1269 Arts and sciences poems

[imprisonment boom has developed] [a built-in growth dynamic] [the number of prisoners continues to grow while crime drops] [and had even prevented] [Crime never does stay down for long] [experts say] [though crime has been declining for six years] [In 1996, the incarcera- tion rate for black men was] [eight times the rate for white men] [Crime never does stay down for long] [experts say] [a built-in growth dynamic] [independent of crime] [Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals] [and had even prevented] [Crime never does stay] [recent radio interview] [sheriff] [declared proudly] [“sexually explic- it”] [he has formed the first women’s chain gang] [in the world] [More than two-thirds of the prisoners] [pre-trial defendants] [sheriff] [defines “sexually explicit” as] [“personal photographs, drawings, mag- azines, and pictorials that show frontal nudity”] [if that painting would affect prison security] [the judge agreed] [allowing materials depicting “frontal nudity” in the cells] [could lead to] [harassment of female guards, creating a “hostile work environment”] [sheriff] [declared proudly] [formed the first women’s chain gang] [on more than 500 talk shows] [“sexually explicit”] [Some expressed the opinion] [American marines and officials had done too little] [to dig out] [victims from the rubble] [in the crucial early hours of the disaster] [and had even prevented] [Some expressed the opinion] [materials depicting frontal nudity] [could lead to unconstitu- tional conditions] [including excessive use of force against inmates] [deliberate indifferent to inmates’ serious medical needs] [creating a “hostile work environment”] [those who died were] [all Tanzanians employed by the embassy] [including excessive use of force against inmates and deliberate indifference] [to dig out] [victims from the rub- ble] [“environment”] [materials depicting frontal nudity] [could lead to conflict among pris- oners] [two inmates could get into a fight if the atheist said, “Look at the size of the genitals on Jesus Christ”] [materials depicting nudity] [are “reasonably likely” to be] [the cause of violence] [a Michelangelo painting of a nude Christ] [an inmate] [was banned from having Playboy delivered to his cell] [if that painting would affect a prison securi- ty] [experts say] [“Look at the size of the”] [sheriff] [relatives of victims expressed a quiet outrage] [“personal pho- tographs”] [too little to help] [Kenyans were paying with their lives for American foreign policy decisions] [a built-in growth dynamic] [embassies will always be vulnerable] [searchng for survivors] [They are not designed to be armed forts in hostile territory] [“We trained cameras on the street”] [“suspicious vehicles were reported”] [The larg- er the number of prisoners] [experts say] [the bigger the number of people who will someday be released] [There were no American deaths in the Tanzanian bombing, officials said] [to help them extricate] [including excessive use of force] [several Kenyan rescue workers complained] [American marines and other American officials] [and had even prevented] [them from taking dead Kenyans out of the embassy] [from searching for survivors there] [And embassies will always be vulnerable] [“personal photographs, draw- ings, magazines, and pictorials that show frontal nudity”] [are reason- ably likely] [to be] [the cause of violence] [“If it’s a war between the Americans and other people, they should take the war elsewhere”] [to help them extricate people] [Many of the inmates are housed in tents] [in hostile territory] [there were no American] [quiet outrage] [frontal nudity] [either because of their own criminal propensities or] [a Michelangelo painting of a nude Christ] [in the crucial early hours of the disaster] [rescue workers] [Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals] [“If it’s a war between the Americans and other people”] [sheriff] [if that painting would affect] [armed forts in hostile territory] [to help them extricate people] [either because of their own criminal propensities or] [will always be vulnerable] [Many relatives of the victims] [of racial dispari- ty in the nation’s prisons] [materials depicting “frontal nudity” could lead to conflicts among prisoners] [though crime has been declining] [the incarceration rate for black men was eight times the rate for white men] [either because of their own criminal propensities or] [more than 500 talk shows] [Several Kenyan rescue workers complained] [Crime never does stay down] [including excessive use of force] [there are also sharp regional differences] [7 of the 10 states] [being in the South] [the incarceration rate] [banned from having Playboy] [“should take the war elsewhere”] [harrassment of female guards] [unconstitutional conditions] [excessive use of] [Drug Enforcement Administration] [drug crimes constituted the biggest source of growth for female inmates] [statistical branch of the Justice Department] [housed in tents] [materials depicting “frontal nudity”] [a Michelangelo painting of a nude Christ] [drug crimes] [deliberate indifference to medical needs] [if the atheist said] [“sexually explicit”] [“personal photographs”] [recent radio interview] [“most people who work in the prison business”] [“don’t look for drops in crime”] [due process] [Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals] [the larger the number of prisoners] [Several Kenyan rescue workers complained] [dig out victims from the rubble] [“most people who work in the prison business”] [independent of crime rate] [female inmates] [depicting “frontal nudity”] [American foreign policy deci- sions] [statistical branch of the Justice Department] [Playboy] [“should take the war elsewhere”] [either because of their own criminal propen- sities or] [American] [black men] [will always be vulnerable] [because they are not designed] [if a painting could affect] [being in the South] [Michelangelo] [“We trained cameras”] [“personal photographs”] [“suspicious vehicles”] [the judge agreed] [Playboy] [in his cell] [female inmates] [“frontal nudity”] [female guards] [in the crucial early hours of] [Playboy] [those who died were all] [the cause of violence] [or their experience behind bars] [Drug Enforcement Administration] [“most people who work in the prison business”] [sheriff] [because they are not designed] [either because of] [the larger the number of prisoners] [Crime never does] [show “frontal nudity”] [the first women’s chain gang] [Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals] [of racial disparity] [while crime drops] [and had even prevented] [Christ] [the cause of violence] [American marines and officials] [has helped reduce] [black men] [due process] [rate for black men was] [stay down] [“Look at the size of the”] [Drug Enforcement Administration] [number of prisoners] [incarceration rate] [“If it’s a war”] [on the street] [get into a fight] [get into a fight if the atheist said] [American marines and officials had done too little to help] [Michelangelo]

