Poemunity — your poem community

His mother stepped about her kitchen, complaining in a low voice; all day his father sat stooped at a sewing machine. When he went to high school Webber was in his class. Webber lived in a neighborhood where the houses are set in lawns with trees beside the gutters. The boys who live there, after school, take their skates and hockey sticks and play in the streets until nightfall. At twelve o’clock the boys ran out of school to a lunchroom around the corner. First come, first served, and they ran as fast as they could. Webber would run up beside him and knock him against the wall. He tried not to mind and thought Webber would tire of it. One day he hit Webber’s side; his fist fell off Webber’s over- coat. Webber turned with a glad shout and punched him as he cowered. His home was in a neighborhood of workingmen where there were few Jews. When he came home from school he walked as quickly as he could, his head bowed and cap pulled low over his face. Once, a few blocks from home, a tall lad stopped him. “Are you a Jew? I knock the block off every Jew I meet.” “No,” he answered. “I think you’re a Jew. What’s your name?” He told him, glad that his name was not markedly Jewish and yet foreign enough to answer for his looks. “Where do you live?” He told him and added, “Come around any old time and ask about me.” So he got away. When he was through high school he worked in the civil service as a typist, taken on until a rush of business was over. He took the test for a steady job, but his standing on the list was low, unlikely to be reached for a long time, if ever before the new list. Looking for work, he always came upon a group waiting for the job. He was short and weak-looking, and looked peevish. He could not get work for months. At last an old German storekeeper wanted to hire him and asked at what he had been working. He told him. “It doesn’t pay me to break you in, if you are going to leave me. Have you taken another civil service test? Are you waiting for a new appointment?” “No,” he answered. In a few months a letter came to his home from the civil service board, asking him to report for work as a typist, a permanent appointment. There was no hurry, but his father did not know and so brought the letter to the store. There had been a boy in his class at school whose name was Kore. Kore was short, too, but he had the chest of an old sailor and thick, bandy legs. He shouted when he spoke and was always laughing. Kore moved into the block. With Kore he was not afraid to stand on the stoop after work or go walking anywhere. Once they went to Coney Island and Kore wanted to go bathing. It was late at night and no one else was in. They went along the beach until they came to the iron pier the steamboats dock at. Kore boasted that he would swim around the pier and slid away into the black water. At last the people were gone. The booths were long darkened. He waited for Kore at the other side of the pier, watching the empty waves come in.

For those my unbaptized rhymes, Writ in my wild unhallowed times, For every sentence, clause, and word, That's not inlaid with Thee, my Lord, Forgive me, God, and blot each line Out of my book, that is not Thine. But if, 'mongst all, Thou find'st here one Worthy thy benediction, That one of all the rest shall be The glory of my work, and me.

When I a verse shall make, Know I have pray'd thee, For old religion's sake, Saint Ben to aid me. Make the way smooth for me, When I, thy Herrick, Honouring thee, on my knee Offer my lyric. Candles I'll give to thee, And a new altar, And thou, Saint Ben, shalt be Writ in my psalter.

From the dull confines of the drooping west To see the day spring from the pregnant east, Ravish'd in spirit, I come, nay more, I fly To thee, blest place of my nativity! Thus, thus with hallow'd foot I touch the ground, With thousand blessings by thy fortune crown'd. O fruitful genius! that bestowest here An everlasting plenty, year by year. O place! O people! Manners! fram'd to please All nations, customs, kindreds, languages! I am a free-born Roman; suffer then That I amongst you live a citizen. London my home is, though by hard fate sent Into a long and irksome banishment; Yet since call'd back, henceforward let me be, O native country, repossess'd by thee! For, rather than I'll to the west return, I'll beg of thee first here to have mine urn. Weak I am grown, and must in short time fall; Give thou my sacred relics burial.

His sovereignty is o’er my gathered throng; His glory is my faith within, I seek Him for atonement of my sin— This day of fasting to forgive the wrong: And He will answer, He will say, “Forgiven.” Holy—and mighty in His chamber o’er the skies; Holy—in penitence alone His pardon lies; Holy—the secret of His Law He tells His own Holy—for all His sheep rejoicing to atone; Holy—He pardoneth His faithful one that pleads; Holy—and all His people praise His mighty deeds; Holy—His faithful one remembering in His love; Holy—He loves the soul’s affliction of His dove. Holy—on those unclean His cleansing waters flow; Holy—His people’s sin He maketh white as snow. Holy—yea, Israel of their error maketh clear; Holy—He sets apart one day in all the year; Holy—He pardons them whose longing turns to Him. Holy—above the highest heights He standeth dim; Holy—and He is good to those who bear His fear; Holy—forgiving sin His wrath will not appear; Holy—by righteousness He drives transgressions hence; Holy—He holds this day of fast for penitence. Holy—He gently leads to Him His holy one; Holy—thus merciful beside Him there is none; Holy—’mid clouds abiding where His dwelling lies: Holy—and angels tell His glory through the skies. His sovereignty is o’er my gathered throng; His glory is my faith within. I seek Him for atonement of my sin— This day of fasting to forgive the wrong: And He will answer, He will say, “Forgiven.”

