Poemunity — your poem community

For longer than by now I can believe I assumed that you had nothing to do with each other I thought you had arrived whenever that had been more solitary than single snowflakes with no acquaintance or understanding running among you guiding your footsteps somewhere ahead of me in your own time oh white lakes on the maps that I copied and gaps on the paper for the names that were to appear in them sometimes a doorway or window sometimes an eye sometimes waking without knowing the place in the whole night I might have guessed from the order in which you turned up before me and from the way I kept looking at you as though I recognized something in you that you were all words out of one language tracks of the same creature

One against the other across the fleetingly infinite field: that dry crackling of pallid corn stalks clacking comes close to it. behind them mountains range like steppes between the tiers of fog they coddle. it's autumn coming close again and you need to compare this one to autumns past, recall the other sputters of color too good to last. something you need to say, something you come close to: wind in its limitless visits— especially in fall when it cleans the overblown trees— wind in possession of you says it best. but you go on anyway, trying to pen the breeze: this fall phenomenon different from summer's in its macabre celebration of the lifeless, in its forever rewritten memory of what comes next. sorrel leaves swirling in a whirlwind mimic your own compulsive repetition, its own circle of yearning so close to a kind of comfort. quickening conversations of geese flocking south chill through your thin skin: behind it a choir of silence undefined rows you closer to what you'll never forget, what you almost remember this time. closer to its name. the heart overtaken. the bare staves waving at boughs' ends, the musical red wings: something they almost say, more like a sense hunched in darkness, an ache, a suspicion: every time, closer to it, closer. hear hard light on the hillside flatten the visible scale into two dimensions, and you're in love with the flatted third: the way it breaks you down, over and over, to mean you are alive. the way you rub it in the wound that you never come close to wanting to close— as if you could scrub away the whirling of everything else and come down like snow to the center, the eye, so close to the purity of knowing inside this present pain, that searing white place without wind or words.

(Jesse Helms & others...) I'm coming up out of the tomb, Men of War Just when you thought you had me down, in place, hidden I'm coming up now Can you feel the ground rumble under your feet? It's breaking apart, it's turning over, it's pushing up It's thrusting into your point of view, your private property O Men of War, Censorious Ones! get ready big boys get ready I'm coming up now I'm coming up with all that was hidden Get ready, Big Boys, get ready I'm coming up with all you wanted buried, All the hermetic texts with stories in them of hot & dangerous women Women with lascivious tongues, sharp eyes & claws I've been working out, my muscles are strong I'm pushing up the earth with all you try to censor All the iconoclasm & bravado you scorn All the taunts against your banner & salute I'm coming up from Hell with all you ever suppressed All the dark fantasies, all the dregs are coming back I'm leading them back up now They're going to bark & scoff & rage & bite I'm opening the box boo !

I. I come from fields of fractured ice, Whose wounds are cured by squeezing, Melting they cool, but in a trice, Get warm again by freezing. Here, in the frosty air, the sprays With fern-like hoar-frost bristle, There, liquid stars their watery rays Shoot through the solid crystal. II. I come from empyrean fires— From microscopic spaces, Where molecules with fierce desires, Shiver in hot embraces. The atoms clash, the spectra flash, Projected on the screen, The double D, magnesian b, And Thallium’s living green. III. We place our eye where these dark rays Unite in this dark focus, Right on the source of power we gaze, Without a screen to cloak us. Then, where the eye was placed at first, We place a disc of platinum, It glows, it puckers! will it burst? How ever shall we flatten him! IV. This crystal tube the electric ray Shows optically clean, No dust or haze within, but stay! All has not yet been seen. What gleams are these of heavenly blue? What air-drawn form appearing, What mystic fish, that, ghostlike, through The empty space is steering? V. I light this sympathetic flame, My faintest wish that answers, I sing, it sweetly sings the same, It dances with the dancers. I shout, I whistle, clap my hands, And stamp upon the platform, The flame responds to my commands, In this form and in that form. VI. What means that thrilling, drilling scream, Protect me! 'tis the siren: Her heart is fire, her breath is steam, Her larynx is of iron. Sun! dart thy beams! in tepid streams, Rise, viewless exhalations! And lap me round, that no rude sound May mar my meditations. VII. Here let me pause.—These transient facts, These fugitive impressions, Must be transformed by mental acts, To permanent possessions. Then summon up your grasp of mind, Your fancy scientific, Till sights and sounds with thought combine Become of truth prolific. VIII. Go to! prepare your mental bricks, Fetch them from every quarter, Firm on the sand your basement fix With best sensation mortar. The top shall rise to heaven on high— Or such an elevation, That the swift whirl with which we fly Shall conquer gravitation.