1 Four poilus in a wood austerely shitting. Death watches them, laughing, its sides splitting. Life is a cry followed by laughter. The body before, the waste after. 2 Could one hear in that wood the gentle click of  the shutter like the breaking of a stick or the safety catch on its climacteric 3 Like the four winds. Like a low fart that rips clean air in two, like urine that drips. Four squatting footsoldiers of  the Apocalypse. 4 Kiss them lightly, faint breeze in the small  leaves, be the mop on the brow, the sigh that relieves. Let them dump and move on into the dark plate of  the unexposed future, too little and too late.

I would like to describe the simplest emotion joy or sadness but not as others do reaching for shafts of rain or sun I would like to describe a light which is being born in me but I know it does not resemble any star for it is not so bright not so pure and is uncertain I would like to describe courage without dragging behind me a dusty lion and also anxiety without shaking a glass full of water to put it another way I would give all metaphors in return for one word drawn out of my breast like a rib for one word contained within the boundaries of my skin but apparently this is not possible and just to say—I love I run around like mad picking up handfuls of birds and my tenderness which after all is not made of water asks the water for a face and anger different from fire borrows from it a loquacious tongue so is blurred so is blurred in me what white-haired gentlemen separated once and for all and said this is the subject and this is the object we fall asleep with one hand under our head and with the other in a mound of planets our feet abandon us and taste the earth with their tiny roots which next morning we tear out painfully

I would not paint — a picture — I'd rather be the One It's bright impossibility To dwell — delicious — on — And wonder how the fingers feel Whose rare — celestial — stir — Evokes so sweet a torment — Such sumptuous — Despair — I would not talk, like Cornets — I'd rather be the One Raised softly to the Ceilings — And out, and easy on — Through Villages of Ether — Myself endued Balloon By but a lip of Metal — The pier to my Pontoon — Nor would I be a Poet — It's finer — Own the Ear — Enamored — impotent — content — The License to revere, A privilege so awful What would the Dower be, Had I the Art to stun myself With Bolts — of Melody!

The image wears large round glasses opaque blue bigger than her upper face I don’t know what she means. You image He stood there elected. In your eyes — he would escape from the auto parts store to come home and read. As I see him dead he has black hair and brown eyes he doesn’t have to wear glasses because he’s dead. I haven’t seen a desert lily in twenty years but knowing they exist thrills me. One year I went home and they were everywhere powerful, blooming to exist and in my eyes. As I could be that And I’ll always see it. Presidents are scum compared to desert lilies. Oh all right, Daddy says. The dead talk this way playing but they don’t need to write lines — this line of thought. I still don’t quite know what your poems are like. Immediate — but complex. Lily? As complex as that? As complex as us. We are seeing you ... As we speak and see, together, thinking it. Do the words relax you? We are them, reading. Being dead is like reading.

