Written by
Dylan Thomas |
If I were tickled by the rub of love,
A rooking girl who stole me for her side,
Broke through her straws, breaking my bandaged string,
If the red tickle as the cattle calve
Still set to scratch a laughter from my lung,
I would not fear the apple nor the flood
Nor the bad blood of spring.
Shall it be male or female? say the cells,
And drop the plum like fire from the flesh.
If I were tickled by the hatching hair,
The winging bone that sprouted in the heels,
The itch of man upon the baby's thigh,
I would not fear the gallows nor the axe
Nor the crossed sticks of war.
Shall it be male or female? say the fingers
That chalk the walls with greet girls and their men.
I would not fear the muscling-in of love
If I were tickled by the urchin hungers
Rehearsing heat upon a raw-edged nerve.
I would not fear the devil in the loin
Nor the outspoken grave.
If I were tickled by the lovers' rub
That wipes away not crow's-foot nor the lock
Of sick old manhood on the fallen jaws,
Time and the crabs and the sweethearting crib
Would leave me cold as butter for the flies
The sea of scums could drown me as it broke
Dead on the sweethearts' toes.
This world is half the devil's and my own,
Daft with the drug that's smoking in a girl
And curling round the bud that forks her eye.
An old man's shank one-marrowed with my bone,
And all the herrings smelling in the sea,
I sit and watch the worm beneath my nail
Wearing the quick away.
And that's the rub, the only rub that tickles.
The knobbly ape that swings along his sex
From damp love-darkness and the nurse's twist
Can never raise the midnight of a chuckle,
Nor when he finds a beauty in the breast
Of lover, mother, lovers, or his six
Feet in the rubbing dust.
And what's the rub? Death's feather on the nerve?
Your mouth, my love, the thistle in the kiss?
My Jack of Christ born thorny on the tree?
The words of death are dryer than his stiff,
My wordy wounds are printed with your hair.
I would be tickled by the rub that is:
Man be my metaphor.
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Written by
Rg Gregory |
i have lost touch over the years
with the hot africa inside me
illness and all - i spread to root
in the red earth siphoned the sun
loved the black inflections of my eyes
cut callow cords and found new forms
felt free to fashion and freely raised
orchards of feelings where the groves
were rife with desiccated pens
but all the time my ears insistent to
the sounds of england harping at
my back rehearsing self's return
and i came back propelled against
the growing grains inside - to wring
futures from a skin the times had sloughed
and now (eleven years since then)
uganda's gone its own way into grief
and many i must have taught amin
has killed - i rush about my own concerns
unable to erupt the loathing that
consumes all rational response
but lost to know the meeting point
for what uganda opened out in me
and what now lacerates its dreams
uganda (victim to a white
man's piece of chalk) now victim to
a gloated bitterness in black
your griefs have swamped the nile
and i lounge here (a long way home)
disturbed and pillowed by these words
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Written by
John Berryman |
I consider a song will be as humming-bird
swift, down-light, missile-metal-hard, & strange
as the world of anti-matter
where they are wondering: does time run backward-”
which the poet thought was true; Scarlatti-supple;
but can Henry write it?
Wreckt, in deep danger, he shook once his head,
returning to meditation. And word had sped
all from the farthest West
that Henry was desired: can he get free
of the hanging menace, & this all, and go?
He doesn't think so.
Therefore he shakes and he will sing no more,
much less a song as fast as said, as light,
so deep, so flexing. He broods.
He may, rehearsing, here of his bad year
at the very end, in squalor, ill, outside.
-”Happy New Year, Mr Bones.
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Written by
Friedrich von Schiller |
Full many a shining wit one sees,
With tongue on all things well conversing;
The what can charm, the what can please,
In every nice detail rehearsing.
Their raptures so transport the college,
It seems one honeymoon of knowledge.
Yet out they go in silence where
They whilom held their learned prate;
Ah! he who would achieve the fair,
Or sow the embryo of the great,
Must hoard--to wait the ripening hour--
In the least point the loftiest power.
With wanton boughs and pranksome hues,
Aloft in air aspires the stem;
The glittering leaves inhale the dews,
But fruits are not concealed in them.
From the small kernel's undiscerned repose
The oak that lords it o'er the forest grows.
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Written by
Jorie Graham |
The man held his hands to his heart as
he danced.
He slacked and swirled.
The doorways of the little city
blurred. Something
leaked out,
kindling the doorframes up,
making each entranceway
less true.
And darkness gathered
although it does not fall . . . And the little dance,
swinging this human all down the alleyway,
nervous little theme pushing itself along,
braiding, rehearsing,
constantly incomplete so turning and tacking --
oh what is there to finish? -- his robes made
rustic by the reddish swirl,
which grows darker towards the end of the
avenue of course,
one hand on his chest,
one flung out to the side as he dances,
taps, sings,
on his scuttling toes, now humming a little,
now closing his eyes as he twirls, growing smaller,
why does the sun rise? remember me always
dear for I will
return --
liberty spooring in the evening air,
into which the lilacs open, the skirts uplift,
liberty and the blood-eye careening gently over
the giant earth,
and the cat in the doorway who does not
mistake the world,
eyeing the spots where the birds must
eventually land --
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