Poemunity — your poem community

The first hot April day the granite step was warm. Flies droned in the grass. When a car went past they rose in unison, then dropped back down. . . . I saw that a yellow crocus bud had pierced a dead oak leaf, then opened wide. How strong its appetite for the luxury of the sun! Everyone longs for love’s tense joy and red delights. And then I spied an ant dragging a ragged, disembodied wing up the warm brick walk. It must have been the Methodist in me that leaned forward, preceded by my shadow, to put a twig just where the ant was struggling with its own desire.

1 These guys try to make us match moods to products the way once, under love’s spell, we attached meaning to sound, attached sounds to objects. The old magic won’t work now, but it’s nice to be reminded of it. 2 She’s a tease, tears her skirts off one by one. Really? Drops her petals as if she could always make more. It’s tiresome. We know what she looks like naked. On a cold night, we can see forever.

Phoenix “In Egyptian mythology, a bird which lived for five hundred years and then consumed itself in fire, rising renewed from the ashes.” —webster The earth is a beautiful place. Watermirrors and things to be reflected. Goldenrod across the little lagoon. The Black Philosopher says “Our chains are in the keep of the Keeper in a labeled cabinet on the second shelf by the cookies, sonatas, the arabesques. . . . There’s a rattle, sometimes. You do not hear it who mind only cookies and crunch them. You do not hear the remarkable music—‘A Death Song For You Before You Die.’ If you could hear it you would make music too. The black blues.” West Madison Street. In “Jessie’s Kitchen” nobody’s eating Jessie’s Perfect Food. Crazy flowers cry up across the sky, spreading and hissing This is it.

Do not allow me to sink, I said To a top floating ribbon of kelp. As I was lifted on each wave And made to slide into the vale I wanted not to drown. I wanted To make it all right with my dear, To tell my cat I’ll be away, To have them all destroyed, the poems Which were not objects enough on their own Even entertainment value. I wanted Through my saltwater breath to leave A bubble or two in its abstract sphere On the surface of their delicious minds. • Outside the window of the world The midges dance above a bush Making a complex music holding A language for which there is no key. That they are dancing there helps us To communicate even in the negative. • Time’s not funny enough to dash My hopes. I go in wide open To deal with its little team of tenses To try to win myself a stopped Place for an instant while I think. • I have left my place to come to speak To you. Now from this other place Inhabited by the very beast I brace myself to speak with good Tone that will carry. I love you. How does that sound? I was only testing. • Who murmurs me their secret name? Is it you? If you could do that You certainly would be better than me. Who I am, the name I hunt After has so far escaped me. The grammarsow or the waving rook Surely must think of me as somebody. • Ben Narnain was a love of mine, Going up beside the Soordook Burn And bracken and bog-myrtle. The water Ouzel dipped at the pools. The twite The mountain linnet caught the eye. From the top I saw the sword of the long Loch lying in its scabbard of hills. • Ideosyncracies of the way We speak eventually become Currency and only by Art Skip the expanded chest of rhetoric To speak nearly from one to another. • Younger my brash prison of joy Seemed to do me well enough. Now made modern with its new Benefits of experience I can hardly catch a glimpse Of that young sun and tree-top. My cell’s window has risen too high. • Is who’s listening who I guess It is? My dear it is so long Since I held your heart near. I wanted just to speak but now Hearing your little ear I know So well near me I am put off. Anyhow I was only going to try To assail some aspect of Reality. • The blemish is this, I think, I could I would have if I had known I really could but me knowing It maybe too well was not sure What it was I could and the words Were all against me and would not help. • Listening through the microscopes of power I heard a rebec under an olive Sing to me that certainly My wife would leave me and go down To live on the prose plains again. • This is a book. It is blue. Those are pages. They are black and white. That is a famous man. The worms Do not know his name or color. • I am here very much at four A.M. Am I in a deeper night Than you whose eyeballs observe terrible Encounters under your dream’s hill? I am only still up out of sleep Trying to burnish an implement With my mind’s elbow grease to pack In English and send off to you For you to put on the mantlepiece.

notice how my forehead approaches you at a high speed notice the contortions on my face; hear and feel the impact of my forehead against your eyebrow never get angry if someone doesn’t do things for you react to disappointment by being quiet and nice and alone, not by being confrontational or frustrated in 1952 a DSM copy-editor removed ‘headbutting’ from the entry for ‘psychopathic behavior’ thereafter the headbutt has thrived across all social, political, and elementary school gym classes today the headbutt is a sign of friendship, stability, and inner calm the exponential effect of your repeated lies makes me afraid what will happen to us; ‘the perfect headbutt’ destroys both participants and impresses even the severely disillusioned, and the phrase ‘giant poem’ reverberates through my head with the austerity of ancient ruins, the off-centered beauty of repressed veganism, and the lord of the rings trilogy I forgot what this poem was about

