dreamed
I was
pursued
by 4 bears
1 was continually arriving from beyond the east
1 was striking like a hammer without any anvil
1 was in love with god who tangled him up like a vine
1 was singing like a river om om om om
by 4 bears
pursued
I was
dreamed
Darkness, did you forget my name?
I’ve been out taking the air,
Roaming all day on the bright mountainside,
But Darkness, you know me!
the endless susurrus of tires
strove with us through the night’s great room
we trusted to its purpose: home
I spoke a wish into the dark,
as if I dropped a fish into a well,
then paused for a returning sound to tell
if water caught it, not dry stone,
not dead coins only. Not a sound came back:
That wish went its own way, and left no track.
The night is long. Where may a wish not go,
when every word’s alive, and each is true?
In such a span of time, what can’t it do?
Under the hood:
No rain that summer, my father said, the grasshoppers’ song bringing
No relief among the dry weeds. Then the buffalo came like thunder,
My father said, they came like the flood
That follows rain. The hunters went out singing
In the cool before dawn, dark shapes going along under
A dark sky. My father said by the time they came back again,
The whites were heaps of bones beside their heaped goods,
And the grasshoppers were singing up the rain.
(a song for music)
I won’t be getting up at seven
I won’t be on the bus at eight
I may not get up till the weekend
Everybody’s gonna have to to wait
I don’t care if the coffee’s brewing
I don’t care that eggs are in the pan
I’m snug and warm and I ain’t moving
Is that so hard to understand?
I won’t get up today
That’s all I’ve got to say
It’s just gonna be that way.
Last night I dreamed myself a city
Where everybody spoke in rhyme
Smelled nice, and everyone was pretty
That’s where I want to spend my time
That’s why I won’t get up today
That’s all I’ve got to say
It’s just gonna be that way
I’ll follow dreaming down, however deep:
A spider keeps me safe and guards my sleep.
At least, should I misfortune meet
I will not lack a winding-sheet.
I dreamt I had a hundred arms
And drifted with the algal swarms
On a concordant sea;
Oh, but the Maelstrom reeled me in
To wake here in the deep again
Restless, unfree.
Upon collecting up these million grains
Of sand all that remains
Is to sift them out onto this beach
Again, to cast them out of reach.
1.
Between the gray sky and gray
earth the darkling crowds
of those who
don’t and won’t look up
swell the concrete streets but
no cement can hold back time
no built thing can support the sky and
the earth holds me, but
I hold nothing:
holding nothing
back, again,
still.
2.
I can’t even
get lost just once, I
got lost then
right away
did it again. Later
that place I was headed for
changed into another, so
I never found it.
3.
Hip hooray for the Brooklyn Bridge!
A comic book for the Bowery Kids!
Nobody’s lost, nobody jumps,
We all stand up & take our lumps.
From here to Brooklyn, never back!
And into the great wide world at last!
4.
Never can remember
the endings of movies
quite right and then
I’m afraid to watch them
a second time
since what if the whole world
could come undone
just like
that?
5.
I used to love rocks and
talk about them. Now I don’t
remember why
I thought I knew so much, why
I thought the world was all
about the rocks.
Kids, huh?
6.
If the bay froze – right now, right away –
I bet those sharp gray
waves would fetch a pretty penny
you could cut up the bay, not have any
thing left but sunken wrecks and fish
skeletons, and everyone would wish
they’d bought a piece while they could
yeah, you best believe it would be a good
deal while it lasted, buddy
7.
I have this friend
let’s call her Chris I
haven’t seen her in
a while and I
forget if I owe her
a call or if
she owes me so
anyhow it’s pretty
late now
maybe in a day or two
I’ll remember
again
8.
She got her world from
Headlines, so was always in
Despair, or shopping.
9.
That creek meandering through
the grass doesn’t want
a thing and moves
always. That bird poised like
death on the bank
wants what it can
get; it doesn’t move
but once.
10.
This morning she was up
before me, who used to be
my slug-a-bed, my slow waker.
This morning she has
opinions, who used to
wait and see what things
would be like.
This morning as
I reached for my
coffee cup I realized
wait
this is no dream
this thing is real.
