872 Life poems

why am i doing this? Failure to keep my work in order so as to be able to find things to paint the house to earn enough money to live on to reorganize the house so as to be able to paint the house & to be able to find things and earn enough money so as to be able to put books together to publish works and books to have time to answer mail & phone calls to wash the windows to make the kitchen better to work in to have the money to buy a simple radio to listen to while working in the kitchen to know enough to do grownups work in the world to transcend my attitude to an enforced poverty to be able to expect my checks to arrive on time in the mail to not always expect that they will not to forget my mother's attitudes on humility or to continue to assume them without suffering to forget how my mother taunted my father about money, my sister about i cant say it failure to forget mother and father enough to be older, to forget them to forget my obsessive uncle to remember them some other way to remember their bigotry accurately to cease to dream about lions which always is to dream about them, I put my hand in the lion's mouth to assuage its anger, this is not a failure to notice that's how they were; failure to repot the plants to be neat to create & maintain clear surfaces to let a couch or a chair be a place for sitting down and not a table to let a table be a place for eating & not a desk to listen to more popular music to learn the lyrics to not need money so as to be able to write all the time to not have to pay rent, con ed or telephone bills to forget parents' and uncle's early deaths so as to be free of expecting care; failure to love objects to find them valuable in any way; failure to preserve objects to buy them and to now let them fall by the wayside; failure to think of poems as objects to think of the body as an object; failure to believe; failure to know nothing; failure to know everything; failure to remember how to spell failure; failure to believe the dictionary & that there is anything to teach; failure to teach properly; failure to believe in teaching to just think that everybody knows everything which is not my failure; I know everyone does; failure to see not everyone believes this knowing and to think we cannot last till the success of knowing to wash all the dishes only takes ten minutes to write a thousand poems in an hour to do an epic, open the unwashed window to let in you know who and to spirit thoughts and poems away from concerns to just let us know, we will to paint your ceilings & walls for free

Fie pleasure, fie! thou cloyest me with delight, Thou fill’st my mouth with sweetmeats overmuch; I wallow still in joy both day and night: I deem, I dream, I do, I taste, I touch, No thing but all that smells of perfect bliss; Fie pleasure, fie! I cannot like of this. To taste (sometimes) a bait of bitter gall, To drink a draught of soür ale (some season) To eat brown bread with homely hands in hall, Doth much increase men’s appetites, by reason, And makes the sweet more sugar’d that ensues, Since minds of men do still seek after news. The pamper’d horse is seldom seen in breath, Whose manger makes his grace (oftimes) to melt; The crammed fowl comes quickly to his death; Such colds they catch in hottest haps that swelt; And I (much like) in pleasure scawled still, Do fear to starve although I feed my fill. It might suffice that Love hath built his bower Between my lady’s lively shining eyes; It were enough that beauty’s fading flower Grows ever fresh with her in heavenly wise; It had been well that she were fair of face, And yet not rob all other dames of grace. To muse in mind, how wise, how fair, how good, How brave, how frank, how courteous, and how true My lady is, doth but inflame my blood With humours such as bid my health adieu; Since hap always when it is clomb on high, Doth fall full low, though erst it reach’d the sky. Lo, pleasure, lo! lo thus I lead a life That laughs for joy, and trembleth oft for dread; Thy pangs are such as call for change’s knife To cut the twist, or else to stretch the thread, Which holds yfeer the bundle of my bliss: Fie, pleasure, fie! I dare not trust to this.

Aluminum tank indifferent in its place behind a glass door in the passageway, like a tea urn in a museum case; screaming-machines that dumbly spend each day waiting for gas or smoke or hands or heat, positioned like beige land mines overhead, sanguine on walls, or posted on the street like dwarf grandfather clocks spray painted red; little gray hydrant in its warlike stance; old fire escape, all-weather paint job peeling, a shelf for threadbare rugs and yellowing plants; sprinkler heads, blooming from the public ceiling; all sitting supernaturally still, waiting for us to cry out. And we will.

I’m your guide here. In the evening-dark morning streets, I point and name. Look, the sycamores, their mottled, paint-by-number bark. Look, the leaves rusting and crisping at the edges. I walk through Schiller Park with you on my chest. Stars smolder well into daylight. Look, the pond, the ducks, the dogs paddling after their prized sticks. Fall is when the only things you know because I’ve named them begin to end. Soon I’ll have another season to offer you: frost soft on the window and a porthole sighed there, ice sleeving the bare gray branches. The first time you see something die, you won’t know it might come back. I’m desperate for you to love the world because I brought you here.

My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends— It gives a lovely light!

What I wanted seemed little enough at the time. There was snow on the ground, grayish and sticking to the mud—the promise of plenty to come. Snow gathered already in the corners of sills. When she spoke what we had sensed for weeks without saying, her voice fell clear, unwavering, soft as the day. It hardly had to do with us anymore. The crazy tilt of the carport across the alley was all I could see for awhile, the weight on its wobbly roof like a terrible joke. But that was wrong—that was wrong. Before long the snows shook down on what we had done. What I wanted was to ignore it all, sit there in stillness, shepherding logs to the fire while the old ones went pink to white to gray.

