Written by
Quincy Troupe |
in brussels, eye sat in the grand place cafe & heard
duke's place, played after salsa
between the old majestic architecture, jazz bouncing off
all that gilded gold history snoring complacently there
flowers all over the ground, up inside the sound
the old white band jammin the music
tight & heavy, like some food
pushin pedal to the metal
gettin all the way down
under the scaffolding surrounding
l'hotel de ville, chattanooga choochoo
choo choing all the way home, upside walls, under gold eagles
& a gold vaulting girl, naked on a rooftop holding a flag over
her head, like skip rope, surrounded by all manner
of saints & gold madmen, riding emblazoned stallions
snorting like crazed demons at their nostrils
the music swirling like a dancing bear
a beautiful girl, flowers in her hair
the air woven with lilting voices in this grand place of parepets
& crowns, jewels & golden torches streaming
like a horse's mane, antiquity riding through in a wheel carriage
here, through gargoyles & gothic towers rocketing swordfish lanced crosses
pointing up at a God threatening rain
& it is stunning at this moment when raised beer steins cheer
the music on, hot & heavy, still humming & cooking
basic african-american rhythms alive here
in this ancient grand place of europe
this confluence point of nations & cultures
jumping off place for beer & cuisines
fused with music, poetry & stone
here in this blinding, beautiful square
sunlit now as the golden eye of God shoots through
flowers all over the cobbled ground, up in the music
the air brightly cool as light after jeweled rain
still, there are these hats slicing foreheads off in the middle
of crowds that need explaining, the calligraphy of this penumbra
slanting ace-deuce, cocked, carrying the perforated legacy of bebop
these bold, peccadillo, pirouetting pellagras
razor-sharp clean, they cut into our rip-tiding dreams carrying
their whirlpooling imaginations, their rivers of schemes
assaulted by pellets of raindrops
these broken mirrors catching fragments
of sonorous words, entrapping us between parentheses
two bat wings curved, imprisoning the world
|
Written by
Ted Hughes |
Crow realized God loved him-
Otherwise, he would have dropped dead.
So that was proved.
Crow reclined, marvelling, on his heart-beat.
And he realized that God spoke Crow-
Just existing was His revelation.
But what Loved the stones and spoke stone?
They seemed to exist too.
And what spoke that strange silence
After his clamour of caws faded?
And what loved the shot-pellets
That dribbled from those strung-up mummifying crows?
What spoke the silence of lead?
Crow realized there were two Gods-
One of them much bigger than the other
Loving his enemies
And having all the weapons.
|
Written by
Thomas Lux |
As you descend, slowly, falling faster past
you this snow,
ghostly, some flakes bio-
luminescent (you plunge,
and this lit snow doesn't land
at your feet but keeps falling below
you): single-cell-plant chains, shreds
of zooplankton's mucus food traps,
fish fecal pellets, radioactive fallouts,
sand grains, pollen....And inside
these jagged falling islands
live more microlives,
which feed creatures
on the way down
and all the way down. And you,
in your sinking isolation
booth, you go down, too,
through this food-snow, these shards,
bits of planet, its flora
and flesh, you
slip straight down, unreeled,
until the bottom's oozy silt, the sucking
baby-soft muck,
welcomes you
to the deep sea's bed,
a million anvils per square inch
pressing on your skull.
How silent here, how much life,
few places deeper on earth,
none with more width.
|
Written by
Charles Bukowski |
he came to the door one night wet thin beaten and
terrorized
a white cross-eyed tailless cat
I took him in and fed him and he stayed
grew to trust me until a friend drove up the driveway
and ran him over
I took what was left to a vet who said,"not much
chance...give him these pills...his backbone
is crushed, but is was crushed before and somehow
mended, if he lives he'll never walk, look at
these x-rays, he's been shot, look here, the pellets
are still there...also, he once had a tail, somebody
cut it off..."
I took the cat back, it was a hot summer, one of the
hottest in decades, I put him on the bathroom
floor, gave him water and pills, he wouldn't eat, he
wouldn't touch the water, I dipped my finger into it
and wet his mouth and I talked to him, I didn't go any-
where, I put in a lot of bathroom time and talked to
him and gently touched him and he looked back at
me with those pale blue crossed eyes and as the days went
by he made his first move
dragging himself forward by his front legs
(the rear ones wouldn't work)
he made it to the litter box
crawled over and in,
it was like the trumpet of possible victory
blowing in that bathroom and into the city, I
related to that cat-I'd had it bad, not that
bad but bad enough
one morning he got up, stood up, fell back down and
just looked at me.
"you can make it," I said to him.
he kept trying, getting up falling down, finally
he walked a few steps, he was like a drunk, the
rear legs just didn't want to do it and he fell again, rested,
then got up.
you know the rest: now he's better than ever, cross-eyed
almost toothless, but the grace is back, and that look in
his eyes never left...
and now sometimes I'm interviewed, they want to hear about
life and literature and I get drunk and hold up my cross-eyed,
shot, runover de-tailed cat and I say,"look, look
at this!"
but they don't understand, they say something like,"you
say you've been influenced by Celine?"
"no," I hold the cat up,"by what happens, by
things like this, by this, by this!"
