Poemunity — your poem community

National Portrait Gallery I have a need to see the painting when no one is looking. The god- thought if there was such a thing, inconsolable, of Saturday reaching for Sunday to ride out onto the Indian Ocean like an argument of starched waves in their coffin-white lace I might finger as I pass. There are hands in the paintings: raised, pointing, folded, reaching, reaching    ...    there’s a leporello book intended for my ex-lover’s breathing, weather balloons like colored severed heads laughing their way up the sky’s fever-continuing threshold of three miles withholding this formula for desire. Beside the one body and its skying figures of speech, night’s impressionist-flecked mask captured by singing: try to inhale. And again, please. Cough up cadmium twice, suddenly. Carry the caraway seed page away, fill your sea purse head with the tiny unborn. Painting, like digging up your garden in the dark, isn’t spring. Isn’t daddy root, mama bud pullulating for some creation. Isn’t spring. Isn’t season’s salt measure for your worth. Whoever told you that lied about what’s to be framed next.

The mind is a hotel with a thousand rooms. When I tilt my head a certain way, I think about certain things. When I tilt my head another way, I think about other things. If I sleep on the right side of my face, for example, I’d dream of a pale rose, the future, or a continental diner in Passaic, New Jersey. When I sleep on the left side of my face, I’d dream that a hand is squeezing my heart, that I’m in prison, or that I’m watching hockey at an airport bar, about to miss a flight.

This guy I know, a rabbi, Friday nights, on his way home before sunset in winter, always stops at a florist or bodega and buys a bunch of flowers for his wife. Every week the same, a ritual, regardless of her mood that morning, fresh upsets at work, or snarling on the bridge; he brings her roses wrapped in cellophane. But isn’t there a ring of hokiness in that? Why should a good man have to show his devotion? Some things go unspoken; some things get tested on the real world, and isn’t that the place that matters most? So when you told me I should bring you flowers, I joked, “But don’t I show my feelings more in dog walks, diapers, and rewiring lamps?” The flowers, I learned later, weren’t for wooing, not for affection in long marriage, but for something seeded even deeper down, through frost heaves, and which might be, roughly, peace. (It’s funny that I just assumed romance.) Now there’s no peace with us. I wonder what they might have meant to you, those simple tokens, holding in sight what no rite can grow back.

See, it’s a kind of crime scene, as if the mind were a dime novel, a scrim of need and semen, all cinder and siren, a dim prison where the miser dines on rinds of desire, and the sinner, sincere as denim, repeats Eden’s demise — that luckless toss of dice. Yet here at the rim of this demesne a mitigating mise-en-scène: a close-up of her mother stirring rice, a glass of sparkling cider, a mince pie spliced in — not to rescind or mend: what mind denies mercies mine in the end.

I made a sand castle. In rolled the sea. "All sand castles belong to me— to me," said the sea. I dug sand tunnels. In flowed the sea. "All sand tunnels belong to me— to me," said the sea. I saw my sand pail floating free. I ran and snatched it from the sea. "My sand pail belongs to me— to ME!"

Pain trains an undisciplined mind. I will end yours if  you end mine. Little feet, little feet are playing Hopscotch among the landmines. Hope has worked miracles before. If  yours didn't, how can mine? I could have learned to welcome night, If only  you had been mine. How dare you put words in God's mouth, Shail? Why not. He put ashes in mine.

Mine - by the Right of the White Election! Mine - by the Royal Seal! Mine - by the sign in the Scarlet prison - Bars - cannot conceal! Mine - here - in Vision - and in Veto! Mine - by the Grave's Repeal - Titled - Confirmed - Delirious Charter! Mine - long as Ages steal!

I’m grateful to the man now sleeping with my ex-lover. It’s true I loved her, but it’s right that someone be with her now in the dark hour of our republic. Life is no good anymore. There are no jobs and no money, so it’s good that someone be with her now under street lamps filtered through sheer curtains at night, the pale approximation of daylight illuminating the outer slope of my ex-lover’s left thigh and the asymmetric birthmark located there I thought resembled the bust of Martin Van Buren, which that man should smooch now and cherish as I did those tender hours on the other side of time and the republic when in the opulence of waking I’d move to the window to squint at the dapper bodies passing which seemed then to know where they were going. What awaited when they arrived there. No job, no money, I’m grateful for the man now nuzzling and elating with my ex-lover, how she survives with him this dark hour, its sad redundancies, the human condition like a phonograph skipping, which is the condition of urging the same thing over and anticipating a different result. How dull it is, its mimeographed disasters, dull how the bankers are offing themselves now in morning again, leaping from windows again, the republic fretting as if it’s the first republic, the first dark hour, and dull the way the man drives daily at daybreak away from my ex-lover in an extravagant light believing that if he does, that when he does, he’ll be the first to hurt her. O enduring sun.

