517 Social commentaries poems

Wheer 'asta beän saw long and meä liggin' 'ere aloän? Noorse? thoort nowt o' a noorse: whoy, Doctor's abeän an' agoän; Says that I moänt 'a naw moor aäle; but I beänt a fool; Git ma my aäle, fur I beänt a-gawin' to breäk my rule. Doctors, they knaws nowt, fur a says what 's nawways true; Naw soort o' koind o' use to saäy the things that a do. I 've 'ed my point o' aäle ivry noight sin' I beän 'ere. An' I 've 'ed my quart ivry market-noight for foorty year. Parson 's a beän loikewoise, an' a sittin' ere o' my bed. "The amoighty 's a taäkin o' you to 'isén, my friend," a said, An' a towd ma my sins, an' s toithe were due, an' I gied it in hond; I done moy duty boy 'um, as I 'a done boy the lond. Larn'd a ma' beä. I reckons I 'annot sa mooch to larn. But a cast oop, thot a did, 'bout Bessy Marris's barne. Thaw a knaws I hallus voäted wi' Squoire an' choorch an' staäte, An' i' the woost o' toimes I wur niver agin the raäte. An' I hallus coom'd to 's choorch afoor moy Sally wur deäd, An' 'eard 'um a bummin' awaäy loike a buzzard-clock ower me 'eäd, An' I niver knaw'd whot a meän'd but a thowt ä 'ad summut to saäy. An' I thowt a said what a owt to 'a said, an' I coom'd awaäy. Bessy Marris's barne! tha knaws she laäid it to meä. Mowt a beän, mayhap, for she wur a bad un, sheä. 'Siver, I kep 'um, I kep 'um, my lass, tha mun understond; I done moy duty boy 'um, as I 'a done boy the lond. But Parson a cooms an' a goäs, an' a says it easy an' freeä: "The amoighty 's taäkin o' you to 'issén, my friend," says 'eä. I weänt saäy men be loiars, thaw summun said it in 'aäste; But 'e reäds wonn sarmin a weeäk, an' I 'a stubb'd Thurnaby waäste. D' ya moind the waäste, my lass? naw, naw, tha was not born then; Theer wur a boggle in it, I often 'eärd 'um mysén; Moäst loike a butter-bump, fur I 'eärd 'um about an' about, But I stubb'd 'um oop wi' the lot, an' raäved an' rembled 'um out. Keäper's it wur; fo' they fun 'um theer a-laäid of is' faäce Down i' the woild 'enemies afoor I coom'd to the plaäce. Noäks or Thimbleby—toäner 'ed shot 'um as dead as a naäil. Noäks wur 'ang'd for it opp at 'soize—but git ma my aäle. Dubbut looök at the waäaste; theer warn't not feeäd for a cow; Nowt at all but bracken an' fuzz, an' looök at it now— Warn't worth nowt a haäcre, an' now theer 's lots o' feeäd, Fourscoor yows upon it, an' some on it down i' seeäd. Nobbut a bit on it 's left, an' I meän'd to 'a stubb'd it at fall, Done it ta-year I meän'd, an' runn'd plow thruff it an' all, If godamoighty an' parson 'ud nobbut let ma aloän,— Meä, wi haäte hoonderd haäcre o' Squoire's, an' lond o' my oän. Do godamoighty knaw what a's doing a-taäkin' o' meä? I beänt wonn as saws 'ere a beän an yonder a peä; An' Squoire 'ull be sa mad an' all—a' dear, a' dear! And I 'a managed for Squoire coom Michaelmas thutty year. A mowt 'a taäen owd Joänes, as 'ant not a 'aäpoth o' sense, Or a mowt a' taäen young Robins—a niver mended a fence: But godamoighty a moost taäke meä an' taäke ma now, Wi' aäf the cows to cauve an' Thurnaby hoälms to plow! Looök 'ow quoloty smoiles when they seeäs ma a passin' boy, Says to thessén, naw doubt, "What a man a beä sewer-loy!" Fur they knaws what I beän to Squoire sin' fust a coom'd to the 'All; I done moy duty by Squoire an' I done moy duty boy hall. Squoire 's i' Lunnon, an' summun I reckons 'ull 'a to wroite, For whoa 's to howd the lond ater meä that muddles ma quoit; Sartin-sewer I beä, thot a weänt niver give it to Joänes, Naw, nor a moänt to Robins—a niver rembles the stoäns. But summun 'ull come ater meä mayhap wi' 'is kittle o' steäm Huzzin' an' maazin' the blessed feälds wi' the Divil's oän teäm. Sin' I mun doy I mun doy, thaw loife they says is sweet, But sin' I mun doy I mun doy, for I couldn abeär to see it. What atta stannin' theer fur, an' doesn bring me the aäle? Doctor 's a 'toättler, lass, an a's hallus i' the owd taäle; I weänt breäk rules fur Doctor, a knaws naw moor nor a floy; Git ma my aäle, I tell tha, an' if I mun doy I mun doy.

