Poemunity — your poem community

I said cake I said top hat I said microphone four little golden baby heads wait I said pirate ghost wait wait I said closed eye smiling cat he scrawled back oh my god I thought fuck yeah I can read this at the marathon he said Eileen smiles ehhh I can use it the bell of my computer rang same message wait the cat is crying with relief the cat is a devil now the cat is not mad the cat making racialized jazz uh or not my white hands I’m talking to everyone now. and I’m using a filter. No I’m not I acknowledge that there is an image of me twice. I only recently learned the term jazz hands if we fucked Pennsylvania up what is our hope to live in a stolen country that was always stolen and worked largely by stolen people. Out of a conservative diaspora came I mongrel poet from Massachusetts to make my mark love& these things and opportunities to speak. We can’t fall down we teem in the new opportunity we discover what resistance means our time & blowing up the inside of my computer buck studies the phone says delivered what is. Adam says did you see my beard. We talk about money awhile I ride my bike. Get off the phone goes ding. It’s his beard calling. I go oh. you have what I want. he says lol then skull then rocket then turkey green pistol and a flame. I don’t know what to say back to that I say bike and go.

(a found poem, composed entirely of e-mails from various high school students) If I were to ask you a question about your book and sum it up into one word it would be,Why? I think I like Walt Whitman better than you. I just don't get literature, but for a fast hour and a half read, your book takes the cake. I like how you organized the lines in that one poem to represent a growing twisting bonsai tree. Are you going to get a rude reaction when you meet that one guy in that one poem? I guess you never know. You are very young to be a poet. I also like how your poems take up an entire page (it makes our reading assignment go faster). In class we spend so much time dissecting your poems and then deeply analyzing them. I think I like Walt Whitman better than you, but don’t take offense—you are very good too! You are young, You are young and pure and really just want to have a good time. Thank you we have taken a debate and you are a far better poet than Walt Whitman. And I loved how your poems were easy to read and understand. Hello my name is Alicia. We read you book and I just loved it. We also read Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. There was no competition there. I liked your book a whole lot better. It was an easy read. But poetry is not my favorite type of literature. Sometimes I am offered drinks and guys try to talk to me but I too just brush it off and keep dancing. Every once and a while the creepy mean guys try to offer you things and then they say something. What would you do? Lastly, I was wondering if you ever wrote a poem that really didn’t have a deeper meaning but everyone still tried to give it one anyways? Walt Whitman is better than you.

Dear Angry Mob, Oak Wood Trail is closed to you. We feel it unnecessary to defend our position, for we have always thought of ourselves (and rightly, I venture) as a haven for those seeking a quiet and solitary contemplation. We are truly sorry for the inconvenience. Signed, Ranger Lil PS            Ofttimes as the day ends on a wet bed of yellow leaves or the sky densens gray and dark I am brought to imagine the growing disquiet in the hearts of my countrymen

What will you be like when the daylight comes? I’m glad you’re Diana Ross, today. What is she scraping off her face? Two strobing flashlights at the apex of the cheekbones, one on the tip of the nose. I’m so glad you’re Dorothy. Nineties depression chic nirvana flannel and hobo overalls accented with stilettos are back falling through lawn chairs as Rodney King. Your dog ran away in the night and I’m celebrating. Caleb caught a case and I’m running through the streets like there’s a bouquet of swords in one fist and balloons in the other, dissembling my distress. In high school we read Camus’s Rebel but stayed up till midnight to catch the second airing of Jerry Springer on three way. I mostly remember the brawls and such earnest DNA testing, such universal are you my daddy tales. We’d stay on the phone and wait for the results. The audience hated reconciliation and everyone was someone’s mom outrunning the weightless claymation noonnight. Praying for patient doom. Tasting like Cool Ranch Doritos and a room of one’s own. Sullen minstrel cuddling the spotlight won’t you put down your phone and tell me what’s really the matter. Why won’t they call security before she hurls another chair. Their spectacle protects them from sorrow and all sorts of water rots in Chicago and no one seems outraged when the mother’s boyfriend is her daughter’s babyfather     no one turns down the complimentary coffee and hamburgers     or stabs him in the groin.     By default, by heroic shamelessness.     Did you spend at least eight and a half minutes in daylight.     Did you radiate like starch in the Paleolithic age, get so thin it aches. Is the rebel wanted dead or alive? I had asked Diana. She had gone into hiding by then.

