1269 Arts and sciences poems

socalled swan of avon n/t but a beaurocrat buggering the buttercups goy from the waist up now soldiers’re the ones making offers and fucking caravaggio posters maybe the artist had bothered about melancholia suddenly xe finds xemself walking down some dark corridor california was truly the promised land for a minute there video marlboro to show us shoppingcart in dingy water and then turn melancholical sign reads no squatting switchd on the cathode ray at yr coronation the bomb droppd w/ regular monotony leaving us wanting a to zed dampened a grid satyrical deliria pan’s baallet in a black tutu who have the inclination but even whose    necromancer— firelit but dred— —commandeering meadows— protests were pathetic

for Lem As if your half-witted tongue Spoke with an eloquence Death bestows, I heard your voice Muffled through the dark Layers of cemetery loam: “They found me black-suited In the shuttered half-dark, my eyes Dug like claws into the clouds’ Soft feather-turnings. What kept me Separate the broiling sun Of intellect now shone on fiercely: In the sheep-pens stinking Of dung and lanolin, I buried my face in the ewe’s Swollen side and listened For the lamb the way The night sky listens To the synapse-fire Of meteors, the fibrillating Heartbeat of the stars. I heard the cells crackle Into being, the embryonic Brain begin to burn: Hunger. Thirst. Beneath my ear My own disastrous birthing, The umbilicus strangling Like a whip around my neck, Shoved through the momentary Breach memory tore open— Dying revealed to me my birth, How half my brain went dark, One side of a universe Pinched out like a candle: Just smart enough to sense My difference, yet not know why— Even my death was the thrust Of a bewildering punchline: On Thanksgiving Morning mouthwatering Pain shoved like a spit From my bowels to my brain.”

I really think its getting to be that time,

(for Harlem Magic) The laws of science teach us a pound of gold weighs as much as a pound of flour though if dropped from any undetermined height in their natural state one would reach bottom and one would fly away Laws of motion tell us an inert object is more difficult to propel than an object heading in the wrong direction is to turn around. Motion being energy—inertia—apathy. Apathy equals hostility. Hostility—violence. Violence being energy is its own virtue. Laws of motion teach us Black people are no less confused because of our Blackness than we are diffused because of our powerlessness. Man we are told is the only animal who smiles with his lips. The eyes however are the mirror of the soul The problem with love is not what we feel but what we wish we felt when we began to feel we should feel something. Just as publicity is not production: seduction is not seductive If I could make a wish I’d wish for all the knowledge of all the world. Black may be beautiful Professor Micheau says but knowledge is power. Any desirable object is bought and sold—any neglected object declines in value. It is against man’s nature to be in either category If white defines Black and good defines evil then men define women or women scientifically speaking describe men. If sweet is the opposite of sour and heat the absence of cold then love is the contradiction of pain and beauty is in the eye of the beheld Sometimes I want to touch you and be touched in return. But you think I’m grabbing and I think you’re shirking and Mama always said to look out for men like you So I go to the streets with my lips painted red and my eyes carefully shielded to seduce the world my reluctant lover And you go to your men slapping fives feeling good posing as a man because you know as long as you sit very very still the laws of motion will be in effect

The renewal project is doomed: because its funding board’s vice-president resigned: because the acids of divorce were eating day-long at her stomach, at her thoughts: because her husband was neglecting her, in favor of his daughter, who was dying: because her husband, bi and edgy, bore an AIDS sore that was ripe enough with fear and woe to throw this whole thick network of connections off its balance and down a hole of human misery. Haven’t we seen it happen? —when a crowded room at a party was tilted perilously askew by the weight of two wept tears that weren’t as large as a housefly’s wings, that couldn’t have filled a pistachio shell. _________ It’s like this: because because because, Sawyer was drunk when he delivered his opening remarks onstage at Stardome Planetarium. He stood below a slide show of “The Emptiness of Outer Space” —stars and planets, scattered like the scantest motes of dust in unimaginable void—and was about to make the leap to what percent of us, our dearly thumping bodies, is a corresponding emptiness . . . when one foot met a wire that had strayed outside the curtain, and a wild arc of hand undid the podium, which canted off its casters sidelong into the 3-D galaxy props, and you could say whatever thimble or pustule or hackle of grief was his, it had toppled the whole damn universe. _________ Was she a ghost? Sometimes she thought she was a ghost, transparent, stealing through the lives of people untouched and untouching. And so she carried a bucket of burning coals (we’ll call it that for now) against her breasts; and then she knew she was alive. And he. . . ?—was just the rusty foxing that an antique book exhales into dim air, wasn’t that what he was, oh it was, yes it was, and so one afternoon he strapped a meteorite to his back, and now he walks the streets like anybody else. An ageless tribal saying: If you aren’t given a burden, you must carve your own. An eye will do, if it’s ill. One word, if it’s cruel. And don’t be fooled by breath: the throat holds up some old-time blues the way a hod holds bricks. _________ But she didn’t die of full-blown AIDS —Sawyer’s daughter. Even so, her twisted legs and limp are enough to sometimes send him a little over the blotto line. Tonight, though, after show time, he’s just soused enough to wander through the mock-up stage-set milky ways agog with child-wonder: all those luminescent islands! all that vacuum! Look: a planet floats, there’s that much cosmos all around it. A planet! While we . . . we couldn’t squint and levitate a half inch, not the guru-most among us. Well, we could: if the laws of the universe changed. It’s only the Earth that makes us so heavy. It’s only our lives that keep our lives from floating off into the nothing.

