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Lone amid the café’s cheer, Sad of heart am I to-night; Dolefully I drink my beer, But no single line I write. There’s the wretched rent to pay, Yet I glower at pen and ink: Oh, inspire me, Muse, I pray, It is later than you think! Hello! there’s a pregnant phrase. Bravo! let me write it down; Hold it with a hopeful gaze, Gauge it with a fretful frown; Tune it to my lyric lyre ... Ah! upon starvation’s brink, How the words are dark and dire: It is later than you think. Weigh them well .... Behold yon band, Students drinking by the door, Madly merry,bock in hand, Saucers stacked to mark their score. Get you gone, you jolly scamps; Let your parting glasses clink; Seek your long neglected lamps: It is later than you think. Look again: yon dainty blonde, All allure and golden grace, Oh so willing to respond Should you turn a smiling face. Play your part, poor pretty doll; Feast and frolic, pose and prink; There’s the Morgue to end it all, And it’s later than you think. Yon’s a playwright — mark his face, Puffed and purple, tense and tired; Pasha-like he holds his place, Hated, envied and admired. How you gobble life, my friend; Wine, and woman soft and pink! Well, each tether has its end: Sir, it’s later than you think. See yon living scarecrow pass With a wild and wolfish stare At each empty absinthe glass, As if he saw Heaven there. Poor damned wretch, to end your pain There is still the Greater Drink. Yonder waits the sanguine Seine ... It is later than you think. Lastly, you who read; aye, you Who this very line may scan: Think of all you planned to do ... Have you done the best you can? See! the tavern lights are low; Black’s the night, and how you shrink! God! and is it time to go? Ah! the clock is always slow; It is later than you think; Sadly later than you think; Far, far later than you think.

It is not so much that I miss you as the remembering which I suppose is a form of missing except more positive, like the time of the blackout when fear was my first response followed by love of the dark.

These are the streets where we walked with war and childhood Like our two shadows behind us, or Before us like one shadow. River walks Threaded by park rats, flanked by battleships, Flickering of a grey tail on the bank, Motionless hulls Enormous under a dead grey sky. Farther, the harbor and the miscolored waters Rocking their flotsam under the blank round eye At the masthead staring down the rats to come, Beyond the fisher gulls. And the windows full of ropes and hardware, Doorways, barreled, yawning on the dark, Wall-eyed alleys, coils of husky smells, The breath of journeys strong there. Streets whose sordid beauty joked readily with hope. The taller avenues, And walls that smiled like unpurchased horizons, Swung intimate views out of a foreign room, Hung a gate upon a garden's fable, Walls that frowned With aged remorseless eyes Or the gloom of thunderlit landscapes, opening A door into that placeless country Where the sad animal is blithe, free and at home. Too, those halls Where we stepped lightly among the creatures Whom death had tamed, who yet crouched, sprang, or flew, Fierce as hunger, graceful as joy, Until we knew, as in a half silvered mirror, the half Captive image of immortality. These are the old places, and walking there As then with war and childhood, I look into the shadows' faces. They appal. Yet often I will see (The marvels floating alive upon that stream, The breathing of delight like purest air) Another place: that you contrived Between midnight and morning In your dream, and in the morning Took me there. We greeted it, who could not stay. But it is there, Surviving disbelief, surviving even what the malign years prepare.

Apart disclaimed wicked pea, split soft skin of the principle princess, who writhes, a little blood passes her perineum every night, grey linen sheets flax talisman plot luxe to strip and scrub all gore a plain bar of secret white soap it is a pine tree, it is an orange blossom, is it a rose hip under a baby tongue, blood cuts punisher, swear it closed, closes it

Before dawn, on the street again, beneath sky that washes me with ice, smoke, metal. I don't want to think the bullet pierced my shoulder, the junkie's rotten teeth laughed, his yellow hair froze. I'm careful: 1 smoke Turkish tobacco cigarette butts, 1 drink a lot to piss a lot, I fry the pig in its own fat, eat the knuckles, brain, and stomach; I don't eat the eyes! Always four smokestacks burning bones, somewhere tears that won't stop, everywhere blood becomes flesh that wants to say something. It's not me shouting at no one in Cadillac Square: it's God roaring inside me, afraid to be alone.