Art thou not from everlasting, O Lord my God, my Holy One? We shall not die. The rock lives in the desert, solid, taking its time. The wave lives for an instant, stable in momentum at the edge of the sea, before it folds away. Everything that is, lives and has size. The mole sleeps in a hole of its making, and the hole also lives; absence is not nothing. It didn’t desire to be, but now it breathes and makes a place, for the comfort of the mole. I am a space taken, and my absence will be shapely and of a certain age, in the everlasting. In the fierce evening, on the mild day, How long shall I be shaken? (Habakkuk)

Thank you but not just at the moment I know you will say I have said that before I know you have been there all along somewhere in another time zone I studied once those beautiful instructions when I was young and far from here they seemed distant then they seem distant now from everything I remember I hope they stayed with you when the noose started to tighten and you could say no more and after wisdom and the days of iron the eyes started from your head I know the words must have been set down partly for yourself unjustly condemned after a good life I know the design of the world is beyond our comprehension thank you but grief is selfish and in the present when the stars do not seem to move I was not listening I know it is not sensible to expect fortune to grant her gifts forever I know

O blithe New-comer! I have heard, I hear thee and rejoice. O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird, Or but a wandering Voice? While I am lying on the grass Thy twofold shout I hear; From hill to hill it seems to pass, At once far off, and near. Though babbling only to the Vale Of sunshine and of flowers, Thou bringest unto me a tale Of visionary hours. Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring! Even yet thou art to me No bird, but an invisible thing, A voice, a mystery; The same whom in my school-boy days I listened to; that Cry Which made me look a thousand ways In bush, and tree, and sky. To seek thee did I often rove Through woods and on the green; And thou wert still a hope, a love; Still longed for, never seen. And I can listen to thee yet; Can lie upon the plain And listen, till I do beget That golden time again. O blessèd Bird! the earth we pace Again appears to be An unsubstantial, faery place; That is fit home for Thee!

Written in A Moment of Exasperation How can you lie so still? All day I watch And never a blade of all the green sod moves To show where restlessly you toss and turn, And fling a desperate arm or draw up knees Stiffened and aching from their long disuse; I watch all night and not one ghost comes forth To take its freedom of the midnight hour. Oh, have you no rebellion in your bones? The very worms must scorn you where you lie, A pallid mouldering acquiescent folk, Meek habitants of unresented graves. Why are you there in your straight row on row Where I must ever see you from my bed That in your mere dumb presence iterate The text so weary in my ears: "Lie still And rest; be patient and lie still and rest." I'll not be patient! I will not lie still! There is a brown road runs between the pines, And further on the purple woodlands lie, And still beyond blue mountains lift and loom; And I would walk the road and I would be Deep in the wooded shade and I would reach The windy mountain tops that touch the clouds. My eyes may follow but my feet are held. Recumbent as you others must I too Submit? Be mimic of your movelessness With pillow and counterpane for stone and sod? And if the many sayings of the wise Teach of submission I will not submit But with a spirit all unreconciled Flash an unquenched defiance to the stars. Better it is to walk, to run, to dance, Better it is to laugh and leap and sing, To know the open skies of dawn and night, To move untrammeled down the flaming noon, And I will clamour it through weary days Keeping the edge of deprivation sharp, Nor with the pliant speaking on my lips Of resignation, sister to defeat. I'll not be patient. I will not lie still. And in ironic quietude who is The despot of our days and lord of dust Needs but, scarce heeding, wait to drop Grim casual comment on rebellion's end; "Yes, yes . . Wilful and petulant but now As dead and quiet as the others are." And this each body and ghost of you hath heard That in your graves do therefore lie so still.

I came to you one rainless August night. You taught me how to live without the rain. You are thirst and thirst is all I know. You are sand, wind, sun, and burning sky, The hottest blue. You blow a breeze and brand Your breath into my mouth. You reach—then bend Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new. You wrap your name tight around my ribs And keep me warm. I was born for you. Above, below, by you, by you surrounded. I wake to you at dawn. Never break your Knot. Reach, rise, blow,Sálvame, mi dios, Trágame, mi tierra. Salva, traga, Break me, I am bread. I will be the water for your thirst.

Is this the world, Miss Bliss? Stacks of ingots on the docks where my brother works? Work and things on the threshold of raw and radiated. Bananas gassed in shacks to ripen by the forklifts. Ships of foreign port. Ships of car parts and dyes. The beef-stripping business. Things, Miss Bliss, and work. Flavors translated from Costa Rica, volatile oils, seized cargoes, incensed loads, cracked coal. After a week the exposed skin around his wrists was blue, vein color, the color of the world. Labor, and the union of the senses to deliver us from our geography. Everywhere is here. When the stevedores break for lunch, one is responsible for the pot-luck of cold meats, the deep dish, leftovers from the wedding, while one is responsible for inviting the office women. These men set the table with the pomp of the late Elizabeth: linen, gilt plates, a taster, and a trumpeted summons. They force the choice bits on each other. They talk about blood and Solomon’s operation. They talk about Lily’s kids and the dead as they come hack to speak to Lonnie in his sleep. And they talk about food they could not eat, the boss, and a dream of playing lead before they switch on the TV with its loud prophecies of soap. They eat deeply in gratitude. The pot scraped with a spoon, that sound. The world’s a word, and a lever. The ghosts at the banquet want something, Miss Bliss. From one world I come to you with two blue wrists, my brother’s rage against the living the world owes, and everything I do that’s duplicate. My cells split. They can’t be true. I smoke. I turn out a little verse. I make a small sacrifice. I throw what cannot be eaten away. I throw it on the ground. Here, some things you can’t eat.