The man Flammonde, from God knows where, With firm address and foreign air, With news of nations in his talk And something royal in his walk, With glint of iron in his eyes, But never doubt, nor yet surprise, Appeared, and stayed, and held his head As one by kings accredited. Erect, with his alert repose About him, and about his clothes, He pictured all tradition hears Of what we owe to fifty years. His cleansing heritage of taste Paraded neither want nor waste; And what he needed for his fee To live, he borrowed graciously. He never told us what he was, Or what mischance, or other cause, Had banished him from better days To play the Prince of Castaways. Meanwhile he played surpassing well A part, for most, unplayable; In fine, one pauses, half afraid To say for certain that he played. For that, one may as well forego Conviction as to yes or no; Nor can I say just how intense Would then have been the difference To several, who, having striven In vain to get what he was given, Would see the stranger taken on By friends not easy to be won. Moreover, many a malcontent He soothed and found munificent; His courtesy beguiled and foiled Suspicion that his years were soiled; His mien distinguished any crowd, His credit strengthened when he bowed; And women, young and old, were fond Of looking at the man Flammonde. There was a woman in our town On whom the fashion was to frown; But while our talk renewed the tinge Of a long-faded scarlet fringe, The man Flammonde saw none of that, And what he saw we wondered at— That none of us, in her distress, Could hide or find our littleness. There was a boy that all agreed Had shut within him the rare seed Of learning. We could understand, But none of us could lift a hand. The man Flammonde appraised the youth, And told a few of us the truth; And thereby, for a little gold, A flowered future was unrolled. There were two citizens who fought For years and years, and over nought; They made life awkward for their friends, And shortened their own dividends. The man Flammonde said what was wrong Should be made right; nor was it long Before they were again in line, And had each other in to dine. And these I mention are but four Of many out of many more. So much for them. But what of him— So firm in every look and limb? What small satanic sort of kink Was in his brain? What broken link Withheld him from the destinies That came so near to being his? What was he, when we came to sift His meaning, and to note the drift Of incommunicable ways That make us ponder while we praise? Why was it that his charm revealed Somehow the surface of a shield? What was it that we never caught? What was he, and what was he not? How much it was of him we met We cannot ever know; nor yet Shall all he gave us quite atone For what was his, and his alone; Nor need we now, since he knew best, Nourish an ethical unrest: Rarely at once will nature give The power to be Flammonde and live. We cannot know how much we learn From those who never will return, Until a flash of unforeseen Remembrance falls on what has been. We've each a darkening hill to climb; And this is why, from time to time In Tilbury Town, we look beyond Horizons for the man Flammonde.

