How dare you! How dare you pull this mantle from your sloven sleeve and think it worthy enough to cover my boy. How dare you judge when you also wallow in this mud. Society has turned its power over to you, relinquishing its rule, turned it over to the man in the mask, whose face never changes, always distorts, who does not live where I live, but commands the corners, who does not have to await the nightmares, the street chants, the bullets, the early-morning calls, but looks over at us and demeans, calls us animals, not worthy of his presence, and I have to say: How dare you! My son deserves a future and a job. He deserves contemplation. I can't turn away as you. Yet you govern us? Hear my son's talk. Hear his plea within his pronouncement, his cry between the breach of his hard words. My son speaks in two voices, one of a boy, the other of a man. One is breaking through, the other just hangs. Listen, you who can turn away, who can make such a choice; you who have sons of your own, but do not hear them! My son has a face too dark, features too foreign, a tongue too tangled, yet he reveals, he truths, he sings your demented rage, but he sings. You have nothing to rage because it is outside of you. He is inside of me. His horror is mine. I see what he sees. And if my son dreams, if he plays, if he smirks in the mist of moon-glow, there I will be, smiling through the blackened, cluttered and snarling pathway toward your wilted heart.

—Luis J Rodriguez

Old but gold.

This poem is not in the book shown. This was transcribed from an instagram post made on June 18, 2024.

--- Take your pick of politicians, out of touch so deeply. Who crave your vote to steer our boat jump into bed to sleep li- asing with corrupted frauds who desecrate their post. The parliamentary parasites who wank to Thatcher's ghost. What I really think is not politically correct. I'm sick of seeing sycophants whose job is to perfect The art of causing chasms and dissolving public unity. A poison, puerile, pestilence polluting our community. Where's the money skimmed from taxes getting siphoned for expenses? Where's the justice for your mates who commit criminal offenses? Where's the empathy for humans that don't look or act like you? What are all the citizens who are in poverty to do? Where are all the refugees who simply need our help to go? Just stick em on a barge or plane; maintain the status quo. Use them as an excuse for why we can't afford to heat The homes that we will never own, the food our kids can't eat. Pick the one who's gonna rule us with the minimum disruption. Who'll only break the records of malfeasance and corruption. The way that they are hollowing out Britain starts to grate. Taking try of this country giving back the right to hate Anyone who's black or brown disabled, queer, or working class. A woman or an immigrant, to them the blame will pass. If the people fight among ourselves, divided we will fall. When we look after each other and seek liberty for all A rising tide will lift all boats, do not let them distract Because the people have the power and it's time for us to act.

If I must die, you must live to tell my story to sell my things to buy a piece of cloth and some strings, (make it white with a long tail) so that a child, somewhere in Gaza while looking heaven in the eye awaiting his dad who left in a blaze— and bid no one farewell not even to his flesh not even to himself— sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above and thinks for a moment an angel is there bringing back love If I must die let it bring hope let it be a tale

by Ada Limón

All these great barns out here in the outskirts, black creosote boards knee-deep in the bluegrass. They look so beautifully abandoned, even in use. You say they look like arks after the sea’s dried up, I say they look like pirate ships, and I think of that walk in the valley where J said, You don’t believe in God? And I said, No. I believe in this connection we all have to nature, to each other, to the universe. And she said, Yeah, God. And how we stood there, low beasts among the white oaks, Spanish moss, and spider webs, obsidian shards stuck in our pockets, woodpecker flurry, and I refused to call it so. So instead, we looked up at the unruly sky, its clouds in simple animal shapes we could name though we knew they were really just clouds— disorderly, and marvelous, and ours.

tried to post this in the lemmy.world community since it's more active, but it loaded for like 10 minutes before i gave up. i'm curious if it'll work here.

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The Figure

You sit at a window and listen to your father crossing the dark grasses of the fields

toward you, a moon soaking through his shoes as he shuffles the wind aside, the night in his hands like an empty bridle.

How long have we been this way, you ask him. It must be ages, the wind answers. It must be the music of the wind

turning your fingers to glass, turning the furniture of childhood to the colors of horses, turning them away.