In the constant lutte to not become that bougie housewife of an athlete taking too much oxy while the help cooks ethical fried chicken for my family and I’m also the help and the television sighs and wags in the back     some Wendy Williams   rerun and     this is acceptable and celebrating neon israel and soul     is so radio :     I walk alone.   I know myself. Or so I chant in the mirror right around discovering that trap music is all the new negro spiritual / righteous delirium try to defund the clown in the en   in negro       say it a little   less     enter the New Yorker in Desdemona’s     scarf     and be this generative   productive whistle     blower for the radicals / coal at the root of slow kill and not scream     at the Salvadorian man with the leaf blower   in my landscape     and hide him and his hoes       when the ICE raid follows and swallow mister PCs   pcp    ,   in this constant     creaseless / as in iron willed / as in   willow weep for me /     effort to love my enemy I became him       The body of me. Its erotic     disbelief temporarily suspended .    alongside the American eagle     : temptation to define freedom     as   consumerism, justice as my right to an object in a special whites only window : see that seedless eagle run the heavens so : suspended and     hovering over my own safe house and spraying it with liquid hog manure     literally. Check WikiLeaks.     Assange looks like a creep but he saves everybody but himself     so   he must be.         Negro do you wanna be that     creepy?

all you have to do is show yourself in case you hear us we are so small and fenceless in the shade throw us a hook when you can touch the scribbled child in the inferno all you have to do is show yourself a little pin your dark olive green parts against the boulder

The mountain thinks it’s the same without you but it’s wrong. Maybe the same stars whisking themselves further off, the darker the brighter, same chamomile crushed underfoot but the little, wiry dog we loved has preceded us into paradise, not that I expect to join her even though my own crappy heart’s worse, running’s out but I may be finally learning how to sit in a chair. I still don’t know what to call the good morning bird although whatever word’d be no truer than manzanita. I think namelessness has a crush on me, on how clean I keep my room, the usual stunned ruckus of wake up. But it’s a different moon, different woman on the hotel balcony yet the same kinda scary, vacant stare, caryatid foreseeing what? Before turning back to the customary, immaculate vacation squalor inside. The cash machine still says “enter to exit” but there’s more water in the creek than I’ve ever seen, the brighter the darker, in that first dream there was none.

Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations 1 This is only a note This is only a note / To say Echoes the title of William Carlos Williams’s poem, “ This Is Just To Say ” To say This is only a note / To say Echoes the title of William Carlos Williams’s poem, “ This Is Just To Say ” how sorry I am You died You died Bryan Wynter was a friend of Graham’s, and landscape painter (1915-1975). The poem takes both the form of an elegy and a direct address to the deceased Wynter, in the form of a letter (that is, an epistolary poem). . You will realize What a position it puts Me in. I couldn’t really Have died for you if so I were inclined. The carn carn /Foxglove “The Carn” was the name of Wynter’s cottage in the town of Zennor. Carn is an alternate spelling of cairn, a heap of stones used as a landmark or tombstone. A foxglove is a colorful perennial flower, with cup-shaped buds. Foxglove carn /Foxglove “The Carn” was the name of Wynter’s cottage in the town of Zennor. Carn is an alternate spelling of cairn, a heap of stones used as a landmark or tombstone. A foxglove is a colorful perennial flower, with cup-shaped buds. here on the wall Outside your first house Leans with me standing In the Zennor wind Zennor wind A village in Cornwall, on the southwestern coast England, prone to strong winds . Anyhow how are things? Are you still somewhere With your long legs long legs In Graham’s poem “Wynter and the Grammarsow,” he terms Wynter “Sir Longlegged” (line 3). And twitching smile under twitching smile under / Your blue hat Critic Fiona Green notes that these lines “resurrect the closing frame of “Lycidas”: “At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue” (line 192). Milton’s “ Lycidas ” is one of the most famous elegies in the English language. Your blue hat twitching smile under / Your blue hat Critic Fiona Green notes that these lines “resurrect the closing frame of “Lycidas”: “At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue” (line 192). Milton’s “ Lycidas ” is one of the most famous elegies in the English language. walking Across a place? Or am I greedy to make you up Again out of memory? Are you there at all? I would like to think You were all right And not worried about Monica Monica Bryan Wynter’s second wife (née Harman), whom he married in 1959 and the children And not unhappy or bored. 2 Speaking to you and not Knowing if you are there Is not too difficult. My words are used to that. Do you want anything? Where shall I send something? Rice-wine, meanders meanders A type of artwork. One of Wynter’s works at the Tate Gallery in London is titled “Meander I”. In Graham’s poem “Wynter and the Grammarsow,” he calls Wynter “Scholar King / Of rare meanders” (lines 18-19). , paintings By your contemporaries? Or shall I send a kind Of news of no time Leaning against the wall Outside your old house. The house and the whole moor moor In addition to the definition of uncultivated land, a possible play on the verb, meaning to anchor Is flying in the mist. 3 I am up. I’ve washed The front of my face And here I stand looking Out over the top Half of my bedroom window. There almost as far As I can see I see St Buryan’s church tower. St Buryan’s church tower St. Buryan’s is a village in Cornwall. Noted by Sarah Ann Matson as “a greater height than any other church in Cornwall” (St. George and the Dragon[1893]). An inch to the left, behind That dark rise of woods, Is where you used to lurk. 4 This is only a note To say I am aware You are not here. I find It difficult to go Beside Housman’s star Housman’s star / Lit fences In A.E. Housman’s poem “ A Shropshire Lad 52 ” the last stanza reads: “There, by the starlit fences, / The wanderer halts and hears / My soul that lingers sighing / About the glimmering weirs.” Also, Graham wrote similar lines in an earlier poem, “Wynter and the Grammarsow”: “Walker beside the star / Lit fences of Housman (lines 25-26). Lit fences Housman’s star / Lit fences In A.E. Housman’s poem “ A Shropshire Lad 52 ” the last stanza reads: “There, by the starlit fences, / The wanderer halts and hears / My soul that lingers sighing / About the glimmering weirs.” Also, Graham wrote similar lines in an earlier poem, “Wynter and the Grammarsow”: “Walker beside the star / Lit fences of Housman (lines 25-26). without you. And nobody will laugh At my jokes like you. 5 Bryan, I would be obliged If you would scout things out For me. Although I am not Just ready to start out. I am trying to be better I am trying to be better, Matthew Francis annotates this line in New Collected Poems(2004): “ ‘Try to be better’, or ‘TTTB’, was a motto of Graham’s” , Which will make you smile Under your blue hat. I know I make a symbol Of the foxglove Foxglove A foxglove is a colorful perennial flower, with cup-shaped buds. on the wall. It is because it knows you.

