for this, these groans
From tangled flesh and interlocked bones.
And no thing died that did not give
A testimony that it longed to live.
Man, strange composite blend of brute and god,
Pushed on, nor backward glanced where last he trod:
He seemed to mount a misty ladder flung
Pendant from a cloud, yet never gained a rung
But at his feet another tugged and clung.
My heart was still a pool of bitterness,
Would yield nought else, nought else confess.
I spoke (although no form was there
To see, I knew an ear was there to hear),
"Well, let them fight; they can whose flesh is fair."

Crisp lightning flashed; a wave of thunder shook
My wing; a pause, and then a speaking, "Look."

I scarce dared trust my ears or eyes for awe
Of what they heard, and dread of what they saw;
For, privileged beyond degree, this flesh
Beheld God and His heaven in the mesh
Of Lucifer's revolt, saw Lucifer
Glow like the sun, and like a dulcimer
I heard his sin-sweet voice break on the yell
Of God's great warriors:Gabriel,
Saint Clair and Michael, Israfel and Raphael.
And strange it was to see God with His back
Against a wall, to see Christ hew and hack
Till Lucifer, pressed by the mighty pair,
And losing inch by inch, clawed at the air
With fevered wings; then, lost beyond repair,
He tricked a mass of stars into his hair;
He filled his hands with stars, crying as he fell,
"A star's a star although it burns in hell."
So God was left to His divinity,
Omnipotent at that most costly fee.

There was a lesson here, but still the clod
In me was sycophant unto the rod,
And cried, "Why mock me thus?Am I a god?"

"One trial more:this failing, then I give You leave to die; no
further need to live."

Now suddenly a strange wild music smote
A chord long impotent in me; a note
Of jungles, primitive and subtle, throbbed
Against my echoing breast, and tom-toms sobbed
In every pulse-beat of my frame.The din
A hollow log bound with a python's skin
Can make wrought every nerve to ecstasy,
And I was wind and sky again, and sea,
And all sweet things that flourish, being free.

Till all at once the music changed its key.

And now it was of bitterness and death,
The cry the lash extorts, the broken breath
Of liberty enchained; and yet there ran
Through all a harmony of faith in man,
A knowledge all would end as it began.
All sights and sounds and aspects of my race
Accompanied this melody, kept pace
With it; with music all their hopes and hates
Were charged, not to be downed by all the fates.
And somehow it was borne upon my brain
How being dark, and living through the pain
Of it, is courage more than angels have.I knew
What storms and tumults lashed the tree that grew
This body that I was, this cringing I
That feared to contemplate a changing sky,
This that I grovelled, whining, "Let me die,"
While others struggled in Life's abattoir.
The cries of all dark people near or far
Were billowed over me, a mighty surge
Of suffering in which my puny grief must merge
And lose itself; I had no further claim to urge
For death; in shame I raised my dust-grimed head,
And though my lips moved not, God knew I said,
"Lord, not for what I saw in flesh or bone
Of fairer men; not raised on faith alone;
Lord, I will live persuaded by mine own.
I cannot play the recreant to these;
My spirit has come home, that sailed the doubtful seas."
With the whiz of a sword that severs space,
The wing dropped down at a dizzy pace,
And flung me on my hill flat on my face;
Flat on my face I lay defying pain,
Glad of the blood in my smallest vein,
And in my hands I clutched a loyal dream,
Still spitting fire, bright twist and coil and gleam,
And chiseled like a hound's white tooth.
"Oh, I will match you yet," I cried, "to truth."

Right glad I was to stoop to what I once had spurned.
Glad even unto tears; I laughed aloud; I turned
Upon my back, and though the tears for joy would run,
My sight was clear; I looked and saw the rising sun.

 I was a 20 year old unemployed receptionist with
dyed orange dreadlocks sprouting out of my skull. I needed a job, but first,
I needed a haircut.

So I head for this beauty salon on Avenue B.
I'm gonna get a hairdo.
I'm gonna look just like those hot Spanish haircut models, become brown
and bodacious, grow some 7 inch fingernails painted ***** red and rake
them down the chalkboard of the job market's soul.

So I go in the beauty salon.

This beautiful Puerto Rican girl in tight white spandex and a push-up bra
sits me down and starts chopping my hair:
"Girlfriend," she says, "what the hell you got growing outta
your head there, what is that, hair implants? Yuck, you want me to touch
that ****, whadya got in there, sandwiches?"

I just go: "I'm sorry."

She starts snipping my carefully cultivated Johnny Lydon post-Pistols hairdo.
My foul little dreadlocks are flying around all over the place but I'm
not looking in the mirror cause I just don't want to know.

