Did he feel it too, this upwelling

Did he feel it too, this upwelling
of the heart that was in him?
And that there is nothing finally,
but simplicity? A single flower’s born,
blooms, wilts, and dies, that’s all;

so it seems to flowers. But the man
who painted flowers, what did he know
or see? What surface or what craft
could start or slow the upwelling
of the heart that was in him?

If art begins in loneliness, or lust,
its end is this upwelling of the heart
that will not stay or pass.
If I too feel it now, do I become
more like a man? Or, like that man

Whose body passed through his own world
like a flower? The slow, ceaseless
upwelling of my heart’s renewed in these;
my wife, my children, all the world
and all its flowers, all their works;

love, fear; time that nothing can arrest
except this act that had an end, or these
anonymous flowers that became artifice,
and he, whose heart may also have upwelled,
as it seemed to, within him, then.

.

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Nuisance crow

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Nuisance crow
on an old fencepost:

green field behind;
brown hills in the distance;

gravel road,
deadleaf trees,
white sky,
world all around —

when did it all become
not worth a mention?

I fear my sixth decade
will make me an old man yet.

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But really they thought it no harm done

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All right so it was a bit of a trick
But really they thought it no harm done
To secretly scatter crackers on the lawn
Then send the baby out to frolic

Thus they taught their girl
From her nascency
She was the mistress of birds
And she grew up into the utmost complacency
Knowing they’d come at her beck
And adore her
And be harmless and not peck
And would sing for her

And no one ever thought What will become
Of her when she grows up and leaves home
When she fares into the world all alone
And her pockets mysteriously unfilled with crumbs

Would she hate the birds that kept absent
Or blame them
When the fields and branches of the trees stayed vacant
When she failed to tame them

To what would she ascribe
The usual empty sky

The poor dear the answer remains unclear
But anyhow what can be done about it now

 

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and the night hold no memories

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and the night hold no memories
but what we can read from it
time is not now
nor am I time’s ghost

read not by dint of a writing
since words are water
O hush of crickets mother me home
like matins like a bell

she is gone, gone to the sea
is gone to it, gone forever
and now every black shadow
seems a good place to hide

O hush and mother me home
like an awkward drum at night-time
like an empty coat
in a room full of empty coats

gigantic hush of crickets
and the moon giving no light
to see these black streets
only the intersections lit up

to see again from this height
between the crossed streets the shadows
darkness dimly lit
the moon

meanwhile all of them
are joining their way homeward
two and by two
two and by two

all are parting the cool air
O and when it closes behind them
they are come home
they are arrived

 

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For me best a paperback

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For me best a paperback:
No good hard boards,
No slick dust jacket that absorbs
The unpredicted inevitable knocks and tears.

Rather the words writ in a rush
Hastened to publication,
The immediate cheap paper
Not worth the saving:

The leftbehind vacationhouse detritus;
The not quite worth packing for home;
The someone else’s freshmanyear surveyclass albatross,
Borne till it could be misplaced in a move

To wash up not yet loved
In beachcomber thriftstores of the mind
In Simi Valley Marin Moscow or Iowa City

Priced to sell
With four neat Roman Xs
Stamped across the pagetops.

 

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Often in Error, Never in Doubt

John Skelton

John Skelton
put his hat of felt on
put his pants and belt on
and his shoes of leather
meet for any weather.
His outfit put together
no hesitation whether
he should go outside—
Aye! I shall! He cried!
And with furious stride
went out through the wide
open front door.
Never yet before
had traveler set out
with fewer pangs of doubt
and such a shout!

 

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The Lives of the Poets

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Ogden Nash
As a poet was brash
His lines rushed out in a lengthy and seemingly unstoppable torrent
And his rhymes were abhorrent.

Ezra Pound
Wrote verse difficult and profound
The fact that even he couldn’t figure it out
Should suffice to remove any doubt.

Edward Lear
Was rather queer.
But of course, the word had a different meaning back then
So instead, one should simply say that he preferred men.

Edmund Clerihew Bentley
Died discontently
Aware that decent rhymes for Clerihew
Are, alas, very few.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
Was heard on occasion to say
That only the author of Euclid’s Elements
Had ever seen Beauty without habiliments.

 

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I heard of a girl who told

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I heard of a girl who told that she was haunted by her father
even when he was still alive
she was a Lesbian and lived in Berlin
back when you’d still capitalize Lesbian
like there was a homeland you’d visit some day
she’d let you know her father had more than one quirk

That man’s name goes in a drawer, was a thing he’d say

I heard she told that her father was unforgiving
unforgiving like God, that kind of unforgiving
I heard she was the kind who stayed careful always
not to allow love to overcome
respect for distance
and recognized that after all people, they are dangerous
even if they never act, even if they smile
and that you’ll never know everything wrong with the world

That man’s name goes in a drawer, her father would say

not to beat around the bush
I heard after her father pulled the trigger
they opened the drawer, sure enough it was full of names
I heard that was always the end of her story
but I believe it must have left her to wonder
what else that her father had said was going to come true

That man’s name goes in a drawer, that’s what he used to say

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You were a work of fiction

don't let life pass you by aka do as i say and not as i do - 32326765120_4792093069_z

you were a work of fiction
you were a solo cloud
baiting the Lord
with your sourest word
sure that His sword
was as light as a feather

you were clever and light
you had spent time underground
wasting your breath
in singing, your health
in fucking, your death
in not caring to go on forever

you were still somebody’s baby
you were a commonplace book
you rode the rails
you might have gone through hell
in the end you sat down on a tumbledown wall
we sat there together

you were as sure as a bird
you kept your friends to themselves
you had that place near Paris
you had a brother who called us
your cousin bent God’s ear
but we brought you a plastic tiara

* * *

you were a fiction
light as a feather
you were a sword
baiting the Lord
let’s sit here forever
singing your health

 

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Siddhartha as a boy is willful

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Siddhartha as a boy is willful:
shirks his chores and doesn’t listen
to his Mom — who maybe knows,
but doesn’t really care that his en-

lightenment one day inspires
a needful world. Instead, she’d quite
prefer Siddhartha do his homework.
Tell me (she says) this enlight-

enment, it pays? You’ll need a job,
it’s no fun living always tighten-

ing your belt, believe you me.
At least a fall-back when enlighten-

ment won’t make ends meet!  — It’s well
Siddhartha pays no mind, content
to poke about, mindfully aimless,
ambling toward enlightenment.

 

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