Poemunity — your poem community

1 Touch each chakra in turn and say, “Nothing shocks me.” 2 Watching bombs fall on Syria, we feel serious, occupied, not preoccupied as we were previously. 3 “Makes me end, where I begun,” wrote   John Donne, turning love into geometry.

is all wrong, ed what poets now live where they say they do where they started out where they want to half the midwesterners did time in new york the other half in california only new yorkers write as if they are from new york and mostly they are not the ones in california were wounded elsewhere when they feel better or can't afford the rent they'll go back where they came from this is america you get hurt where you are born you make poetry out of it as far from home as you can get you die somewhere in between the only geography of poets is greyhound general motors rules them all ubi patria ibi bene or ibi bene ubi patria bread out of nostalgia not a lot of it either some of us came from very far maps don't help much

I know the origin of rocks, settling out of water, hatching crystals from fire, put under pressure in various designs I gathered pretty, picnic after picnic. And I know about love, a little, igneous lust, the slow affections of the sedimentary, the pressure on earth out of sight to rise up into material, something solid you can hold, a whole mountain, for example, or a loose collection of pebbles you forgot you were keeping.

All the roofs sloped at the same angle. The distance between the houses was the same. There were so many feet from each front door to the curb. My father mowed the lawn straight up and down and then diagonally. And then he lined up beer bottles on the kitchen table. We knew them only in summer when the air passed through the screens. The neighbor girls talked to us across the great divide: attic window to attic window. We started with our names. Our whispers wobbled along a tightrope, and below was the rest of our lives.

In speaking of ‘aspiration,’ From the recesses of a pen more dolorous than blackness itself, Were you presenting us with one more form of imperturbable French drollery, Or was it self directed banter? Habitual ennui Took from you, your invisible, hot helmet of anaemia— While you were filling your “little glass” from the decanter Of a transparent-murky, would-be-truthful “hobohemia”— And then facetiously Went off with it? Your soul’s supplanter, The spirit of good narrative, flatters you, convinced that in reporting briefly One choice incident, you have known beauty other than that of stys, on Which to fix your admiration. So far as the future is concerned, “Shall not one say, with the Russian philosopher, ‘How is one to know what one doesn’t know?’” So far as the present is concerned,

I feel myself in need Of the inspiring strains of ancient lore, My heart to lift, my empty mind to feed, And all the world explore. I know that I am old And never can recover what is past, But for the future may some light unfold And soar from ages blast. I feel resolved to try, My wish to prove, my calling to pursue, Or mount up from the earth into the sky, To show what Heaven can do. My genius from a boy, Has fluttered like a bird within my heart; But could not thus confined her powers employ, Impatient to depart. She like a restless bird, Would spread her wing, her power to be unfurl’d, And let her songs be loudly heard, And dart from world to world.

You were my gym buddy ferreting along spotty florescent ramps. Misbegotten signals blinked out bumpkin lanes over sable grass. We passed through many things. Peach sirens, entryway orderlies. Mangled disposition-stations. Chief in disbelief was concrete love. Firmer still, a melee awkwardness that showed all registrants just how we managed to pickpocket night. Then came dark crowds. Some doodled for the pad, debriefed what pumiced eyes meant in multi-dotted foreign rows. Buildings like a spider’s clothes. Later, we sped backward. A maw orchard, windless in the mind, boomed electronic lifts. I spied you at the prow of some sensation. I declined to call another name. Pelting noise flew off fairy citadels. Clocks, first thought abducted, were switched. Dialogues dispelled. My love heard a mug crash on the countertop of Long Island Sound. Our people became as ones lost. Not many rebounded with pledge, not many fetched familiars, stretched legs, reread white meetings. O stream, ring your ears. Handsome tubers, go ahead and wig out. Modern territories click like a mouse. Body becomes human body. On a skinny avenue I hushed up pyramidal steps older than sorcery. You know how I want to share a dust ball with misty partner. Dance one fabled evening and hear the skylark do something. Picnics bended over, they happen below. Swings parks rung. I inject chlorine into my memory-parts with lady satisfaction. Are you gay? A political campaign sanctioned a quart of moose. So stars soon quarreled back to the travel section of the North. I ignored that and opened my lips for a job to crunch and push at me, seeing the flat spacey wherewithal of disconnected items. I want a second act. What can I say but this was my second act. Must wrangle a look-see. The sign revenging its timely laziness in the ruffled strut of an accusing pillow. I hibernate in phrase as perfect as the mood of the blue lotus flower. Public aspects. The last shipment of vhs tapes left its factory on this day in 2008 or 2009. Meanwhile, delis around town don’t go like they used to. Who cares if I can’t hose you down my you, my Newfoundland. And George Washington, someone we can’t really know, rows over famed waters, wondering what his face will be, not in the future, not for the monthly book clubs. But as sovereign: as beast with dunce cap. I will dress you down in fresh lettuce and gobble your ear off with smutty keys principled as music. The marching saints won’t bother in battalion to much know. We make of him so much hackneyed affection, dress wounds as if equivocal all need. Hunger passes through to the other side. Entertaining pals you wouldn’t call but couldn’t not think to. A disfigured face’s humiliated psychic debris sprawls on gussy rug. It talks you into needing solace while cup passes from sleep to sleep. The positional plot warps but is the same. The deluxe mattress drifts on gravitational subtleties like the rest of us, practicing the gut’s banjo. No, in fact, I don’t know how he ever crossed the channels or canals from that stout city. I don’t really know if I ever really need to know. One thing we share is worshipping the image of a person we never knew.