As soon as I step into the tunnel that will take me under the river I need to cross to get to the city my brain shuts down.  No signal gets through and the question remains how do I know? With a brain well emptied, and a head a vacuum of nothing, everything I’ve ever known goes quietly absent.  As still and as quiet as a house abandoned or a mouth wide open in a painting. As soon as I step out of the tunnel scientists squabble about when we should abandon the earth for some other place.  I duck straight back into the tunnel in order to disrupt the signal. In the tunnel's shelter there is nothing in my head, it's empty enough For the origins of the universe to begin.  A frightening thing interrupted by my backing back out of the tunnel just in time. In the light of day what's on my mind turns out to be your lifespan. Next to the tunnel is the only safe place to be.  It is the only place where it's certain I’ll not all day not need to be crying and weeping to go on. Which draws me directly back into the tunnel to interrupt the signal. It takes a little while for my mind to stop trembling.

The days are dog-eared, the edges torn, ragged—like those pages I ripped once out of library books, for their photos of Vallejo and bootless Robert Johnson. A fine needs paying now it’s true, but not by me. I am no more guilty than that thrush is who sits there stripping moss off the wet bark of a tree. A red fleck, like his, glows at the back of my head—a beauty mark, left by the brain’s after-jets. I would not wish for the three brains Robert required to double-clutch his guitar and chase those sounds he had to know led down and into a troubled dusky river, always. Three brains did Johnson no earthly good, neither his nor Vallejo’s 4 & 1/2 worked right exactly—O bunglers, O banged-up pans of disaster! Crying for days, said Cesar, & singing for months. How can I be so strong some times, at others weak? I wish to be free, but free to do what? To leave myself behind? To switch channels remotely? Better to sing. Not like the bird, but as they sang, Cesar & Robert— with the shocked & seeded sweetness of an apple split open by a meat cleaver.

