Poemunity — your poem community

Fashionable women in luxurious homes, With men to feed them, clothe them, pay their bills, Bow, doff the hat, and fetch the handkerchief; Hostess or guest, and always so supplied With graceful deference and courtesy; Surrounded by their servants, horses, dogs, — These tell us they have all the rights they want. Successful women who have won their way Alone, with strength of their unaided arm, Or helped by friends, or softly climbing up By the sweet aid of ‘woman’s influence’; Successful any way, and caring naught For any other woman’s unsuccess, — These tell us they have all the rights they want. Religious women of the feebler sort, — Not the religion of a righteous world, A free, enlightened, upward-reaching world, But the religion that considers life As something to back out of! — whose ideal Is to renounce, submit, and sacrifice, Counting on being patted on the head And given a high chair when they get to heaven, — These tell us they have all the rights they want. Ignorant women — college-bred sometimes, But ignorant of life’s realities And principles of righteous government, And how the privileges they enjoy Were won with blood and tears by those before — Those they condemn, whose ways they now oppose; Saying, ‘Why not let well enough alone? Our world is very pleasant as it is,’ — These tell us they have all the rights they want. And selfish women, — pigs in petticoats, — Rich, poor, wise, unwise, top or bottom round, But all sublimely innocent of thought, And guiltless of ambition, save the one Deep, voiceless aspiration — to be fed! These have no use for rights or duties more. Duties today are more than they can meet, And law insures their right to clothes and food, — These tell us they have all the rights they want. And, more’s the pity, some good women, too; Good conscientious women, with ideas; Who think — or think they think — that woman’s cause Is best advanced by letting it alone; That she somehow is not a human thing, And not to be helped on by human means, Just added to humanity — an ‘L’ — A wing, a branch, an extra, not mankind, — These tell us they have all the rights they want. And out of these has come a monstrous thing, A strange, down-sucking whirlpool of disgrace, Women uniting against womanhood, And using that great name to hide their sin! Vain are their words as that old king’s command Who set his will against the rising tide. But who shall measure the historic shame Of these poor traitors — traitors are they all — To great Democracy and Womanhood!

the bruise will stop by later. For now, the pain pauses in its round, notes the time of day, the patient’s temperature, leaves a memo for the surrogate: What the hell

For Daniel Morden Athena, coming onto me (verbatim transcription): Every step you take will be the right one. Women encouraged me like that: Avoiding void, no one goes nameless in this world. Power? I was the son of a king: Hacking the armor from the limbs of the dying. In the path of the blade of the plough I met God my foe: Oh blight his voyage with trial and calamity. All he needed was a taste of his own medicine: The water was white with the blades of our oars. Long-limbed Circe, the troubled, could only bring trouble: Sure enough that month became a year. Then Demodocus struck his lyre, and sang for me: In that soft song I led one hundred lives. I was young, singing such distance, when I set out: The meters were my cloak, my map, my axe. Declensions of the beasts defined my travels: I made the lions purr; the lions licked my hands. When gulls cry over rough water, home is close: I remembered Charybdis the Swallower, in her magnificence. Horizon-soaked, I sat and sobbed. Sunset. Shoulders shaking. This was the liver’s dying, the world’s waking.

I drowned in the fire of having you, I burned In the river of not having you, we lived Together for hours in a house of a thousand rooms And we were parted for a thousand years. Ten minutes ago we raised our children who cover The earth and have forgotten that we existed. It was not maya, it was not a ladder to perfection, It was this cold sunlight falling on this warm earth. When I turned you went to Hell. When your ship Fled the battle I followed you and lost the world Without regret but with stormy recriminations. Someday far down that corridor of horror the future Someone who buys this picture of you for the frame At a stall in a dwindled city will study your face And decide to harbor it for a little while longer From the waters of anonymity, the acids of breath.

Looking at Mapplethorpe’s Polaroids, I learn that he liked shoes and armpit crotch-shots of men and women, both shaved and un’—all giving a good whiff to the camera. But best of all are his pictures of ordinary phones which convey a palpable sense of expectancy as if at any moment, one of the fabulous, laconic nude men strewn about might call. One could pick up the receiver and hear the garbled sound of ancient Greek and Roman voices reveling in the background. But even when silent, the dingy phone is a sex organ—cock asleep in its cradle.