Methinks I see some crooked mimic jeer And tax my muse with this fantastic grace, Turning my papers, asks "what have we here?" Making withall some filthy antic face. I fear no censure, nor what thou canst say, Nor shall my spirit one jot of vigour lose. Think'st thou my wit shall keep the pack-horse way That ev'ry dudgeon low invention goes? Since sonnets thus in bundles are impress'd, And ev'ry drudge doth dull our satiate ear, Think'st thou my love shall in those rags be dress'd That ev'ry dowdy, ev'ry trull doth wear? Up to my pitch no common judgment flies: I scorn all earthly dung-bred scarabies.

How many paltry, foolish, painted things, That now in coaches trouble every street, Shall be forgotten, whom no poet sings, Ere they be well wrapp'd in their winding-sheet? Where I to thee eternity shall give, When nothing else remaineth of these days, And queens hereafter shall be glad to live Upon the alms of thy superfluous praise. Virgins and matrons reading these my rhymes Shall be so much delighted with thy story, That they shall grieve they liv'd not in these times To have seen thee, their sex's only glory. So shalt thou fly above the vulgar throng, Still to survive in my immortal song.

for Nolan Miller For us, too, there was a wish to possess Something beyond the world we knew, beyond ourselves, Beyond our power to imagine, something nevertheless In which we might see ourselves; and this desire Came always in passing, in waning light, and in such cold That ice on the valley’s lakes cracked and rolled, And blowing snow covered what earth we saw, And scenes from the past, when they surfaced again, Looked not as they had, but ghostly and white Among false curves and hidden erasures; And never once did we feel we were close Until the night wind said, “Why do this, Especially now? Go back to the place you belong;” And there appeared , with its windows glowing, small, In the distance, in the frozen reaches, a cabin; And we stood before it, amazed at its being there, And would have gone forward and opened the door, And stepped into the glow and warmed ourselves there, But that it was ours by not being ours, And should remain empty. That was the idea.

If by dull rhymes our English must be chain'd, And, like Andromeda, the Sonnet sweet Fetter'd, in spite of pained loveliness; Let us find out, if we must be constrain'd, Sandals more interwoven and complete To fit the naked foot of poesy; Let us inspect the lyre, and weigh the stress Of every chord, and see what may be gain'd By ear industrious, and attention meet: Misers of sound and syllable, no less Than Midas of his coinage, let us be Jealous of dead leaves in the bay wreath crown; So, if we may not let the Muse be free, She will be bound with garlands of her own.

After Alejandra Pizarnik, after Fernando Pessoa i Comic screen to change what came to notice           Even though sky at first was the same blank slate     So literal. The value of  it You make your own lion’s teeth sink in, slowly ii The insects claim you don’t belong here then bite & bite Virtue the undulant yards as penance iii Hordes of animals without teeth crash the window in a dream & it means you are not hungry enough iv The capuchin stays silent in the void You feel the sun of  unknown experiments v Once a choice comes to full & the act carries the joy of struggle                       The winter mother severs only a chance at restarting. Could you sorrow the one unchosen thing infinitely so it feels occasional, the act is itself vi If  I write a texture I could make it stucco like childhood Aloe or cactus spines                      To cut is to heal the rough of a cut             All dark blue against good skin like leather vii Imagine the root of oppositional archetypes Next to me chrysanthemums the rust of  blood when it dries but in front of me So much blue & a broken white I can’t see myself on purpose viii What rocks itself  out of  time on a wingbeat Is not a name or a silence As in sanity’s meager gestures. Downriver, the unruly sound turned C-shaped / Real secrets as fragrant and familiar as what’s under the smoke ix I stand next to the rocks Where you choose to return without choosing / Some black, some silver The lines of ash & passage A neon swig of enlightenment x Don’t be exceptional in this false. All fluent in nothing, hiding where your debt grows Be aggressive or do not mind, you say I feel like a chicken after boiling Or like you do now — smooth from the pain (I love how you love promises because they are lies) (I love the honesty of cheap rings) Like a ripened plum or two, pitted — Now a flat middle ground, now another interior to hold the ruin xi Your hair grows in eighths on alternate days but you pretend not to count What rains in it What grandiose adornment hasn’t happened but will happen Also a lie — in color xii The grunting you hear on the other side of the wall might be music Or the disaster of a concrete floor The western cities, the eastern cities / that inscrutable skin I chose The high ground of resurrection Discursive — falling soft / I witness the guilt planted for others I practice by moving my legs I am a bracket You are the conquering seawall Nothing earth about you except what clean is visible Also your hands