Who needs a scary movie when there’s scary life. Icy days pile up like empty pill bottles. One craves hot soup and bear sex. I can’t hibernate above the Kum & Go when there’s Smokey lights all night. It isn’t easy making change for a twenty on a Tuesday night, when they’re filling the tanks beneath the pumps and the manager’s on break. All underage kids must come here. And go here? The world rhymes with itself. Earth is earth and row is row, whether to pull a set of oars and scull or a line of cornstalks completing the farmer’s math. Up above the Kum & Go I’m reading Maya Angelou And there’s a head shop open 24 hrs they do not sell head but you might think it the way the patrons come and go all night all fall all night all fall. I lived behind a sex club called The Power Exchange. All words have been charged with electric bodies ever since I wandered into my first poem. It was surely the Road Not Taken. Or maybe The Body Electric ... I’m easily mistaken. An alder is reptilian in its body, lithe leaves at night and such vocal things. It is a sexy tongue the world speaks. So many licks to get to the polished moon. Tell me a story then. How did you come to be trampled or new or high where the warblers land and recklessly shit where they eat. The universe I fear to be crashing. No painkillers for Doug. Ugh. It’s just autumn come. Electrical storms. The brave fire of the leaves and everything. The pawpaw, along with the huckleberry, the chokecherry, cranberry, Concord grape, and persimmon is one of the indigenous fruits. I usually only get it here, and only this time of year. Fear is real. Especially that most unholy fear that we will be forgotten. Fruit, when it’s rotten, opens a door to memory from other lives. Is it wrong to wish for another life? My hand can barely write the thought. My eye can barely see, my soul, translate the fire into autumn’s sweet flush, persimmons taste like semen, pawpaw tastes like flesh, large hard seeds like date pits I spit off the balcony in summer into the parking lot below where none are sure to be hit nor anything grow. A spider would not lower himself to touch such concrete ground. I would not live to see a tree grow to fruition, and yet each year I’d like to try. Well, Midwest, here I am. It’s pumpkin time. The cicadas have stopped singing. It’s just the crickets now along the river. But above the Kum & Go, it’s wind and machinery. Why do they all take the same path, and why do these undergrads shout against the fall wind. The rebel angels’ cries are but the check-in cries of birds, “hey Mike, hey Mike.” It must be hard to be Mike, your name reduced in the ears of others to a syllable of grief. And then it seems that Mike is gone. Relief.

Near the dry river’s water-mark we found Your brother Minnegan, Flopped like a fish against the muddy ground. Beany, the kid whose yellow hair turns green, Told me to find you, even in the rain, And tell you he was drowned. I hid behind the chassis on the bank, The wreck of someone’s Ford: I was afraid to come and wake you drunk: You told me once the waking up was hard, The daylight beating at you like a board. Blood in my stomach sank. Beside, you told him never to go out Along the river-side Drinking and singing, clattering about. You might have thrown a rock at me and cried I was to blame, I let him fall in the road And pitch down on his side. Well, I’ll get hell enough when I get home For coming up this far, Leaving the note, and running as I came. I’ll go and tell my father where you are. You’d better go find Minnegan before Policemen hear and come. Beany went home, and I got sick and ran, You old son of a bitch. You better hurry down to Minnegan; He’s drunk or dying now, I don’t know which, Rolled in the roots and garbage like a fish, The poor old man.

1The Poet Down for Patrick Kavanagh He sits between the doctor and the law. Neither can help. Barbiturate in paw one, whiskey in paw two, a dying man: the poet down, and his fell caravan. They laugh and they mistake the lash that lurks in his tongue for the honey of his works. The poet is at bay, the hounds baying, dig his grave with careful kindness, saying: 'Another whiskey, and make it a large one!' Priests within, acolytes at the margin the red impaled bull's roar must fascinate — they love the dead, the living man they hate. They were designing monuments — in case — and making furtive sketches of his face, and he could hear, above their straining laughs, the rustling foolscap of their epitaphs. 2  The Poet as Mastercraftsman for Thomas Kinsella Eras do not end when great poets die, for poetry is not whole, it is where man chose mountains to conform, to carve his own face among the Gothic richness and the sky, and the gargoyles, and the lesser tradesmen. Praise from the apprentice is always shown in miniatures of a similar stone. I saw the master in his human guise open doors to let me in, and rhythm out. He smiled and entertained into the night. I was aware of work undone. His eyes, like owls', warned images from the room. Under the stairs the muse was crying; shields clashed in the kitchen and the war drum's boom, men in celtic war dress entered from the right. I left, my conversation put to rout. To poets peace poetry never yields. 3The Poet as Black Sheep for Paul Durcan I have seen him dine in middle-class surroundings, his manners refined, as his family around him talk about nothing, one of their favourite theses. I have seen him lying between the street and pavement, atoning, dying for their sins, the fittest payment he can make for them, to get drunk and go to pieces. On his father's face in sparse lines etched out by ice, the puritan race has come to its zenith of grey spite, its climax of hate, its essence of frigidity. Let the bourgeoisie beware, who could not control his head and kept it in their care until the brain bled: this head is a poet's head, this head holds a galaxy. 4The Person as Dreamer: We Talk about the Future for Des Healy It has to be a hill, high, of course, and twilit. There have to be some birds, all sadly audible: a necessary haze, and small wristlets of rain, yes,and a tremendous air of satisfaction. Both of us will be old and both our wives, of course, have died, young, and tragic. And all our children have gone their far ways, estranged, or else not begotten. We have been through a war, been hungry, and heroes: and here we are now, calm, fed, and reminiscent. The hills are old, silent: our pipe-smoke rises up. We have come a long way . . . . 5The Poet Dreams and Resolves for Macdara Woods To be alone, and not to be lonely, to have time to myself, and not be bored; to live in some suburban house, beside the mountains, with an adequate supply of stout and spirits (or of stout only), and some cigarettes, and writing paper, and a little cheap food, and a small hoard of necessary books, where I could write in dark as monks did, with only blue sky as interference, wind as soul-reaper. But what would I do if on certain nights I was mad in heat for the public lights? I would chain myself to a living tree to foil the Sirens of the distant city.

