Keep your light on all the time
You never know when
Someone’s coming home
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Tag Archives: poems
Lines for Mr. T.S. Eliot
“Here he drank pastis with the mayors of the Basses-Alpes, and even found time to lecture on Edgar Allan Poe, although his new false teeth made it difficult for him to speak French.”
How pleasant to know Mr. Eliot!
With his Nobel Prize and ironical eyes
How pleasant to know Mr. Eliot!
He exhibits a mystical, mischievous dread
And he smokes French tobacco and lies in his bed
As he waits for the world to fall in on his head
(Taking comfort in knowing his poetry’s read);
And everyone says what has always been said
That it’s lovely to know Mr. Eliot!
If he drinks rather much and his teeth are quite new
If he finds it, you know, rather painful to chew
If he speaks somewhat slower than he used to do
It is only because he’s deliberate!
And if he seems chilly, it’s maybe because he’s been celibate —
But they say for all that, it’s still terribly, terribly,
awfully, horribly, pleasant to know Mr. Eliot!
Against Haiku
To Say
To say
That you could never disappoint me
Is just to say you haven’t yet
And then extrapolate.
Of course you could.
Oh, when I think of all the ways you could
Undo me! It almost makes me weep
From the sheer foolish love of what you are so far,
My true love, my millstone.
Talking God’s Prayer
Amid the high stratus clouds
In the house made of dawn
In the house that was raised at dawn,
Upon the road lit by the dawn,
Talking God needs a singer, and I am he!
He walks, and it is my feet that walk;
My limbs are become his limbs,
My body, his body,
My mind, his mind,
And he speaks, and it is my voice that speaks;
And the fierce plumes of his plumed helmet,
They nod above my head, above his head.
Beautiful what lies before him, which lies also before me;
Beautiful what comes behind him, and also behind me;
Beautiful, all that lies below, all that rises above,
Beautiful, everything on every side, beautiful!
As his voice is sacred, and of the most sacred, as pollen, and is beautiful,
So does my voice become most sacred, and beautiful,
And thus in beauty it is done;
In beauty it is done.
Monday 11 a.m.
I too have sentimental leanings,
Inchoate sensibilities,
Vague yearnings,
And feel the pull of those
Old, stupid, useful words, like
Love; dreams; desire;
From which nothing can save us
But the things themselves:
On our kitchen table lie
The blown still-moist petals
Of Friday’s flowers.
Yaitse Figured It Out (Monster Slayer part 6)
Yaitse said:
I see the footprints
Running here and there.
Give them to me,
Those two skinny boys!
White Shell Woman said:
The prints like little feet,
I make them with my fist’s edge,
Scatter them all around the place.
It’s better than living alone.
Changing Woman said:
Go back to the mountains, Yaitse,
Break your teeth on stones.
There’s nothing for you here,
Nothing you have not ruined.
The First Time White-Corn’s-Child Came to the House Made of Dawn
Stumbling through the grounds at sunrise,
With dew-damp pollen clinging to my ragged pants cuffs
And having left all my friends behind,
I found myself here.
Beauty amazes me!
Charms hanging in the doorway!
Beauty amazes me!
I’ll dance with the altar-cloth!
Beautiful all that lies before me!
Beautiful all that creeps up behind!
Beautiful, every side I turn to!
I turn, and turn, and turn!
So here I am wandering around
In the house of happiness,
In the house of long life
That no one enters alive.
The Chinese Dragons, part 5
Speaking to dragons is a great art,
To be seldom practiced.
A man who speaks often to dragons may
Become like a dragon.
The Chinese Dragons, part 4
The dragons do not seek out men.
They hoard their wisdom like jewels.
The least scale from the belly of a dragon
Might ransom any of the kings of men.
Bag of Anything 