The lady is a tramp a camp a lamp The lady is a sight a might a light the lady devastated an alley or two reverberated through the valley which leads to me, and you the lady is the apple of God's eye: He's cool enough about it but He tends to strut a little when she passes by the lady is a wonder daughter of the thunder smashing cages legislating rages with the voice of ages singing us through.

It is a tragedy, yes, but a confusing one. What happened to the wrestlers and where have they gone? Loulou the Pomeranian would love to know. Outdoors the hills are buried in snow, but inside a rose, a rose full-blown, a roomful of rose. The bloom and its shadow overtaking the space. The bloom proposing an impossible tomb. Of the Tachists, the master said to his friend Harry, “They paint white on white, and they believe that this is an achievement.” Harry said, 
“I dare you to paint a white rose in a white room with a window looking onto a landscape covered with snow.” Now this — which even Loulou, color-blindish, can tell is red — is the master’s grandiose response to an intoxicating challenge. Synesthetically, the rose fills Loulou’s pom ears with the echoes of torch songs, longing for the wrong. Loulou is practically drunk from the smell: a heady pink, and juicy, and almost obscene. Like crushed up candies, lingering and sweet, but with an adult musk at the core: a powerful flower. In looking, Loulou’s heart becomes a house at dusk about to force 
something to happen.

... if thou shouldst not be glad, I would divorce me from thy mother’s tomb, Sepulch’ring an adult’ress. — William Shakespeare , King Lear He faked my death, set up this ranch far from my three daughters. Suburban hellhole. With bracelet on ankle, house- arrest. At noon the bully sun shoulders a ripe moon. In the dark soaps reign. The anchors will often flash their glitterati weddings. Not one daughter has birthed an heir. In vitro — be damned. I hose the lawn and count the cars like fish slipping their shiny chrome along asphalt. Which sparrow missed? Cordelia — my gutted heart.

I was walking from the Louvre to Place Saint-Michel along the Seine when I noticed a crowd gathered under a large linden tree. As I approached I thought how much I’d liked to walk down Unter den Linden when I’d lived in Berlin, and now I saw again how attractive the light green seeds of the linden tree were against the darker green of the leaves. I was also agog to see what had caused the crowd to gather. As I neared I heard a mother say to her little boy, “Regardez, Sébastien, les saltimbanques.” Saltimbanques? This was a new word to me. I had a quick look on my iPhone and came up with the translation “mountebank.” 
I pushed my way as politely as possible through the crowd until I had a good view. It was a family of street performers. They had improvised a small stage on the wide pavement, and a father, mother, and ten-year-old or so boy were up there. The man was dressed in a striking yellow and blue outfit with white leggings and black shoes, and was banging a little drum rhythmically while the boy in a checked black-and-white jumpsuit capered about, playing thumb rolls on a tambourine, with a black-and-white dog dancing in perfect step alongside him. The woman dressed all in white sat on a stool playing quick dance music on a red tin whistle. On her head was a white floppy hat, sitting on which was a snowy owl who periodically flew in a circle over the heads of the crowd, coming back to land on the white hat. It was a scene worthy of being painted by the young Picasso, or the old Chagall. Or maybe by Gustave Doré. The boy on stage didn’t look in the best of health, but I hoped I was wrong. The effect of the whole performance was strange and utterly charming. And the little troupe seemed to have emerged from another era — from that of Baudelaire, even. I was puzzled by the translation offered by my iPhone, however. 
What I understood by the English word “mountebank” (which seemed very archaic) was either a person who sold quack medicines in public places, or a charlatan. These performers were no fakes. And yet, the English word, like the French, seemed to suggest the jumping up onto a stage. I’d have to revisit my Shakespeare plays — I seemed to remember that he’d liked using that word. When the white hat came round I put a €20 note into it, took a quick photograph of les saltimbanques and made my way to the nearest metro. I was almost surprised to see cars and motorbikes clogging the road.

How do you feel about me Now that you've learned to know me? Why don't we both admit That something is happening. And we would feel better if We'd just tell each other No need to keep it to ourselves. Let's put it to music Let's put it to music Let's sing about it Laugh about it Clap our hands And shout about it Let the whole world hear it In a sweet, sweet melody Let's put it to music, you and me.