Your father is still crossing the acres, a light on his tongue like a small coin from an empire that has always been ruined.

Now the dark flocks are drifting through his shoulders with an odor of lavender, an odor of gold. Now he has turned

as though to go, but only knelt down with the heavy oars of October on his forearms, to begin the horrible rowing.

You sit in a chair in the room. The wind lies open on your lap like the score of a life you did not measure.

You rise. You turn back to the room and repeat what you know: The earth is not a home. The night is not an empty bridle

in the hands of a man crossing a field with a new moon in his old wool. We abandon the dead. We abandon them.

Much more solemn than the others I’ve posted

Grass.

BY CARL SANDBURG.

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo Shovel them under and let me work— I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun. Shovel them under and let me work. Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor: What place is this? Where are we now?

I am the grass. Let me work.

Another one from the very old book of poetry that was my grandma's.

**The Duel

Eugene Field 1850 – 1895**

The gingham dog and the calico cat Side by side on the table sat; 'T was half-past twelve, and (what do you think!) Nor one nor t' other had slept a wink! The old Dutch clock and the Chinese plate Appeared to know as sure as fate There was going to be a terrible spat. * (I wasn't there; I simply state What was told to me by the Chinese plate!) *

The gingham dog went "Bow-wow-wow!" And the calico cat replied "Mee-ow!" The air was littered, an hour or so, With bits of gingham and calico, While the old Dutch clock in the chimney-place Up with its hands before its face, For it always dreaded a family row! *(Now mind: I'm only telling you What the old Dutch clock declares is true!) *

The Chinese plate looked very blue, And wailed, "Oh, dear! what shall we do!" But the gingham dog and the calico cat Wallowed this way and tumbled that, Employing every tooth and claw In the awfullest way you ever saw— And, oh! how the gingham and calico flew! * (Don't fancy I exaggerate— I got my news from the Chinese plate!) *

Next morning, where the two had sat They found no trace of dog or cat; And some folks think unto this day That burglars stole that pair away! But the truth about the cat and pup Is this: they ate each other up! Now what do you really think of that! * (The old Dutch clock it told me so, And that is how I came to know.)*

In truth, I didn't encounter this until I saw Dead Poet's Society when it came out out on VHS. But that movie is part of how I came to appreciate poetry rather than just putting in the work in school. There really is something about poetry being performed aloud that makes it more moving than just a classmate reading from a book in a stilted voice.

Anyway, this isn't a recipe blog, so I won't go into that any further. And the poem stands for itself without any commentary.

O Captain! My Captain!

BY WALT WHITMAN

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won, The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills, For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding, For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; Here Captain! dear father! This arm beneath your head! It is some dream that on the deck, You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still, My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will, The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done, From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won; Exult O shores, and ring O bells! But I with mournful tread, Walk the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.

Source: Leaves of Grass (David McKay, 1891)

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One summer she goes into the field as usual stopping for a bit at the pool where she often looks at herself, to see if she detects any changes. She sees the same person, the horrible mantle of daughterliness still clinging to her.

The sun seems, in the water, very close. That's my uncle spying again, she thinks— everything in nature is in some way her relative. I am never alone, she thinks, turning the thought into a prayer. Then death appears, like the answer to a prayer.

No one understands anymore how beautiful he was. But Persephone remembers. Also that he embraced her, right there, with her uncle watching. She remembers sunlight flashing on his bare arms.

This is the last moment she remembers clearly. Then the dark god bore her away.

She also remembers, less clearly, the chilling insight that from this moment she couldn't live without him again.

The girl who disappears from the pool will never return. A woman will return, looking for the girl she was.

She stands by the pool saying, from time to time, I was abducted, but it sounds wrong to her, nothing like what she felt. Then she says, I was not abducted. Then she says, I offered myself, I wanted to escape my body. Even, sometimes, I willed this. But ignorance

cannot will knowledge. Ignorance wills something imagined, which it believes exists.

All the different nouns— she says them in rotation. Death, husband, god, stranger. Everything sounds so simple, so conventional. I must have been, she thinks, a simple girl.

