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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Next time around I’ll be an old woman

Next time around I’ll be an old woman

ultimately. Matter-of-fact, kids grown
and independent as the French seem
to Americans who’ve stayed at home.
I’ll wait to be noticed first, but will be.

Having lived in all kinds of places
I’ll prefer the city, since there are cafes,
many varieties of everything, and friends
one needn’t fear will depend on one

overmuch. Next time I’ll wait for the trees
to fall in the dead of night instead,
magnificently, and next morning the sun
will come up like thunder.

And I’ll say—it’s just like that time,
it’s just like that one time I remember.
And I alone will remember.
I’ll be like that next time around.

.

.

Image: Clara Cook Kellogg, by Philip Alexius de László (1929). This portrait is in the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution (object number S/NPG.2006.114); it is made available by the Smithsonian under a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license.

I use ugly words on purpose (poem written with a found pen)

Nothing in word form (small) - 327635449_3c0ec68ed9_c

I use ugly words on purpose
I write ugly words on purpose
ugly ugly ugly ugly
until they lose all meaning
until they lose meaning
ugly ugly ugly ugly
words words words words
meaning meaning meaning meaning

I like it that they
have to do what I say
but sometimes it’s better
when they no longer matter

The way a first taste of coffee
is exquisite and delicious
and by the end of the day
you can drink it down like water
and it means nothing at all

just (to extend the metaphor)
makes you jittery and mean
and puts a bad taste in your mouth
and builds a brooding stockade
(fence posts bristling like unkept teeth)
against sleep

In this bitter analogy, what is sleep?
Sleep sleep sleep sleep.
I’ll know it when I see it
I I I I I.
I write using these ugly words
on purpose
I I I I.

 

0503201803~2

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The stampede of History

Radioactivity_of_a_Thorite_mineral_seen_in_a_cloud_chamber

The stampede of History
occurred on this site in 1872
on this prairie—flat, enduring,
tasting of noon sunshine
and its black, black shade—
where the dusk-blue flowers of History
previously blossomed.

We have been living backwards
toward that day ever since–
forgetting that first giant step,
the big blue marble the color of History,
and the light of a thousand atoms
that smelled as black as History
and roared in our sovereign bones.

On that day in 1872, which was a day
like any other, the cicada chant
of History will be heard in the land
where lately the lightning blossomed
and the concomitant thunder rolled
like enormous cannonballs
across a flattening plain of History.

On that day, you’ll put on a beaded shirt
and ride through the fusillade
of soldiers—Sitting Bull
will be with you, and Jack Wilson,
as you ride, and the blue flowers
will part before you, the land
will rise up before you, and everything
will go down in History.

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Nothing happens fast

Carl Sandburg on the Beach - 637b557

Nothing happens fast

first the Sun rises and
then it’s night time
and Carl Sandburg is
alive and
children playing horseshoes
and during that slow expanse
the mortgage came due
the elves lay down under
the hill and I

awoke thinking
Oh hell not again.

 

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In my dream I was gravity.

Subsidence by seriykotik1970 - Flickr

In my dream I was gravity.
The pilings of the towers humored me
and the muscular calves
of the youths,
the repose and occasional slump

of exhausted hillsides,
and the sea’s endless susurrus
as it trailed the moon forever falling,
were my dance and my devotion,
my music and my mystery.

In my dream I have been gravity
and well pleased with the world.

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And I lay down in mirth

Mirth_and_metre_(1855)_(14778448445)

And I lay down in mirth
like a bed. Later I stood
surveying the good
and the spreading earth.

Then the woods were alive
with invisible birds
and it was good, good.

I stood at my birth
and was wishing the dead
could still hear the music I heard.

Then I pictured the dead
in their cold earthen beds
and the sound of them rose.
And the woods were alive.

And I lay down in mirth
in the grass, in the dirt
and the dead in their earths
raised their voices in song.

The invisible birds
sang along, sang along, sang along,
and it was good, good.

 

 

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— bent stick in the path, ridging

I.

– bent stick in the path, ridging
the dust

where the sun
has been beating down

ten thousand hours
since last it rained

if you were a snake

I’d know
what to do
with you

tip my hat
wish you good hunting.

II.

First a red
tailed hawk
juking from
treetrunk

to tall grass

under the dark canopy

and next I, emerging, see

coyotes
flashing against the sky.

I don’t understand this world
anymore.

 

Coyote Pounce by Justin

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No matter what

Surrounded by troubled seas - 6659283805_a76fe0ae4b_o
The tall man stood on the island
Blunt-faced, facing the wind
With his eyes as wide as a child’s eyes
And his clothes flapping about him

And the seabirds cried like ever
Just as if he were nought but a stone
And the wind rushed heedlessly by him
Till the sea rose and mothered him home

His blunt face is long since forgotten
By his people long scattered and dead
But all the same he stood there once
No matter what nobody says

 

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