Mine own John Poynz, since ye delight to know The cause why that homeward I me draw, And flee the press of courts, whereso they go, Rather than to live thrall under the awe Of lordly looks, wrappèd within my cloak, To will and lust learning to set a law: It is not for because I scorn or mock The power of them, to whom fortune hath lent Charge over us, of right, to strike the stroke. But true it is that I have always meant Less to esteem them than the common sort, Of outward things that judge in their intent Without regard what doth inward resort. I grant sometime that of glory the fire Doth twyche my heart. Me list not to report Blame by honour, and honour to desire. But how may I this honour now attain, That cannot dye the colour black a liar? My Poynz, I cannot from me tune to feign, To cloak the truth for praise without desert Of them that list all vice for to retain. I cannot honour them that sets their part With Venus and Bacchus all their life long; Nor hold my peace of them although I smart. I cannot crouch nor kneel to do so great a wrong, To worship them, like God on earth alone, That are as wolves these sely lambs among. I cannot with my word complain and moan, And suffer nought, nor smart without complaint, Nor turn the word that from my mouth is gone. I cannot speak and look like a saint, Use willes for wit, and make deceit a pleasure, And call craft counsel, for profit still to paint. I cannot wrest the law to fill the coffer With innocent blood to feed myself fat, And do most hurt where most help I offer. I am not he that can allow the state Of him Caesar, and damn Cato to die, That with his death did scape out of the gate From Caesar's hands (if Livy do not lie) And would not live where liberty was lost; So did his heart the common weal apply. I am not he such eloquence to boast To make the crow singing as the swan; Nor call the liond of cowardes beasts the most That cannot take a mouse as the cat can; And he that dieth for hunger of the gold Call him Alexander; and say that Pan Passeth Apollo in music many fold; Praise Sir Thopias for a noble tale, And scorn the story that the Knight told; Praise him for counsel that is drunk of ale; Grin when he laugheth that beareth all the sway, Frown when he frowneth and groan when is pale; On others' lust to hang both night and day: None of these points would ever frame in me. My wit is nought—I cannot learn the way. And much the less of things that greater be, That asken help of colours of device To join the mean with each extremity, With the nearest virtue to cloak alway the vice; And as to purpose, likewise it shall fall To press the virtue that it may not rise; As drunkenness good fellowship to call; The friendly foe with his double face Say he is gentle and courteous therewithal; And say that favel hath a goodly grace In eloquence; and cruelty to name Zeal of justice and change in time and place; And he that suffer'th offence without blame Call him pitiful; and him true and plain That raileth reckless to every man's shame. Say he is rude that cannot lie and feign; The lecher a lover; and tyranny To be the right of a prince's reign. I cannot, I; no, no, it will not be! This is the cause that I could never yet Hang on their sleeves that way, as thou mayst see, A chip of chance more than a pound of wit. This maketh me at home to hunt and to hawk, And in foul weather at my book to sit; In frost and snow then with my bow to stalk; No man doth mark whereso I ride or go: In lusty leas at liberty I walk. And of these news I feel nor weal nor woe, Save that a clog doth hang yet at my heel. No force for that, for it is ordered so, That I may leap both hedge and dyke full well. I am not now in France to judge the wine, With saffry sauce the delicates to feel; Nor yet in Spain, where one must him incline Rather than to be, outwardly to seem: I meddle not with wits that be so fine. Nor Flanders' cheer letteth not my sight to deem Of black and white; nor taketh my wit away With beastliness; they beasts do so esteem. Nor I am not where Christ is given in prey For money, poison, and treason at Rome— A common practice used night and day: But here I am in Kent and Christendom Among the Muses where I read and rhyme; Where if thou list, my Poinz, for to come, Thou shalt be judge how I do spend my time.

I am Minerva, the village poetess, Hooted at, jeered at by the Yahoos of the street For my heavy body, cock-eye, and rolling walk, And all the more when “Butch” Weldy Captured me after a brutal hunt. He left me to my fate with Doctor Meyers; And I sank into death, growing numb from the feet up, Like one stepping deeper and deeper into a stream of ice. Will some one go to the village newspaper, And gather into a book the verses I wrote?— I thirsted so for love I hungered so for life!