She can't remember herself as that person but she keeps thinking the pool will remember and explain to her the meaning of her prayer so she can understand whether it was answered or not.

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After attending a talk where Kuo Jiang Hong spoke about how she once asked her mother whether her late father, Kuo Pao Kun, was really a Communist. (Further context for non-Singaporeans: in our country's early years, the government was very militant in purging all traces of communism. Kuo Pao Kun, a playwright who wrote very political plays, was detained for over four years without trial on communist conspiracy charges, among others.)

The flipside of a conviction is an acquittal. The upside of total despair is my denial. There can be no downside. There can be no middle ground in this memory of home written on bare walls. One man's life pivots upon a cutting edge so let's pray the wind doesn't blow. When innocence falls by the wayside the flipside of anger is a calm demeanour. But silence can be a strength, just as too many words can be troublesome. Do not trade kisses for hard knocks. Do not trade your eye for my tooth. There are nightmares we do not rise from while too much time has taken flight. The curbside of a road is where the wildflowers come to life. The flipside of a flipside brings us somewhere else. And we cannot be sure if we have turned or returned. In the end there is only my conviction. Do not doubt me or your father. Just come warm your frigid hands by the fireside. The flipside of a prolonged winter is this incandescent bulb that pretends to be the sun.

This is one of my favorites, because you can almost hear the dance music in the verses.

The Minuet (1879) by Mary Mapes Dodge

Grandma told me all about it,

Told me so I couldn’t doubt it,

How she danced—my Grandma danced!—.

Long ago.

How she held her pretty head,

How her dainty skirt she spread,

Turning out her little toes;

How she slowly leaned and rose—.

Long ago.

Grandma’s hair was bright and sunny;

Dimpled cheeks, too—ah, how funny!

Really quite a pretty girl,

Long ago.

Bless her! why, she wears a cap,

Grandma does, and takes a nap.

Every single day; and yet.

Grandma danced the minuet.

Long ago.

Now she sits there, rocking, rocking,

Always knitting Grandpa’s stocking—.

(Every girl was taught to knit.

Long ago.).

Yet her figure is so neat,

And her ways so staid and sweet,

I can almost see her now.

Bending to her partner’s bow,

Long ago.

Grandma says our modern jumping,

Hopping, rushing, whirling, bumping,

Would have shocked the gentle folk.

Long ago.

No—they moved with stately grace,

Everything in proper place,

Gliding slowly forward, then.

Slowly courtseying back again,

Long ago.

Modern ways are quite alarming,

Grandma says; but boys were charming—.

Girls and boys, I mean, of course—.

Long ago.

Brave but modest, grandly shy,—.

She would like to have us try.

Just to feel like those who met.

In the graceful minuet.

Long ago.

Were the minuet in fashion,

Who could fly into a passion?

All would wear the calm they wore.

Long ago.

In time to come, if I, perchance,

Should tell my grandchild of our dance,

I should really like to say:

“We did it, dear, in some such way,

Long ago.”

When I was a kid, my grandmother gave me a slender book titled “101 Classic Poems.” I’m 59, and this was hers when she was young, so these are some old timey poems! I can go through it and post some of them if anyone would be interested.

I.

HEAR the sledges with the bells —

Silver bells!

What a world of merriment their melody foretells!

How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,

In the icy air of night!

While the stars that oversprinkle

All the heavens, seem to twinkle

With a crystalline delight;

Keeping time, time, time,

In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells

From the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells —

From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

II.

Hear the mellow wedding-bells

Golden bells!

What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!

Through the balmy air of night

How they ring out their delight! —

From the molten-golden notes,

And all in tune,

What a liquid ditty floats

To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats

On the moon!

Oh, from out the sounding cells,

What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!

How it swells!

How it dwells

On the Future! — how it tells

Of the rapture that impels

To the swinging and the ringing

Of the bells, bells, bells —

Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells —

To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!

III.

Hear the loud alarum bells —

Brazen bells!

What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!

In the startled ear of night

How they scream out their affright!