"So what's your name anyway?" My stylist demands then.
"Uh, Maggie."
"Maggie? Well, that's an okay name, but my name is Suzy."
"Yeah, so?"
"Yeah so it ain't just Suzy S.U.Z.Y, I spell it S.U.Z.E.E, the extra
"e" is for extra Suzee."

I nod emphatically.

Suzee tells me when she's not busy chopping hair, she works as an exotic
dancer at night to support her boyfriend named Rocco. Suzee loves Rocco,
she loves him so much she's got her eyes closed as she describes him:
"6 foot 2, 193 pounds and, girlfriend, his arms so big and long they
wrap around me twice like I'm a little Suzee sandwich."

Little Suzee Sandwich is rapt, she blindly snips and clips at my poor punk
head. She snips and clips and snips and clips, she pauses, I look in the
mirror: "Holy ****, I'm bald."

"Holy ****, baby, you're bald." Suzee says, finally opening her
eyes and then gasping. 

All I've got left is little post-nuke clumps of orange fuzz. And I'll never
get a receptionist job now.

But Suzy waves her manicured finger in my face: "Don't you worry,
baby, I'm gonna get you a job at the dancing club."

"What?"

"Baby, let me tell you, the boys are gonna like a bald go go dancer."

That said, she whips out some clippers, shaves my head smooth and insists
I'm gonna love getting naked for a living.

None of this sounds like my idea of a good time, but I'm broke and I'm
bald so I go home and get my best panties. Suzee lends me some 6 inch pumps,
paints my lips bright red, and gives me 7 shots of Jack Daniels to relax
me. 

8pm that night I take the stage.

I'm bald, 
I'm drunk,
and by god,
I'm naked.


HOLY **** I'M NAKED IN A ROOM FULL OF STRANGERS THIS IS NOT ONE OF THOSE
RECURRING NIGHTMARES WE ALL HAVE ABOUT BEING BUTT NAKED IN PUBLIC, I AM
NAKED, I DON'T KNOW THESE PEOPLE, THIS REALLY SUCKS.

A few guys feel sorry for me and risk getting their hands bitten off by
sticking dollars in my garter belt. My disheveled pubic hairs stand at
full attention, ready to poke the guys' eyes out if they get too close.

Then I notice this bald guy in the audience, I've got a new empathy for
bald people, I figure maybe it works both ways, maybe this guy will stick
10 bucks in my garter.

I saunter over.

I'm teetering around unrhythmically, I'm the surliest, unsexiest dancer
that ever go-go across this hemisphere. The bald guy looks down into his
beer, he'd much rather look at that than at my pubic mound which has now
formed into one vicious spike so it looks like I've got a unicorn in my
crotch.

I stand there weaving through the air.

The strobe light is illuminating my pubic unicorn. Madonna's song Borderline
is pumping through the club's speaker system for the 5th time tonight:
"BORDERLINE BORDERLINE BORDERLINE/LOVE ME TIL I JUST CAN'T SEE."
And suddenly, I start to wonder: What does that mean anyway? 

"LOVE ME TIL I JUST CAN'T SEE"

What?

Screw me so much my eyes pop out, I go blind, end up walking down 2nd Avenue
crazy, horny, naked and blind? What?

There's a glitch in the tape and it starts to skip.

"Borderl...ooop.....Borderl....ooop...Borderlin.....ooop"

I stumble and twist my ankle. My g-string rides between my buttcheeks making
me twitch with pain. My head starts spinning, my knees wobble, I go down
on all fours and puke all over the bald guy's lap.

So there I am. Butt naked on all fours. But before I have time to regain
my composure, the strip club manager comes over, points his smarmy strip
club manager finger at me and goes: 
"You're bald, you're drunk, you can't dance and you're fired."

I stand up.

"Oh yeah, well you stink like a sneaker, pal." I peel off one
of my pumps and throw it in the direction of his fat head then I get the
hell out of there.

A few days later I run into Suzee on Avenue A. Turns out she got fired
for getting me a job there in the first place. But she was completely undaunted,
she dragged me up to this wig store on 14th Street, bought me a mouse brown
shag wig, then got us both telemarketing jobs on Wall Street.

And I never went to a beauty salon again.

 Color of lemon, mango, peach,
These storybook villas
Still dream behind
Shutters, thier balconies
Fine as hand-
Made lace, or a leaf-and-flower pen-sketch.

Tilting with the winds,
On arrowy stems,
Pineapple-barked,
A green crescent of palms
Sends up its forked
Firework of fronds.

A quartz-clear dawn
Inch by bright inch
Gilds all our Avenue,
And out of the blue drench
Of Angels' Bay
Rises the round red watermelon sun.

