Poemunity — your poem community

Does the butterfat know it is butterfat, milk know it’s milk? No. Something just goes and something remains. Like a boardinghouse table: men on one side, women on the other. Nobody planned it. Plaid shirts next to one another, talking in accents from the Midwest. Nobody plans to be a ghost. Later on, the young people sit in the kitchen. Soon enough, they’ll be the ones to stumble Excuse me and quickly withdraw. But they don’t know that. No one can ever know that.

I gcead do Kobus Moolman Poor deleted Tarragona, our city of bonfires. Our city of casual drug use and vinyl that’s been consigned to the archive of snow. What what what’s missing, what’s conspicuous by its absence from the main square and its tributaries: the future perfect or future continuous? I can’t find that beautiful thing you asked me for. I can’t find my memory of making it. When that device was triggered in Placa del Pi at first no one noticed anything. But then the different parts of speech began to shrivel and petrify, to disappear completely; interjections, measure words gone within a fortnight. We’d open our mouths to utter them but nothing. Shortly after that came the battalions, marching in ebony lockstep across a border we’d misplaced, had long ago forgotten ever existed. They just appeared one Sunday in their expressionless squadrons, they appeared like chimes solidifying in their obsidian fatigues. They occupied Jew Hill, the barracks, the Generality. By then all the hard-edged abstract words had rotted, had grown 
incontinent and squelching, as the canker advanced with terminal 
facility from diamantine epidermis to pulpy interior. No plums anymore. When they come they come in the predawn to confiscate recollection, targeting random apartments in the sour-milk light, each wears a helmet. No sausages. No . None of those lavender-remembering pears I’d bring in baskets for you every October. They’re unscrewing the street signs on and Your clean, cedar-hinting scent, your scent of I can’t find my memory of they can’t

“Your great-grandfather was . . .” And Mrs. C, our tart old Scots landlady, with her stomping legs, four bristles sprouted from her chin- wart, she who briskly chats away about Montrose, founder of her clan, as though she’s just now fresh from tea with him, regards you incredulously, a bastard gargoyle off some bastard architecture, one grown topsy-turvy: “Not to know your great-grandfather! How do you live? O you Americans!” She cannot see what freedom it affords, your ignorance, a space swept clear of all the clutter of lives lived. And yet who can dismiss her words entirely? It burdens too, this emptiness, pervasive presence not a room away that, no matter how you hammer at its wall, refuses to admit you. As though you woke and in a place you thought familiar, then had a sense (what is it that has been disturbed?) of one you never met yet somehow knew—looks echoing among the dusty pictures: that myopic glass reflecting, like a sunset lingered inside trees, a meditative smile: a breath warm to your cheek, your brow: the hand (whose?) moving on your blanket in a gesture that you fail to recognize yet know it as you know the taste through oranges of sun- light current in them still— then gone as you began to stir. And for a moment dawn seems lost as in a mist, seems wistful for a feeling it cannot achieve . . . the sun breaks through, an instant medleying the leaves.

(Written by Martial) My friend, the things that do attain The happy life be these, I find: The riches left, not got with pain, The fruitful ground; the quiet mind; The equal friend; no grudge, no strife; No charge of rule nor governance; Without disease the healthy life; The household of continuance; The mean diet, no dainty fare; True wisdom joined with simpleness; The night discharged of all care, Where wine the wit may not oppress; The faithful wife, without debate; Such sleeps as may beguile the night: Content thyself with thine estate, Neither wish death, nor fear his might.

for Peter Schjeldahl Wake up high up frame bent & turned on Moving slowly & by the numbers light cigarette Dress in basic black & reading a lovely old man’s book: BY THE WATERS OF MANHATTAN change flashback play cribbage on the Williamsburg Bridge watching the boats sail by the sun, like a monument, move slowly up the sky above the bloody rush: break yr legs & break yr heart kiss the girls & make them cry loving the gods & seeing them die celebrate your own & everyone else’s birth: Make friends forever & go away

from An Evening's Love You charm'd me not with that fair face Though it was all divine: To be another's is the grace, That makes me wish you mine. The Gods and Fortune take their part Who like young monarchs fight; And boldly dare invade that heart Which is another's right. First mad with hope we undertake To pull up every bar; But once possess'd, we faintly make A dull defensive war. Now every friend is turn'd a foe In hope to get our store: And passion makes us cowards grow, Which made us brave before.

From King Arthur COMUS Your hay it is mow'd, and your corn is reap'd; Your barns will be full, and your hovels heap'd: Come, my boys, come; Come, my boys, come; And merrily roar out Harvest Home. CHORUS Come, my boys, come; Come, my boys, come; And merrily roar out Harvest Home. MAN We ha' cheated the parson, we'll cheat him agen, For why should a blockhead ha' one in ten? One in ten, One in ten, For why should a blockhead ha' one in ten? For prating so long like a book-learn'd sot, Till pudding and dumplin burn to pot, Burn to pot, Burn to pot, Till pudding and dumplin burn to pot. CHORUS Burn to pot, Burn to pot, Till pudding and dumplin burn to pot. We'll toss off our ale till we canno' stand, And Hoigh for the honour of Old England: Old England, Old England, And Hoigh for the honour of Old England. CHORUS Old England, Old England, And Hoigh for the honour of Old England.

Let me make the songs for the people, Songs for the old and young; Songs to stir like a battle-cry Wherever they are sung. Not for the clashing of sabres, For carnage nor for strife; But songs to thrill the hearts of men With more abundant life. Let me make the songs for the weary, Amid life’s fever and fret, Till hearts shall relax their tension, And careworn brows forget. Let me sing for little children, Before their footsteps stray, Sweet anthems of love and duty, To float o’er life’s highway. I would sing for the poor and aged, When shadows dim their sight; Of the bright and restful mansions, Where there shall be no night. Our world, so worn and weary, Needs music, pure and strong, To hush the jangle and discords Of sorrow, pain, and wrong. Music to soothe all its sorrow, Till war and crime shall cease; And the hearts of men grown tender Girdle the world with peace.

Act II, Scene iv, Air IV—Cotillion

Act I, Scene viii, Air X—“Thomas, I Cannot,”