Too much horrified to speak,

They can only shriek, shriek,

Out of tune,

In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,

In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,

Leaping higher, higher, higher,

With a desperate desire,

And a resolute endeavor

Now — now to sit, or never,

By the side of the pale-faced moon.

Oh, the bells, bells, bells!

What a tale their terror tells

Of Despair!

How they clang, and clash, and roar!

What a horror they outpour

On the bosom of the palpitating air!

Yet the ear, it fully knows,

By the twanging

And the clanging,

How the danger ebbs and flows;

Yet [[Yes]], the ear distinctly tells,

In the jangling

And the wrangling,

How the danger sinks and swells,

By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells —

Of the bells —

Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells —

In the clamour and the clangour of the bells!

IV.

Hear the tolling of the bells —

Iron bells!

What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!

In the silence of the night,

How we shiver with affright

At the melancholy menace of their tone!

For every sound that floats

From the rust within their throats

Is a groan.

And the people — ah, the people —

They that dwell up in the steeple,

All alone,

And who, tolling, tolling, tolling,

In that muffled monotone,

Feel a glory in so rolling

On the human heart a stone —

They are neither man nor woman —

They are neither brute nor human —

They are Ghouls: —

And their king it is who tolls: —

And he rolls, rolls, rolls, rolls,

Rolls

A pæan from the bells!

And his merry bosom swells

With the pæan of the bells!

And he dances, and he yells;

Keeping time, time, time,

In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the pæan of the bells —

Of the bells: —

Keeping time, time, time,

In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the throbbing of the bells —

Of the bells, bells, bells —

To the sobbing of the bells: —

Keeping time, time, time,

As he knells, knells, knells,

In a happy Runic rhyme,

To the rolling of the bells —

Of the bells, bells, bells: —

To the tolling of the bells —

Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells —

---

And The wikipedia entry for a little background

---

This poem might as well define onomatopeia, and it spawned what has become my second favorite word, tintinnabulation.

It is among my favorite to read aloud, on the rare occasions that is something worth doing. Sadly, poetry reading as a form of social interaction is not what it used to be lol. But this one is usually my top pick when there's a call for such things. It's just so fun to read. Normally, poe runs dark, and you usually don't think of him as fun. You'd do something like the jabberwock because of its unique words and sonic flow. But old Edgar pulled this poem out of his otherwise emo ass, and it never fails to delight.

EDIT: /u/southsamurai has picked up the gauntlet. May the sun shine on all their days. ___

With only a modicum of regret, I am stepping away from Lemmy.

Nothing to do with this community or Lemmy itself. Love y'all.

Rather, since leaving reddit I've observed a huge improvement in my mental health and my feelings of personal effectiveness. I'm taking this as a sign to exit social media for now, as an exercise in overall self-care.

So I'm releasing this community to, well, whoever would like to step up! This will likely be my last post here, but I'll keep an eye on my inbox.

If there are any takers, just hmu.

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And Still It Comes

like a downhill brakes-burned freight train full of pig iron ingots, full of lead life-size statues of Richard Nixon, like an avalanche of smoke and black fog lashed by bent pins, the broken-off tips of switchblade knives, the dust of dried offal, remorseless, it comes, faster when you turn your back, faster when you turn to face it, like a fine rain, then colder showers, then downpour to razor sleet, then egg-size hail, fist-size, then jagged laser, shrapnel hail thudding and tearing like footsteps of drunk gods or fathers; it comes polite, loutish, assured, suave, breathing through its mouth (which is a hole eaten by a cave), it comes like an elephant annoyed, like a black mamba terrified, it slides down the valley, grease on grease, like fire eating birds’ nests, like fire melting the fuzz off a baby’s skull, still it comes: mute and gorging, never to cease, insatiable, gorging and mute.

Unknown artist but I love this poem so much

Wisława Szymborska, 1986

What needs to be done? Fill out the application and enclose a résumé.

Regardless of the length of life a résumé is best kept short.

Concise, well-chosen facts are de rigueur. Landscapes are replaced by addresses, shaky memories give way to unshakable dates.