Boston Common, December 6, 1882 during the Transit of Venus I love all sights of earth and skies, From flowers that glow to stars that shine; The comet and the penny show, All curious things, above, below, Hold each in turn my wandering eyes: I claim the Christian Pagan’s line, Humani nihil,—even so,— And is not human life divine? When soft the western breezes blow, And strolling youths meet sauntering maids, I love to watch the stirring trades Beneath the Vallombrosa shades Our much-enduring elms bestow; The vender and his rhetoric’s flow, That lambent stream of liquid lies; The bait he dangles from his line, The gudgeon and his gold-washed prize. I halt before the blazoned sign That bids me linger to admire The drama time can never tire, The little hero of the hunch, With iron arm and soul of fire, And will that works his fierce desire,— Untamed, unscared, unconquered Punch! My ear a pleasing torture finds In tones the withered sibyl grinds,— The dame sans merci’s broken strain, Whom I erewhile, perchance, have known, When Orleans filled the Bourbon throne, A siren singing by the Seine. But most I love the tube that spies The orbs celestial in their march; That shows the comet as it whisks Its tail across the planets’ disks, As if to blind their blood-shot eyes; Or wheels so close against the sun We tremble at the thought of risks Our little spinning ball may run, To pop like corn that children parch, From summer something overdone, And roll, a cinder, through the skies. Grudge not to-day the scanty fee To him who farms the firmament, To whom the Milky Way is free; Who holds the wondrous crystal key, The silent Open Sesame That Science to her sons has lent; Who takes his toll, and lifts the bar That shuts the road to sun and star. If Venus only comes to time, (And prophets say she must and shall,) To-day will hear the tinkling chime Of many a ringing silver dime, For him whose optic glass supplies The crowd with astronomic eyes,— The Galileo of the Mall. Dimly the transit morning broke; The sun seemed doubting what to do, As one who questions how to dress, And takes his doublets from the press, And halts between the old and new. Please Heaven he wear his suit of blue, Or don, at least, his ragged cloak, With rents that show the azure through! I go the patient crowd to join That round the tube my eyes discern, The last new-comer of the file, And wait, and wait, a weary while, And gape, and stretch, and shrug, and smile, (For each his place must fairly earn, Hindmost and foremost, in his turn,) Till hitching onward, pace by pace, I gain at last the envied place, And pay the white exiguous coin: The sun and I are face to face; He glares at me, I stare at him; And lo! my straining eye has found A little spot that, black and round, Lies near the crimsoned fire-orb’s rim. O blessed, beauteous evening star, Well named for her whom earth adores,— The Lady of the dove-drawn car,— I know thee in thy white simar; But veiled in black, a rayless spot, Blank as a careless scribbler’s blot, Stripped of thy robe of silvery flame,— The stolen robe that Night restores When Day has shut his golden doors,— I see thee, yet I know thee not; And canst thou call thyself the same? A black, round spot,—and that is all; And such a speck our earth would be If he who looks upon the stars Through the red atmosphere of Mars Could see our little creeping ball Across the disk of crimson crawl As I our sister planet see. And art thou, then, a world like ours, Flung from the orb that whirled our own A molten pebble from its zone? How must thy burning sands absorb The fire-waves of the blazing orb, Thy chain so short, thy path so near, Thy flame-defying creatures hear The maelstroms of the photosphere! And is thy bosom decked with flowers That steal their bloom from scalding showers? And hast thou cities, domes, and towers, And life, and love that makes it dear, And death that fills thy tribes with fear? Lost in my dream, my spirit soars Through paths the wandering angels know; My all-pervading thought explores The azure ocean’s lucent shores; I leave my mortal self below, As up the star-lit stairs I climb, And still the widening view reveals In endless rounds the circling wheels That build the horologe of time. New spheres, new suns, new systems gleam; The voice no earth-born echo hears Steals softly on my ravished ears: I hear them “singing as they shine”— A mortal’s voice dissolves my dream: My patient neighbor, next in line, Hints gently there are those who wait. O guardian of the starry gate, What coin shall pay this debt of mine? Too slight thy claim, too small the fee That bids thee turn the potent key The Tuscan’s hand has placed in thine. Forgive my own the small affront, The insult of the proffered dime; Take it, O friend, since this thy wont, But still shall faithful memory be A bankrupt debtor unto thee, And pay thee with a grateful rhyme.

Forget about it for you’ll never win, never hit the jackpot, move in to a solar-powered eco mansion and modest philanthropy, become a panjandrum of diaphanous pleasures but must sink or swim beneath mood- mutable skies, coconut milk clouds, in the shadow of high flats, low sales, bright fronts, strung crowds of literally miraculous people in expensive skin like bed sheets you would wrap yourself in and which you now touch lightly as you enter this café past a clutch of mitching schoolgirls with pierced noses and Tintin hairdos who look at you as if to say is it dial-a-dickhead day in here? or maybe that’s aimed instead at the guy eating flatbread with five thousand friends on his phone who types with a grin all is well with the world, when all is not well with the world — the burden of debt as your granny might say heavy as sin — although who would begrudge this incense of crushed coffee in steam this clatter and chatter latex flowers under halogen lights and who’d demean that woman with her small child wiping the small child’s chin to the delight of a lonely well-off older person or w.o.o.p. — I believe they call them woopies — at the next table over who scoops two shaking spoons of sugar into a steaming cup then begins to call her son Oh my lost Son asking after her granddaughter while the mitching girls swagger out the door — look, one forgot her phone — ah good, someone caught her — and who would begrudge the yin and yang of this moment sitting here coming or going anyone and no one here or somewhere else stuck nowhere and flowing in the mix like everyone for you are blurring below indigo and ink-dim skies as time passes by like steam vapors into the run-of-the-mill gray coat you put on pausing, before leaving to meet this falling day which as your granny might say is the only day you’re in.

somewhere in america, in a certain state of grace . . . Patti Smith As a child I danced to the heartful, savage rhythm of the Native, the American Indian, in the Turtle Mountains, in the Round Hall, in the greasy light of kerosene lamps. As a child I danced among the long, jangle legs of the men, down beside the whispering moccasin women, in close circles around the Old Ones, who sat at the drum, their heads tossed, backs arched in ancient prayer. As a child I danced away from the fist, I danced toward the rhythms of life, I danced into dreams, into the sound of flies buzzing. A deer advancing but clinging to the forest wall, the old red woman rocking in her tattered shawl, the young women bent, breasts drooping to the mouths of their young, the heat hanging heavy on the tips of our tongues, until the Sun burned the sky black, the moon made us silvery blue and all of the night sounds, all of the night sounds folded together with the buzzing still in our heads, becoming a chant of ghosts, of Crazy Horse and Wovoka and all the Endless Others, snaking through the weaving through the trees like beams of ribbons of light, singing,we shall live again we shall live, until the Sun and the Sun and the Sun and I awaken, still a child, still dancing toward the rhythm of life.