it’s rank it cranks you up crash you’re fracked you suck shucks you’re wack you be all you cracked up to be dead on arrival overdosed on whatever excess of hate and love I sleep alone if you were there then please come in tell me what’s good think up something psychic sidekick gimme a pigfoot show me my lifeline read me my rights

It was a' for our rightful king That we left fair Scotland's strand; It was a' for our rightful king We e'er saw Irish land, My dear, We e'er saw Irish land. Now a' is done that men can do, And a' is done in vain! My love, and native land, fareweel! For I maun cross the main, My dear, For I maun cross the main. He turn'd him right and round about, Upon the Irish shore, He gave his bridle-reins a shake, With, Adieu for evermore, My dear! And adieu for evermore! The soldier frae the war returns, And the merchant frae the main. But I hae parted frae my love, Never to meet again, My dear, Never to meet again. When day is gone and night is come, And a' folk bound to sleep, I think on him that's far awa The lee-lang night, and weep, My dear, The lee-lang night, and weep.

I strolled upon the Brooklyn Bridge one day, Beneath the storm; None but a lad in rags upon the way I saw;—there on a bench he lay Heedless of form. He seemingly was reading what the Shower Was publishing upon the Bridge and down the Bay; Yet he was writing, writing at this hour,— Writing in a careless sort of way. Upon a pad he scribbled and as fast the rain Retouched, effaced, corrected and revised. Was he recording Nature’s solemn strain, Or sketching choristers therein disguised? Whatever it be, I found myself quite by his side: My nod and smile he pocketed and wrote again; “Read me your drizzling stuff,” I said, and he replied: “I’ve written a check in payment for this shower of rain.”

Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations It was not Death, for I stood up, And all the Dead, lie down - It was not Night, for all the Bells Put out their Tongues Tongues The clappers inside of the bells , for Noon. It was not Frost, for on my Flesh I felt Siroccos Siroccos Hot winds. The Emily Dickinson Lexicon includes definitions from the American Dictionary of the English Language (1844): “A pernicious wind that blows from the south-east in Italy, called the Syrian wind. It is said to resemble the steam from the mouth of an oven.” - crawl - Nor Fire - for just my marble feet Could keep a Chancel, Chancel The section near the altar of a church cool - And yet, it tasted, like them all, The Figures I have seen Set orderly, for Burial Reminded me, of mine - As if my life were shaven, And fitted to a frame, And could not breathe without a key, And ’twas like Midnight, some - When everything that ticked - has stopped - And space stares - all around - Or Grisly frosts - first Autumn morns, Repeal the Beating Ground - But most, like Chaos - Stopless - cool - Without a Chance, or spar spar The top mast of a ship - Or even a Report of Land - To justify - Despair.

for Miguel It would be neat if with the New Year I could leave my loneliness behind with the old year. My leathery loneliness an old pair of work boots my dog vigorously head-shakes back and forth in its jaws, chews on for hours every day in my front yard— rain, sun, snow, or wind in bare feet, pondering my poem, I’d look out my window and see that dirty pair of boots in the yard. But my happiness depends so much on wearing those boots. At the end of my day while I’m in a chair listening to a Mexican corrido I stare at my boots appreciating: all the wrong roads we’ve taken, all the drug and whiskey houses we’ve visited, and as the Mexican singer wails his pain, I smile at my boots, understanding every note in his voice, and strangers, when they see my boots rocking back and forth on my feet keeping beat to the song, see how my boots are scuffed, tooth-marked, worn-soled. I keep wearing them because they fit so good and I need them, especially when I love so hard, where I go up those boulder strewn trails, where flowers crack rocks in their defiant love for the light.