The doctor said to my father, “You asked me to tell you when nothing more could be done. That’s what I’m telling you now.” My father sat quite still, as he always did, especially not moving his eyes. I had thought he would rave if he understood he would die, wave his arms and cry out. He sat up, thin, and clean, in his clean gown, like a holy man. The doctor said, “There are things we can do which might give you time, but we cannot cure you.” My father said, “Thank you.” And he sat, motionless, alone, with the dignity of a foreign leader. I sat beside him. This was my father. He had known he was mortal. I had feared they would have to tie him down. I had not remembered he had always held still and kept quiet to bear things, the liquor a way to keep still. I had not known him. My father had dignity. At the end of his life his life began to wake in me.

He looked down at his withering body and saw a hair near his navel, swaying. And now he saw his other hairs rise up. He felt a hectic current in his veins. Looking within, he saw the bubbling of his blood. He cursed his fever, saying: “It is the chemistry of prayer. It increases in frequency, seeding panic to all my being. My cells swell with the liquid of guilt they fabricate, juices of hatred eat my belly my corpuscles make war in me as they devour each other. My head heats in the combustion of anxiety, I am polluted by the secretions of my soul’s decay, while my brain wears away with the scratching night and day on the encephalograph of prayer. I grow monstrous with the leukemia of the world.” And he heard the hair say: “Hear me.” And he saw it grow gray as it waved. All his hairs he saw whiten, and, numberless, wilt from their erect electric listening. He saw them topple from their roots. “How dare you!” he cursed them. There surged a brief resuscitation to his body. His heart took heart and pounded twice with the health of fear But then the plague of prayer redoubled and overwhelmed him. In his feebleness he raged, and said: “I will tear out this evil and free it.” With his withered hands he tore the remaining hairs from his body and head. With his nails he opened his breast, and with his fist he exploded his heart, which erupted, a black and red volcano. As his brain tasted, for the first time, the birth of his doom, he came a rolling tide, a floating mountain of ecstasy. “I see you! I love you!” his eyes cried, overflowing with his bright blood. “You were the light of the world that are now my gushing tears— the kind and fiery tears of chaos, that wash my eyes with the cure of oblivion.” “He hears us!” cried his sick blood pouring from his ears. “Even as of old he heard our hair before it perished.” With his last strength, the chemistry of prayer, a few drops of his blood coagulated. That clot whirled out, free, in the vortex of the universe.

I would to God, that mine old age might have Before my last, but here a living grave; Some one poor almshouse, there to lie, or stir, Ghost-like, as in my meaner sepulchre; A little piggin, and a pipkin by, To hold things fitting my necessity, Which, rightly us'd, both in their time and place, Might me excite to fore, and after, grace. Thy cross, my Christ, fix'd 'fore mine eyes should be, Not to adore that, but to worship Thee. So here the remnant of my days I'd spend, Reading Thy bible, and my book; so end.

There’s a dispute as to whether a name can be given to mills or not. If an essential root is given to one arm, they might be revolvers in insect’s casings, winding down a river of dirt in giving you, America, too small a thimble, the carcass of instruction and wavy, diminutive hand signals. From a cracked stone mouthing, to an unplayed game (still wrapped), to the skin of my plastic voice. There is a slow moving, not fast like the static form of urban frames. If you want (and here is IF, again, with indecision) to describe misdirected outcroppings from a battery of daylight shells, I mean light, I mean dark colored turtles, one map giving birth to another, this, flown heavy with rupture and landed after a piece was found. Not enough. There is a simple solution to your house, and my wooden block. One politic NOT on top of an Other, as one’s head is wrapped in a box, in a hole. Spittle looms swim, bide time clicks, made queues on an S, connected to separate one from a ONE, towels, in seeing an ocean first and making Balboan curves, you know there are all kinds of sticks. A brick, painted with soft hair, builds up questions to age and blacken linings, whip tailed lizards, their eyes are what implants carbonized blinking, placed alongside letters, the hold on becoming an END. Chips give sound to fingers, the Oh returning in flowing error, twice committed. Flood. Not a zero or a one, as if cornered with prostituted faces leaning outward, an Escape weighing about an army of lip collectors and fused hands and their whispers of Xs as in 2 again or more. There is the border of skin there is the border of membrane there is the border of number. Tongues firing the burned and buried. 2 and on, and THEN its disappearance. Invisibility solidified, a welt on a willow. You know a letter, a cache in a person. Memory management errors undone. Fluid as blood. Blood as a turning through time.

hist      whist little ghostthings tip-toe twinkle-toe little twitchy witches and tingling goblins hob-a-nob     hob-a-nob little hoppy happy toad in tweeds tweeds little itchy mousies with scuttling eyes    rustle and run     and hidehidehide whisk whisk     look out for the old woman with the wart on her nose what she’ll do to yer nobody knows for she knows the devil     ooch the devil     ouch the devil ach     the great green dancing devil devil devil devil wheeEEE