Two wandering across the porcelain Siberia, one alone on the window sill, four across the ceiling's senseless field of pale yellow, one negotiating folds in a towel: tiny, bronze-colored, antennae 'strongly elbowed,' crawling over Antony and Cleopatra , face down, unsurprised, one dead in the mountainous bar of soap. Sub-family Formicinae (a single segment behind the thorax), the sickle moons of their abdomens, one trapped in bubbles (I soak in the tub); with no clear purpose they come in by the baseboard, do not bite, crush bloodless beneath a finger. Peterson's calls them 'social creatures,' yet what grim society: identical pilgrims, seed-like, brittle, pausing on the path only three seconds to touch another's face, some hoisting the papery carcasses of their dead in their jaws, which open and close like the clasp of a necklace. 'Mating occurs in flight'— what better way? Weightless, reckless rapture: the winged queen and her mate, quantum passion spiraling near the kumquat, and then the queen sheds her wings, plants the pearl-like larvae in their cribs of sand: more anvil-headed, creeping attentions to follow cracks in the tile, the lip of the tub, and one starting across the mirror now, doubled.

When we are out of gas, a headache haloes the roof, darkening the skin of everyone who has a full tank. I was told that the nectar of shoelaces, if squeezed hard enough, turns to water and trickles from the caribou’s snout. A glacier nibbled from its center spiders a story of the Southern Cross, twin brothers dancing in the back room lit with cigarettes break through the drum’s soft skin— There bone faces atlas a grieving century.

Any fool can get into an ocean But it takes a Goddess To get out of one. What’s true of oceans is true, of course, Of labyrinths and poems. When you start swimming Through riptide of rhythms and the metaphor’s seaweed You need to be a good swimmer or a born Goddess To get back out of them Look at the sea otters bobbing wildly Out in the middle of the poem They look so eager and peaceful playing out there where the water hardly moves You might get out through all the waves and rocks Into the middle of the poem to touch them But when you’ve tried the blessed water long Enough to want to start backward That’s when the fun starts Unless you’re a poet or an otter or something supernatural You’ll drown, dear. You’ll drown Any Greek can get you into a labyrinth But it takes a hero to get out of one What’s true of labyrinths is true of course Of love and memory. When you start remembering.

You are a ukulele beyond my microphone You are a Yukon beyond my Micronesia You are a union beyond my meiosis You are a unicycle beyond my migration You are a universe beyond my mitochondria You are a Eucharist beyond my Miles Davis You are a euphony beyond my myocardiogram You are a unicorn beyond my Minotaur You are a eureka beyond my maitai You are a Yuletide beyond my minesweeper You are a euphemism beyond my myna bird You are a unit beyond my mileage You are a Yugoslavia beyond my mind’s eye You are a yoo-hoo beyond my minor key You are a Euripides beyond my mime troupe You are a Utah beyond my microcosm You are a Uranus beyond my Miami You are a youth beyond my mylar You are a euphoria beyond my myalgia You are a Ukranian beyond my Maimonides You are a Euclid beyond my miter box You are a Univac beyond my minus sign You are a Eurydice beyond my maestro You are a eugenics beyond my Mayan You are a U-boat beyond my mind control You are a euthanasia beyond my miasma You are a urethra beyond my Mysore You are a Euterpe beyond my Mighty Sparrow You are a ubiquity beyond my minority You are a eunuch beyond my migraine You are a Eurodollar beyond my miserliness You are a urinal beyond my Midol You are a uselessness beyond my myopia

anyone lived in a pretty how town (with up so floating many bells down) spring summer autumn winter he sang his didn’t he danced his did. Women and men(both little and small) cared for anyone not at all they sowed their isn’t they reaped their same sun moon stars rain children guessed(but only a few and down they forgot as up they grew autumn winter spring summer) that noone loved him more by more when by now and tree by leaf she laughed his joy she cried his grief bird by snow and stir by still anyone’s any was all to her someones married their everyones laughed their cryings and did their dance (sleep wake hope and then)they said their nevers they slept their dream stars rain sun moon (and only the snow can begin to explain how children are apt to forget to remember with up so floating many bells down) one day anyone died i guess (and noone stooped to kiss his face) busy folk buried them side by side little by little and was by was all by all and deep by deep and more by more they dream their sleep noone and anyone earth by april wish by spirit and if by yes. Women and men(both dong and ding) summer autumn winter spring reaped their sowing and went their came sun moon stars rain