Was I so poor in those damned days that I went in the dark in torn shoes and furtiveness to steal fat ears of cattle corn from the good cows and pound them like hard maize on my worn Aztec stone? I was.

O Donald! ye are just the man Who, when he’s got a wife, Begins to fratch— nae notice ta’en— They’re strangers a’ their life. The fan may drop— she takes it up, The husband keeps his chair; She hands the kettle— gives his cup— Without e’en— thank ye, dear.” Now, truly, these slights are but toys; But frae neglects like these, The wife may soon a slattern grow, And strive nae mair to please. For wooers ay do all they can To trifle wi’ the mind; They hold the blaze of beauty up, And keep the poor things blind. But wedlock tears away the veil, The goddess is nae mair; He thinks his wife a silly thing, She thinks her man a bear. Let then the lover be the friend— The loving friend for life; Think but thysel the happiest spouse, She’ll be the happiest wife.

Well it's six o'clock in Oakland and the sun is full of wine I say, it's six o'clock in Oakland and the sun is red with wine We buried you this morning, baby in the shadow of a vine Well, they told you of the sickness almost eighteen months ago Yes, they told you of the sickness almost eighteen months ago You went down fighting, daddy. Yes You fought Death toe to toe O, the egrets fly over Lake Merritt and the blackbirds roost in trees O, the egrets fly over Lake Merritt and the blackbirds roost in trees Without you little papa what O, what will become of me O, it's hard to come home, baby To a house that's still and stark O, it's hard to come home, baby To a house that's still and stark All I hear is myself thinking and footsteps in the dark

I will do everything you tell me, Mother. I will charm three gold hairs from the demon’s head. I will choke the mouse that gnaws an apple tree’s roots and keep its skin for a glove. To the wolf, I will be pretty and kind and curtsy his crossing of my path. The forest, vocal even in its somber tread, rages. A slope ends in a pit of foxes drunk on rotten brambles of berries and the raccoons ransack a rabbit’s unmasked hole. What do they find but a winter’s heap of droppings? A stolen nest, the cracked shell of another creature’s child. I imagine this is the rabbit way and I will not stray, Mother, into the forest’s thick, where the trees meet the dark, though I have known misgivings of light as a hot hand that flickers against my neck. The path ends at a river I must cross. I will wait for the ferryman to motion me through. Into the waves he etches with his oar a new story: a silent girl runs away, a silent girl is never safe. I will take his oar in my hand. I will learn the boat’s rocking and bring myself back and forth. To be good is the hurricane of caution. I will know indecision’s rowing, the water I lap into my lap as he shakes his withered head. Behind me is the forest. Before me the field, a loose run of grass. I stay in the river, Mother, I study escape.