I shake the cat, hold him up in
the smoky and drunken light, he's relaxed he knows...
it's then that the interviews end
although I am proud sometimes when I see the pictures
later and there I am and there is the cat and we are photo-
graphed together.
he too knows it's ******** but that somehow it all helps.
|
Written by
Denise Duhamel |
is what we called her. The story was
that her father had thrown Drano at her
which was probably true, given the way she slouched
through fifth grade, afraid of the world, recess
especially. She had acne scars
before she had acne—poxs and dips
and bright red patches.
I don't remember
any report in the papers. I don't remember
my father telling me her father had gone to jail.
I never looked close to see the particulars
of Crater Face's scars. She was a blur, a cartoon
melting. Then, when she healed—her face,
a million pebbles set in cement.
Even Comet Boy,
who got his name by being so abrasive,
who made fun of everyone, didn't make fun
of her. She walked over the bridge
with the one other white girl who lived
in her neighborhood. Smoke curled
like Slinkies from the factory stacks
above them.
I liked to imagine that Crater Face
went straight home, like I did, to watch Shirley Temple
on channel 56. I liked to imagine that she slipped
into the screen, bumping Shirley with her hip
so that child actress slid out of frame, into the tubes
and wires that made the TV sputter when I turned it on.
Sometimes when I watched, I'd see Crater Face
tap-dancing with tall black men whose eyes
looked shiny, like the whites of hard-boiled eggs.
I'd try to imagine that her block was full
of friendly folk, with a lighthouse or goats
running in the street.
It was my way of praying,
my way of un-imagining the Drano pellets
that must have smacked against her
like a round of mini-bullets,
her whole face as vulnerable as a tongue
wrapped in sizzling pizza cheese.
How she'd come home with homework,
the weight of her books bending her into a wilting plant.
How her father called her ****, *****, big baby, slob.
The hospital where she was forced to say it was an accident.
Her face palpable as something glowing in a Petri dish.
The bandages over her eyes.
In black and white,
with all that make-up, Crater Face almost looked pretty
sure her MGM father was coming back soon from the war,
seeing whole zoos in her thin orphanage soup.
She looked happiest when she was filmed
from the back, sprinting into the future,
fading into tiny gray dots on UHF.
|
Written by
Quincy Troupe |
we walk through a calligraphy of hats slicing off foreheads
ace-deuce cocked, they slant, razor sharp, clean through imagination, our
spirits knee-deep in what we have forgotten entrancing our bodies now to
dance, like enraptured water lilies
the rhythm in liquid strides of certain looks
eyeballs rippling through breezes
riffing choirs of trees, where a trillion slivers of sunlight prance across
filigreeing leaves, a zillion voices of bamboo reeds, green with summer
saxophone bursts, wrap themselves, like transparent prisms of dew drops
around images, laced with pearls & rhinestones, dreams
& perhaps it is through this decoding of syllables that we learn speech
that sonorous river of broken mirrors carrying our dreams
assaulted by pellets of raindrops, prisons of words entrapping us
between parentheses — two bat wings curving cynical smiles
still, there is something here, that, perhaps, needs explaining
beyond the hopelessness of miles, the light at the end of a midnight tunnel —
where some say a speeding train is bulleting right at us ——
so where do the tumbling words spend themselves after they have spent
all meaning residing in the warehouse of language, after they have slipped
from our lips, like skiers on ice slopes, strung together words linking
themselves through smoke, where do the symbols they carry
stop everything, put down roots, cleanse themselves of everything
but clarity —— though here eye might be asking a little too much of any
poet's head, full as it were with double-entendres
|
Written by
Anne Sexton |
If I could blame it all on the weather,
the snow like the cadaver's table,
the trees turned into knitting needles,
the ground as hard as a frozen haddock,
the pond wearing its mustache of frost.
If I could blame conditions on that,
if I could blame the hearts of strangers
striding muffled down the street,
or blame the dogs, every color,
sniffing each other
and pissing on the doorstep...
If I could blame the bosses
and the presidents for
their unpardonable songs...
If I could blame it on all
the mothers and fathers of the world,
they of the lessons, the pellets of power,
they of the love surrounding you like batter...
Blame it on God perhaps?
He of the first opening
that pushed us all into our first mistakes?
No, I'll blame it on Man
For Man is God
and man is eating the earth up
like a candy bar
and not one of them can be left alone with the ocean
for it is known he will gulp it all down.
The stars (possibly) are safe.
At least for the moment.
The stars are pears
that no one can reach,
even for a wedding.
Perhaps for a death.
|
Written by
Robert Lowell |
(I.R.A. Bombing)
The British Army now carries two rifles,
one with rubber rabbit-pellets for children,
the other's of course for the Provisionals....
'When they first showed me the boy, I thought oh good,
it's not him because he's blonde—
I imagine his hair was singed dark by the bomb.
He had nothing on him to identify him,
except this box of joke trick matches;
he liked to have them on him, even at mass.
The police were unhurried and wonderful,
they let me go on trying to strike a match...
I just wouldn't stop—you cling to anything—
I couldn't believe I couldn't light one match—
only joke matches... Then I knew he was Richard.'
|
Written by
Emily Dickinson |
Banish Air from Air --
Divide Light if you dare --
They'll meet
While Cubes in a Drop
Or Pellets of Shape
Fit
Films cannot annul
Odors return whole
Force Flame
And with a Blonde push
Over your impotence
Flits Steam.
|