Dear Doctor, I have read your play, Which is a good one in its way, Purges the eyes, and moves the bowels, And drenches handkerchiefs like towels With tears that, in a flux of grief, Afford hysterical relief To shatter'd nerves and quicken'd pulses, Which your catastrophe convulses. I like your moral and machinery; Your plot, too, has such scope for scenery! Your dialogue is apt and smart; The play's concoction full of art; Your hero raves, your heroine cries, All stab, and everybody dies; In short, your tragedy would be The very thing to hear and see; And for a piece of publication, If I decline on this occasion, It is not that I am not sensible To merits in themselves ostensible, But—and I grieve to speak it—plays Are drugs—mere drugs, Sir, nowadays. I had a heavy loss by Manuel — Too lucky if it prove not annual— And Sotheby, with his damn'd Orestes (Which, by the way, the old bore's best is), Has lain so very long on hand That I despair of all demand; I've advertis'd—but see my books, Or only watch my shopman's looks; Still Ivan , Ina and such lumber My back-shop glut, my shelves encumber. There's Byron too, who once did better, Has sent me—folded in a letter— A sort of—it's no more a drama Than Darnley , Ivan or Kehama : So alter'd since last year his pen is, I think he's lost his wits at Venice, Or drain'd his brains away as stallion To some dark-eyed and warm Italian; In short, Sir, what with one and t'other, I dare not venture on another. I write in haste; excuse each blunder; The coaches through the street so thunder! My room's so full; we've Gifford here Reading MSS with Hookham Frere, Pronouncing on the nouns and particles Of some of our forthcoming articles, The Quarterly —ah, Sir, if you Had but the genius to review! A smart critique upon St. Helena, Or if you only would but tell in a Short compass what—but, to resume; As I was saying, Sir, the room— The room's so full of wits and bards, Crabbes, Campbells, Crokers, Freres and Wards, And others, neither bards nor wits— My humble tenement admits All persons in the dress of Gent., From Mr. Hammond to Dog Dent. A party dines with me today, All clever men who make their way: Crabbe, Malcolm, Hamilton and Chantrey Are all partakers of my pantry. They're at this moment in discussion On poor De Staël's late dissolution. Her book, they say, was in advance— Pray Heaven she tell the truth of France! 'Tis said she certainly was married To Rocca, and had twice miscarried, No—not miscarried, I opine— But brought to bed at forty nine. Some say she died a Papist; some Are of opinion that's a hum; I don't know that—the fellow, Schlegel, Was very likely to inveigle A dying person in compunction To try the extremity of unction. But peace be with her! for a woman Her talents surely were uncommon. Her publisher (and public too) The hour of her demise may rue, For never more within his shop he— Pray—was she not interr'd at Coppet? Thus run our time and tongues away; But, to return, Sir, to your play; Sorry, Sir, but I cannot deal, Unless 'twere acted by O'Neill. My hands are full—my head so busy, I'm almost dead—and always dizzy; And so, with endless truth and hurry, Dear Doctor, I am yours, JOHN MURRAY

I, too, know the science of building men Out of fragments in little light Where I'll be damned if lightning don't Strike as I forget one May have a thief's thumb, Another, a murderer's arm, And watch the men I've made leave Like an idea I meant to write down, Like a vehicle stuck In reverse, like the monster God came to know the moment Adam named animals and claimed Eve, turning from heaven to her As if she was his To run. No word he said could be tamed. No science. No design. Nothing taken Gently into his hand or your hand or mine, Nothing we erect is our own.