I Among twenty snowy mountains, The only moving thing Was the eye of the blackbird. II I was of three minds, Like a tree In which there are three blackbirds. III The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds. It was a small part of the pantomime. IV A man and a woman Are one. A man and a woman and a blackbird Are one. V I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling Or just after. VI Icicles filled the long window With barbaric glass. The shadow of the blackbird Crossed it, to and fro. The mood Traced in the shadow An indecipherable cause. VII O thin men of Haddam, Why do you imagine golden birds? Do you not see how the blackbird Walks around the feet Of the women about you? VIII I know noble accents And lucid, inescapable rhythms; But I know, too, That the blackbird is involved In what I know. IX When the blackbird flew out of sight, It marked the edge Of one of many circles. X At the sight of blackbirds Flying in a green light, Even the bawds of euphony Would cry out sharply. XI He rode over Connecticut In a glass coach. Once, a fear pierced him, In that he mistook The shadow of his equipage For blackbirds. XII The river is moving. The blackbird must be flying. XIII It was evening all afternoon. It was snowing And it was going to snow. The blackbird sat In the cedar-limbs.

In early youth’s unclouded scene, The brilliant morning of eighteen, With health and sprightly joy elate, We gazed on youth’s enchanting spring, Nor thought how quickly time would bring The mournful period — thirty-eight ! Then the starch maid, or matron sage, Already of the sober age, We viewed with mingled scorn and hate; In whose sharp words, or sharper face, With thoughtless mirth, we loved to trace The sad effects of — thirty-eight ! Till, saddening, sickening at the view, We learned to dread what time might do; And then preferred a prayer to Fate To end our days ere that arrived, When (power and pleasure long survived) We meet neglect, and — thirty-eight ! But Time, in spite of wishes, flies; And Fate our simple prayer denies, And bids us Death’s own hour await! The auburn locks are mixed with grey, The transient roses fade away, But reason comes at — thirty-eight ! Her voice the anguish contradicts That dying vanity inflicts; Her hand new pleasures can create, For us she opens to the view Prospect less bright — but far more true, And bids us smile at — thirty-eight ! No more shall Scandal’s breath destroy The social converse we enjoy With bard or critic, tete a tete — O’er youth’s bright blooms her blight shall pour, But spare the improving, friendly hour Which Science gives at — thirty-eight ! Stripped of their gaudy hues by Truth, We view the glittering toys of youth, And blush to think how poor the bait For which to public scenes we ran, And scorned of sober sense the plan Which gives content at — thirty-eight ! O may her blessings now arise, Like stars that mildly light the skies, When the sun’s ardent rays abate! And in the luxuries of mind — In friendship, science — may we find Increasing joys at — thirty-eight ! Though Time’s inexorable sway Has torn the myrtle bands away, For other wreaths — ’tis not too late: The amaranth’s purple glow survives, And still Minerva’s olive thrives On the calm brow of — thirty-eight ! With eye more steady, we engage To contemplate approaching age, And life more justly estimate; With firmer souls and stronger powers, With reason, faith, and friendship ours, We’ll not regret the stealing hours That lead from thirty- e’en to forty-eight !

on seventeen, I come from hearty straw. My grandpa wore a gallon hat. My grandma, like a shogun, bun and shawl. For their honeymoon, they went to the movies. No one knows what they saw. You arrive with licorice, cigarettes, the documentary on Woody Allen. Don’t feign a passion for his start in tv , or his clarinets, or Love and Death. Just skip to the Soon- Yi part.

in memory of R.I.S. 1. Would I know her anywhere, this child who never knew you except in photographs? She has your high clear polished forehead, but “No, my sister has his dimple, the cleft in his chin ...” Tight curly hair (like yours) drawn back, and your face, thinned, refined, to a girl’s—you in a girl’s body, you (thick, muscular, tempestuous) newly slight, polite:you in a neat print skirt, loose black blouse! Now a seventeen-year-old classicist— “Latin’s my favorite”—you translate Catullus, write tidy sonnets, envy the sister who remembers the dead father, but (as you always did) adore your mother and walk with your head thrown slightly back as if the weight of thought were hard to bear. I rock in my teacherly chair. She’s shy, constrained. “I don’t want to read my father’s poems, they’re all in tatters in the closet, they scare me.” I tell her I’m kind of a long-lost aunt, tell her about the photo of you as (you said) “the young Shelley”— about your huntsman’s bow, opera, baseball, endless games of chess in the dorm parlor with you boasting your prowess. And she’s embarrassed, you’re embarrassed, living in her blood, to think you ever acted like that! 2. When you were a man, a thirty-seven-year old, long after our last fight, last kiss, you OD’d on morphine and disappeared into the blanks that always framed your mind. But she’s sent two poems and a thank-you note, and her handwriting—yours—hasn’t changed. “It meant a lot to me to talk about my dad,” you scribbled with your new small fingers. I want to believe this, want to believe you’re really starting out again! Do me a favor: forget Catullus, Horace, love and hate and think, instead, of the epic cell, the place where the chromosomes are made and made for a moment perfect. Translate those lines from Virgil some of us once liked to chant, the ones about beginning, about those who first left Troy to seek the Italian shore.

time will wash away so clean not a cry will be left in it