 The mountain held the town as in a shadow 
I saw so much before I slept there once: 
I noticed that I missed stars in the west, 
Where its black body cut into the sky. 
Near me it seemed: I felt it like a wall 
Behind which I was sheltered from a wind. 
And yet between the town and it I found, 
When I walked forth at dawn to see new things, 
Were fields, a river, and beyond, more fields. 
The river at the time was fallen away, 
And made a widespread brawl on cobble-stones; 
But the signs showed what it had done in spring; 
Good grass-land gullied out, and in the grass 
Ridges of sand, and driftwood stripped of bark. 
I crossed the river and swung round the mountain. 
And there I met a man who moved so slow 
With white-faced oxen in a heavy cart, 
It seemed no hand to stop him altogether. 
"What town is this?" I asked. 
"This? Lunenburg." 
Then I was wrong: the town of my sojourn, 
Beyond the bridge, was not that of the mountain, 
But only felt at night its shadowy presence. 
"Where is your village? Very far from here?" 
"There is no village--only scattered farms. 
We were but sixty voters last election. 
We can't in nature grow to many more: 
That thing takes all the room!" He moved his goad. 
The mountain stood there to be pointed at. 
Pasture ran up the side a little way, 
And then there was a wall of trees with trunks: 
After that only tops of trees, and cliffs 
Imperfectly concealed among the leaves. 
A dry ravine emerged from under boughs 
Into the pasture. 
"That looks like a path. 
Is that the way to reach the top from here?-- 
Not for this morning, but some other time: 
I must be getting back to breakfast now." 
"I don't advise your trying from this side. 
There is no proper path, but those that have 
Been up, I understand, have climbed from Ladd's. 
That's five miles back. You can't mistake the place: 
They logged it there last winter some way up. 
I'd take you, but I'm bound the other way." 
"You've never climbed it?" 
"I've been on the sides 
Deer-hunting and trout-fishing. There's a brook 
That starts up on it somewhere--I've heard say 
Right on the top, tip-top--a curious thing. 
But what would interest you about the brook, 
It's always cold in summer, warm in winter. 
One of the great sights going is to see 
It steam in winter like an ox's breath, 
Until the bushes all along its banks 
Are inch-deep with the frosty spines and bristles-- 
You know the kind. Then let the sun shine on it!" 
"There ought to be a view around the world 
From such a mountain--if it isn't wooded 
Clear to the top." I saw through leafy screens 
Great granite terraces in sun and shadow, 
Shelves one could rest a knee on getting up-- 
With depths behind him sheer a hundred feet; 
Or turn and sit on and look out and down, 
With little ferns in crevices at his elbow. 
"As to that I can't say. But there's the spring, 
Right on the summit, almost like a fountain. 
That ought to be worth seeing." 
"If it's there. 
You never saw it?" 
"I guess there's no doubt 
About its being there. I never saw it. 
It may not be right on the very top: 
It wouldn't have to be a long way down 
To have some head of water from above, 
And a good distance down might not be noticed 
By anyone who'd come a long way up. 
One time I asked a fellow climbing it 
To look and tell me later how it was." 
"What did he say?" 
"He said there was a lake 
Somewhere in Ireland on a mountain top." 
"But a lake's different. What about the spring?" 
"He never got up high enough to see. 
That's why I don't advise your trying this side. 
He tried this side. I've always meant to go 
And look myself, but you know how it is: 
It doesn't seem so much to climb a mountain 
You've worked around the foot of all your life. 
What would I do? Go in my overalls, 
With a big stick, the same as when the cows 
Haven't come down to the bars at milking time? 
Or with a shotgun for a stray black bear? 
'Twouldn't seem real to climb for climbing it." 
"I shouldn't climb it if I didn't want to-- 
Not for the sake of climbing. What's its name?" 
"We call it Hor: I don't know if that's right." 
"Can one walk around it? Would it be too far?" 
"You can drive round and keep in Lunenburg, 
But it's as much as ever you can do, 
The boundary lines keep in so close to it. 
Hor is the township, and the township's Hor-- 
And a few houses sprinkled round the foot, 
Like boulders broken off the upper cliff, 
Rolled out a little farther than the rest." 
"Warm in December, cold in June, you say?" 
"I don't suppose the water's changed at all. 
You and I know enough to know it's warm 
Compared with cold, and cold compared with warm. 
But all the fun's in how you say a thing." 
"You've lived here all your life?" 
"Ever since Hor 
Was no bigger than a----" What, I did not hear. 
He drew the oxen toward him with light touches 
Of his slim goad on nose and offside flank, 
Gave them their marching orders and was moving.