1269 Arts and sciences poems

I read your poetry once more, poems written by a rich man, knowing all, and by a beggar, homeless, an emigrant, alone. You always wanted to go beyond poetry, above it, soaring, but also lower, to where our region begins, modest and timid. Sometimes your tone transforms us for a moment, we believe—truly— that every day is sacred, that poetry—how to put it? — makes life rounder, fuller, prouder, unashamed of perfect formulation. But evening arrives, I lay my book aside, and the city's ordinary din resumes— somebody coughs, someone cries and curses.

I scarcely dared to look to see what it was I was. No one else with a book, the slick weeklies gossip amongst themselves on the side tables as the ticker rolls the Dow Jones down down down under a profile of the marathon bombers (the older, a boxer). Jove argues for the removal of a race of   peoples that do not please him:What is past remedy calls for the surgeon’s knife

Re-reading him in Bouchon past noon, it is mobbed midtown, like an ant farm seen through painkillers. God, what a bust it’s all been, capitalism, communism, feminism, this lust to liberate. Che should have stayed in medicine. The girls here admit they can’t wait to marry and get to the alimony, before they hit thirty. The men, heads skinned like Lager inmates, know only the revolutions in diets and spinning classes. Still, one table away, these two, with gnarled empretzled hands, seem unhappy in the old way.

hearing all bells at once instructs the final exhale Camelot in thimble of  the gods Marilyn Monroe’s ambulance lost on the way to the palace of  temperament a branch of government for the magical arts punch wall of forest for an oaken desk another dream we needed agitating the sentence as it rows across a newly destroyed heart folding following tormenting one another we were all once young and beautiful squandering everything it’s what we came here to do cut off engines to the child registering disposition of the cat in the dark as the size of the darkness

Toward summer or its dependence On demarcations in the sandy vial Some tree spelling astronaut onto a Planet’s arm, it stopped making sense. I am not an apothecary or a wave Or a dog by the 15 th hole, I am not A light sparking a whole country’s demise. I will never be a towel holding someone’s Sunscreen while they wash it off in foreign Seas. My hair goes up and down, it’s true As it is I am not a bag of tea nor will I ever Be exceptionally happy. Let the director Know I was distressed by the construction Noise, that I had no known allergies that My parents convinced me I was wanted And why wouldn’t you believe them. If the earth when it opened dragged away Our sense of faith, doubt was an Invention I preferred to ignore in the Manner of solicitations by mail.

An erasure of Lydia Huntley Sigourney’s “On Seeing the Deaf, Dumb, and Blind Girl, Sitting for Her Portrait” Guide, passion, catch what Hath no speech. Unknown Joys, power, and meditation’s Unfolding sky. Feeling draws Heart and wildering language Still without speech to Mind. Philosophy fails to Sway this future child.

for Diane Ward unemployment.      rate. too.      short. than.      any. raccoon.      too. imagist. those.      any. synonyms. * hornbl. aleck. paulist.       each. road.       endless. from.        it. the.        same. irish. from.        mudge. nerves. the.        wine. edges. behind.       a. verb. * she. was.        only. some. drove.        herself. trying.        to. convince. De.         Niro. about.        which. atlantic. * poverts. nerv. (saun.              ch.) m’etc. * where.              would. snowfall. about.              Goodman. Brown. * a.              calve. of.              river. some.              carpark. any.              size. of.              limes.

Record no oiled tongue, diary— Note my lantern bruises the low Clouds with light the evening We talked. Almonds in a bowl; She ate none. I did Not bid her remove her dark Gloves as sometime before she had done. Her dress not so clean as before. A last brand not rescued to flame— No billow but breath, and breath Too short a line to twine Our hands in marriage: I left A last time. Her in widow’s silk— My lantern clothed in morning Dawns on this road so late tonight The white birches I believe, I believe I could have loved Her, her white wrists White the birch trees by lantern bared, Black gloves pulled off at night Become the night . . . . Do you hear? That pulse? The deer wander Between her hands, glean fallen Seed at hand, bed down in fallen Needles and grass. Those green discs Afloat in the night are their eyes Caught in lantern light. Can it be So many wake the forest glows With sight? See and am seen. A pulse At the stump is breath and rest And breath again. Infinite In store the game of this land. Note the plumage of the turkey. Note the thick meat at breast. Sap: syrup. Pine: plank. A copse Of wood is cord for furnace. A copse Is cottage, too. The owl in the hollow Tree screeches because I am too close To truth. Note the almond Tree overmuch with fruit. The almond Pressed is oil sweet. The almond bit Is a smoky meat that leaves—note it: The tongue bathed in oil.

The voice, because of its austerity, will often cause dust to rise. The voice, because of its austerity, will sometimes attempt the representation of dust. Someone will say, I can’t breathe—as if choking on dust. The voice ages with the body. It will say, I was shaped by light escaping from a keyhole. Or, I am the shape of that light. It will say, For the body to breathe, a layer must be peeled away. It will say, What follows is a picture of how things are for me now. It will say, The rose is red, twice two is four—as if another were present. The dust rises in spirals. It will say, The distance from Cairo to anywhere is not that great. As if one had altered the adjustment of a microscope. Or examined its working parts. Possibly an instrument covered with dust and forgotten on a shelf. Beside a hatbox and a pair of weathered boots. The voice will expand to fill a given space. As if to say, This space is not immeasurable. This space is not immeasurable. When held before your eyes. And which voice is it says (or claims to say), Last night I dreamt of walls and courses of brick, last night I dreamt of limbs. As you dream—always unwillingly—of a writing not visible and voices muffled by walls. As if the question: lovers, prisoners, visitors. The voice, as an act of discipline or play, will imitate other voices. This is what I am doing now. This is what I’m doing now. The clock behind my back, its Fusée mechanism. Voice one recognizes from years before. Beneath water, hidden by a spark. Here at the heart of winter, or let’s say spring. Voice with a history before its eyes. With a blue dot before its eyes. History of dust before its eyes. It will say, as if remembering, The letter S stands for a slow match burning. On the table before me. No numbers on this watch. And I live in a red house that once was brown. A paper house, sort of falling down. Such is the history of this house. It looks like this. Looks just like this. We think to say in some language.

Willie “Slick” Williams reads William Carlos Williams, then writes a letter to the producers of the TV makeover show Pimp My Ride, explaining why his car should be featured on the program. so much depends upon a red cadillac slick with turtle wax beside the white chicks