Of all your loves mention only the marriage, of all your children only those who were born.

Who knows you counts more than who you know. Trips only if taken abroad. Memberships in what but without why. Honors, but not how they were earned.

Write as if you’d never talked to yourself and always kept yourself at arm’s length.

Pass over in silence your dogs, cats, birds, dusty keepsakes, friends, and dreams.

Price, not worth, and title, not what’s inside. His shoe size, not where he’s off to, that one you pass yourself off as. In addition, a photograph with one ear showing. What matters is its shape, not what it hears. What is there to hear, anyway? The clatter of paper shredders.

Edward Hirsch, 2020

Instead of a pebble to mark our grief or a coin to ease his passage you placed a speaker at the top of his head and suddenly a drumbeat came blasting out of the grass, startling the mourners on the far side of the cemetery, clanging the trees, scattering the swifts that had gathered around the stone like souls of the dead, souls that were now parting to make way for a noisy spirit rising out of the dirt.

Tracy K. Smith, 2007

Winter is a boa constrictor Contemplating a goat. Nothing moves, Save for the river, making its way Steadily into ice. A state of consternation.

My limbs settle into stony disuse In this city full of streetlamps And unimaginable sweets. I would rather your misuse, your beard

Smelling of some other woman's Idle afternoons. Lately, the heart of me Has grown to resemble a cactus Whose on flower blooms one night only

Under the whitest, The most disdainful of moons.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1113470

> A noiseless patient spider, > I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated, > Mark'd how to explore the vacant, vast surrounding, > It launched forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself. > Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them. > > And you O my soul where you stand, > Surrounded, detatched, in measureless oceans of space, > Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them. > Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold, > Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul. > > — Walt Whitman

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For Detroit

There are birds here, so many birds here is what I was trying to say when they said those birds were metaphors for what is trapped between buildings and buildings. No. The birds are here to root around for bread the girl’s hands tear and toss like confetti. No, I don’t mean the bread is torn like cotton, I said confetti, and no not the confetti a tank can make of a building. I mean the confetti a boy can’t stop smiling about and no his smile isn’t much like a skeleton at all. And no his neighborhood is not like a war zone. I am trying to say his neighborhood is as tattered and feathered as anything else, as shadow pierced by sun and light parted by shadow-dance as anything else, but they won’t stop saying how lovely the ruins, how ruined the lovely children must be in that birdless city.

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Because my husband would not read my poems, I wrote one about how I did not love him. In lines of strict iambic pentameter, I detailed his coldness, his lack of humor. It felt good to do this.

Stanza by stanza, I grew bolder and bolder. Towards the end, struck by inspiration, I wrote about my old boyfriend, a boy I had not loved enough to marry but who could make me laugh and laugh. I wrote about a night years after we parted when my husband's coldness drove me from the house and back to my old boyfriend. I even included the name of a seedy motel well-known for hosting quickies. I have a talent for verisimilitude.

In sensuous images, I described how my boyfriend and I stripped off our clothes, got into bed, and kissed and kissed, then spent half the night telling jokes, many of them about my husband. I left the ending deliberately ambiguous, then hid the poem away in an old trunk in the basement.

You know how this story ends, how my husband one day loses something, goes into the basement, and rummages through the old trunk, how he uncovers the hidden poem and sits down to read it.

But do you hear the strange sounds that floated up the stairs that day, the sounds of an animal, its paw caught in one of those traps with teeth of steel? Do you see the wounded creature at the bottom of the stairs, his shoulders hunched over and shaking, fist in his mouth and choking back sobs? It was my husband paying tribute to my art.

Edward Hirsch, 2020

Moon-head is shouting at me to back the fuck up on the forklift I am trying to jab into a tower of wooden pallets stacked all the way to the sprinklers laid out under the roof of the warehouse where I am struggling to control the prongs of a monster and avoid dousing everyone on the floor of E.H. Sargent & Co., my summer of chemicals, the school where I learned that someone is always shouting at someone else on the job to back the fuck up.