I wonder what I would have said if my dad asked me, "Son, do you know who cut down my pretty cherry tree?" I think I might have closed my eyes and thought a little bit about the herds of elephants I'd seen attacking it. I would have heard the rat-a-tat of woodpeckers, at least, or the raging roar of a charging boar or some such other beast! Perhaps a hippopotamus with nothing else to do had wandered through our garden and stopped to take a chew. We all know George said, "Father, I cannot tell a lie." Yet I can't help but wonder ... Did he really try?

The sky, lazily disdaining to pursue The setting sun, too indolent to hold A lengthened tournament for flashing gold, Passively darkens for night’s barbecue, A feast of moon and men and barking hounds, An orgy for some genius of the South With blood-hot eyes and cane-lipped scented mouth, Surprised in making folk-songs from soul sounds. The sawmill blows its whistle, buzz-saws stop, And silence breaks the bud of knoll and hill, Soft settling pollen where plowed lands fulfill Their early promise of a bumper crop. Smoke from the pyramidal sawdust pile Curls up, blue ghosts of trees, tarrying low Where only chips and stumps are left to show The solid proof of former domicile. Meanwhile, the men, with vestiges of pomp, Race memories of king and caravan, High-priests, an ostrich, and a juju-man, Go singing through the footpaths of the swamp. Their voices rise . . the pine trees are guitars, Strumming, pine-needles fall like sheets of rain . . Their voices rise . . the chorus of the cane Is caroling a vesper to the stars . . O singers, resinous and soft your songs Above the sacred whisper of the pines, Give virgin lips to cornfield concubines, Bring dreams of Christ to dusky cane-lipped throngs.

Thus every Creature, and of every Kind, The secret Joys of sweet Coition find: Not only Man’s Imperial Race; but they That wing the liquid Air, or swim the Sea, Or haunt the Desert, rush into the flame: For Love is Lord of all; and is in all the same. ’Tis with this rage, the Mother Lion stung, Scours o’re the Plain; regardless of her young: Demanding Rites of Love, she sternly stalks; And hunts her Lover in his lonely Walks. ’Tis then the shapeless Bear his Den forsakes; In Woods and Fields a wild destruction makes. Boars whet their Tusks; to battle Tygers move; Enrag’d with hunger, more enrag’d with love. Then wo to him, that in the desert Land Of Lybia travels, o’re the burning Sand. The Stallion snuffs the well-known Scent afar; And snorts and trembles for the distant Mare: Nor bitts nor Bridles, can his rage restrain; And rugged Rocks are interpos’d in vain. He makes his way o’re Mountains, and contemns Unruly Torrents, and unfoorded Streams. The bristled Boar, who feels the pleasing wound, New grinds his arming Tusks, and digs the ground. The sleepy Leacher shuts his little Eyes; About his churning Chaps the frothy bubbles rise: He rubs his sides against a Tree; prepares And hardens both his Shoulders for the Wars.