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Ecstatic experiences with nature This is an automatic furnace Do not drop or roll Do not handle with squeeze lift truck Handle with care This is a piece of quality assured Home heating and cooling equipment The Ohio Valley Container Corporation Made its container to stand A resistance bursting test Of over 200 pounds per square inch Not an inch a metaphor, These words are on my window There is no pane, the first frost comes The second baby, we'll have to Turn up the heat, eat nothing And breathe through a rose Emulating the butterfly's patterns And the repetitive indifference of leaves Turning pink, color of the rose, so flushed Orange color, color of trees Ecstatic mists train us, no feeling No feeling, only moving beginning The pane crashed, baby falls Between loose pelvis onto the sheet Watches leaves blow wind onto window Ecstatic poets bend over, watch the thin doctor He's in the light, this is a chore or task Leaves blow the rose upside down up and down the street Interior blowing toward muscles and thighs Bending up and down, pictures of people The butterfly replaces the hat Every inch of the sheet is ironed Practice matches a new sculpture of thought in ephemeral stretching The space is no bigger than needed Air and water all around, pennies in water I foresee a taste for display in blowing up and down The crown describes only fantastic gems in air No loose signs of what the teas will do for you Fear a moment of taking longer than the warmth lasts The visitors and the coaches then speak of their intention For time to deny any atrophy or waste, even the giggles Later longer than warmth not in inches But in wrappings of leaves for warmth and evenness The warm colors, the cold blue curtains between the sun and the moon After pretension to be singly devoted to one's task is swayed to love Then the simple movement from inside to outside Become astonishment, red yellow orange and eyes bright Sophia Crystal foretells as I foresee absence of memory who sings eternally Only to sing more and more

He tells me in Bangkok he’s robbed Because he’s white; in London because he’s black; In Barcelona, Jew; in Paris, Arab: Everywhere and at all times, and he fights back. He holds up seven thick little fingers To show me he’s rated seventh in the world, And there’s no passion in his voice, no anger In the flat brown eyes flecked with blood. He asks me to tell all I can remember Of my father, his uncle; he talks of the war In North Africa and what came after, The loss of his father, the loss of his brother, The windows of the bakery smashed and the fresh bread Dusted with glass, the warm smell of rye So strong he ate till his mouth filled with blood. “Here they live, here they live and not die,” And he points down at his black head ridged With black kinks of hair. He touches my hair, Tells me I should never disparage The stiff bristles that guard the head of the fighter. Sadly his fingers wander over my face, And he says how fair I am, how smooth. We stand to end this first and last visit. Stiff, 116 pounds, five feet two, No bigger than a girl, he holds my shoulders, Kisses my lips, his eyes still open, My imaginary brother, my cousin, Myself made otherwise by all his pain.

I am a student of wrens. When the mother bird returns to her brood, beak squirming with winged breakfast, a shrill clamor rises like jingling from tiny, high-pitched bells. Who’d have guessed such a small house contained so many voices? The sound they make is the pure sound of life’s hunger. Who hangs our house in the world’s branches, and listens when we sing from our hunger? Because I love best those songs that shake the house of the singer, I am a student of wrens.

The gaunt thing with no organs creeps along the streets of Europe, she will commute, in her feathered bat stomach-gown with no organs with sores on her insides even her head a vast puschamber of pus(sy) memories with no organs nothing to make babies she will be the great witch of euro-american legend who sucked the life from some unknown nigger whose name will be known but whose substance will not ever not even by him who is dead in a pile of dopeskin This bitch killed a friend of mine named Bob Thompson a black painter, a giant, once, she reduced to a pitiful imitation faggot full of American holes and a monkey on his back slapped airplanes from the empire state building May this bitch and her sisters, all of them, receive my words in all their orifices like lye mixed with cocola and alaga syrup feel this shit, bitches, feel it, now laugh your hysterectic laughs while your flesh burns and your eyes peel to red mud

To Have and Have Not, 1944 Betty Joan Perske, age nineteen, gives that look, the one that shifts tectonic plates, to Bogie, and that’s it: Germany surrenders, Japan bows its apologies, and that sailor smooches the nurse in Times Square. The world, no longer black and white, makes love as D-Day shrinks to just a time for planting daffodils, and Hiroshima grows Toyotas. Harry T. has lunch with Stalin; General Patton takes up nursing Bonsai trees. “You know how to whistle, don’t you,” says Bacall, as the moon sighs and the Earth sighs back. “Just put your lips together and blow.”

I The evening comes, the fields are still. The tinkle of the thirsty rill, Unheard all day, ascends again; Deserted is the half-mown plain, Silent the swaths! the ringing wain, The mower's cry, the dog's alarms, All housed within the sleeping farms! The business of the day is done, The last-left haymaker is gone. And from the thyme upon the height, And from the elder-blossom white And pale dog-roses in the hedge, And from the mint-plant in the sedge, In puffs of balm the night-air blows The perfume which the day forgoes. And on the pure horizon far, See, pulsing with the first-born star, The liquid sky above the hill! The evening comes, the fields are still. Loitering and leaping, With saunter, with bounds— Flickering and circling In files and in rounds— Gaily their pine-staff green Tossing in air, Loose o'er their shoulders white Showering their hair— See! the wild Maenads Break from the wood, Youth and Iacchus Maddening their blood. See! through the quiet land Rioting they pass— Fling the fresh heaps about, Trample the grass. Tear from the rifled hedge Garlands, their prize; Fill with their sports the field, Fill with their cries. Shepherd, what ails thee, then? Shepherd, why mute? Forth with thy joyous song! Forth with thy flute! Tempts not the revel blithe? Lure not their cries? Glow not their shoulders smooth? Melt not their eyes? Is not, on cheeks like those, Lovely the flush? —Ah, so the quiet was! So was the hush! II The epoch ends, the world is still. The age has talk'd and work'd its fill— The famous orators have shone, The famous poets sung and gone, The famous men of war have fought, The famous speculators thought, The famous players, sculptors, wrought, The famous painters fill'd their wall, The famous critics judged it all. The combatants are parted now— Uphung the spear, unbent the bow, The puissant crown'd, the weak laid low. And in the after-silence sweet, Now strifes are hush'd, our ears doth meet, Ascending pure, the bell-like fame Of this or that down-trodden name, Delicate spirits, push'd away In the hot press of the noon-day. And o'er the plain, where the dead age Did its now silent warfare wage— O'er that wide plain, now wrapt in gloom, Where many a splendour finds its tomb, Many spent fames and fallen mights— The one or two immortal lights Rise slowly up into the sky To shine there everlastingly, Like stars over the bounding hill. The epoch ends, the world is still. Thundering and bursting In torrents, in waves— Carolling and shouting Over tombs, amid graves— See! on the cumber'd plain Clearing a stage, Scattering the past about, Comes the new age. Bards make new poems, Thinkers new schools, Statesmen new systems, Critics new rules. All things begin again; Life is their prize; Earth with their deeds they fill, Fill with their cries. Poet, what ails thee, then? Say, why so mute? Forth with thy praising voice! Forth with thy flute! Loiterer! why sittest thou Sunk in thy dream? Tempts not the bright new age? Shines not its stream? Look, ah, what genius, Art, science, wit! Soldiers like Caesar, Statesmen like Pitt! Sculptors like Phidias, Raphaels in shoals, Poets like Shakespeare— Beautiful souls! See, on their glowing cheeks Heavenly the flush! —Ah, so the silence was! So was the hush! The world but feels the present's spell, The poet feels the past as well; Whatever men have done, might do, Whatever thought, might think it too.

Watching the dark my spirit rose in flood On that most dearest Prelude of my delight. The low-lying mist lifted its hood, The October stars showed nobly in clear night. When I return, and to real music-making, And play that Prelude, how will it happen then? Shall I feel as I felt, a sentry hardly waking, With a dull sense of No Man's Land again?

As an experiment, TheWashington Post asked a concert violinist— wearing jeans, tennis shoes, and a baseball cap— to stand near a trash can at rush hour in the subway and play Bach on a Stradivarius. Partita No. 2 in D Minor called out to commuters like an ocean to waves, sang to the station about why we should bother to live. A thousand people streamed by.  Seven of them paused for a minute or so and thirty-two dollars floated into the open violin case. A café hostess who drifted over to the open door each time she was free said later that Bach gave her peace, and all the children, all of them, waded into the music as if it were water, listening until they had to be rescued by parents who had somewhere else to go.

To wed, or not to wed; that is the question; Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The bills and house rent of a wedded fortune, Or to say “nit” when she proposes, And by declining cut her. To wed; to smoke No more; And have a wife at home to mend The holes in socks and shirts And underwear and so forth. ’Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To wed for life; To wed; perchance to fight; ay, there’s the rub; For in that married life what fights may come, When we have honeymooning ceased Must give us pause; there’s the respect That makes the joy of single life. For who would bear her mother’s scornful tongue, Canned goods for tea, the dying furnace fire; The pangs of sleepless nights when baby cries; The pain of barking shins upon a chair and Closing waists that button down the back, When he himself might all these troubles shirk With a bare refusal? Who would bundles bear, And grunt and sweat under a shopping load? Who would samples match; buy rats for hair, Cart cheese and crackers home to serve at night For lunch to feed your friends; play pedro After tea; sing rag time songs, amusing Friendly neighbors. Buy garden tools To lend unto the same. Stay home at nights In smoking coat and slippers and slink to bed At ten o’clock to save the light bills? Thus duty does make cowards of us all, And thus the native hue of matrimony Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of chores; And thus the gloss of marriage fades away, And loses its attraction.

I sit on the couch & witness my life projected on a screen — I am white w/a chiseled, dimpled chin & no lips. I’m a farmer who lives alone in a loft & not a lowly office worker who lives w/a roommate in an apartment where dust balls decorate the floors & walls & the ceiling rings w/children’s feet running back & forth like baby bulls. I am crazy enough to be a contestant on a show where I’m contractually obligated to propose to a woman who believes in a heteronormative, patriarchal idea of what a family should be. At the end of every episode, I offer roses to those I wish to make out w/more & take out on prepackaged romantic dates I could never afford on my bachelor budget. For example: a date in a castle, a glass slipper prop, a clock winding its way down to midnight. My date & I sip champagne, chat & eat, then we dance to a live orchestra led by a maestro who wishes he were dead. A giant screen appears & plays a clip of a live-action Cinderella movie w/Prince Charming played by an actor I’ve seen slaughter & behead a soldier like clipping the head off a rose. In real life, my dates consist of dinner at Burger King where we dine on chicken fries & don paper crowns for a royal feel. On another show date, I take two women into South Dakota where we fly over the heads of white slave owners carved into a sacred Native mountain. At the end of the date, I offer no roses to either woman & abandon them on a canopied bed in the middle of the Badlands & take off in a helicopter to provide the cameras an aerial view of wilderness & despair. At the end of the show, I find myself proposing to a fertility nurse in a barn made to look like a chapel & not the place where I raised my first horse, fucked my first goat. Here, I will milk the cows for our future offspring to drink straight from the teat like I did as a kid. The show ends & I rise from the couch & walk into the kitchen. On bended knee, I reach for a bottle of beer deep in the back of the fridge, pop the top like a question & take a swig, cold & crisp once it hits my full lips.