Nikainetos, 3 BCE

Traveler, I am the grave of Biton: if you go from Torone to Amphipolis, give Nicagoras this message: his only son died in a storm, in early winter, before sunrise.

Muriel Rukeyser, 1962

This journey is exploring us. Where the child stood An island in a river of crisis, now The bridges bind us in symbol, the sea Is a bond, the sky reaches into our bodies. We pray : we dive into each other’s eyes.

Whatever can come to a woman can come to me.

This is the long body : into life from the beginning, Big-headed infant unfolding into child, who stretches and finds And then flowing the young one going tall, sunward, And now full-grown, held, tense, setting feet to the ground, Going as we go in the changes of the body, As it is changes, in the long strip of our many Shapes, as we range shifting through time. The long body : a procession of images.

This moment in a city, in its dream of war.                                 We chose to be, Becoming the only ones under the trees                                                             when the harsh sound Of the machine sirens spoke. There were these two men, And the bearded one, the boys, the Negro mother feeding Her baby. And threats, the ambulance with open doors. Now silence. Everyone else within the walls. We sang.                                 We are the living island, We the flesh of this island, being lived, Whoever knows us is part of us today.

Whatever can happen to anyone can happen to me.

Fire striking its word among us, waterlilies Reaching from darkness upward to a sun Of rebirth, the implacable.     And in our myth The Changing Woman who is still and who offers.

Eyes drinking light, transforming light, this day That struggles with itself, brings itself to birth. In ways of being, through silence, sources of light Arriving behind my eye, a dialogue of light.

And everything a witness of the buried life. This moment flowing across the sun, this force Of flowers and voices body in body through space. The city of endless cycles of the sun.

I speak to you     You speak to me

Muriel Rukeyser, 1962

I think of the image brought into my room Of the sage and the thin young man who flickers and asks. He is asking about the moment when the Buddha Offers the lotus, a flower held out as declaration. “Isn’t that fragile?” he asks.     The sage answers: “I speak to you.     You speak to me.     Is that fragile?”

Muriel Rukeyser, 1962

Many of us     Each in his own life waiting Waiting to move     Beginning to move     Walking And early on the road of the hill of the world Come to my landscapes emerging on the grass

The stages of the theatre of the journey

I see the time of willingness between plays Waiting and walking and the play of the body Silver body with its bosses and places One by one touched awakened into into

Touched and turned one by one into     flame

The theatre of the advancing goddess     Blossoming Smiles as she stands intensely being in stillness Slowness in her blue dress advancing standing I go And far across a field over the jewel grass

The play of the family stroke by stroke acted out

Gestures of deep acknowledging on the journey stages Of the playings the play of the goddess and the god A supple god of searching and reaching Who weaves his strength     Who dances her more alive

The theatre of all animals, my snakes, my great horses

Always the journey     long     patient     many haltings Many waitings for choice and again easy breathing When the decision to go on is made Along the long slopes of choice and again the world The play of poetry approaching in its solving

Solvings of relations in poems and silences For we were born to express     born for a journey Caves, theatres, the companioned solitary way And then I came to the place of mournful labor

A turn in the road and the long sight from the cliff

Over the scene of the land dug away to nothing and many Seen to a stripped horizon carrying barrows of earth A hod of earth taken and emptied and thrown away Repeated farther than sight.     The voice saying slowly

But it is hell.     I heard my own voice in the words Or it could be a foundation     And after the words My chance came.     To enter.     The theatres of the world.

Muriel Rukeyser, 1962

Born of this river and this rock island, I relate The changes : I born when the whirling snow Rained past the general’s grave and the amiable child White past the windows of the house of Gyp the Blood. General, gangster, child.     I know in myself the island.

I was the island without bridges, the child down whose blazing Eye the men of plumes and bone raced their canoes and fire Among the building of my young childhood, houses; I was those changes, the live darknesses Of wood, the pale grain of a grove in the fields Over the river fronting red cliffs across— And always surrounding her the river, birdcries, the wild Father building his sand, the mother in panic her parks— Bridges were thrown across, the girl arose From sleeping streams of change in the change city. The violent forgetting, the naked sides of darkness. Fountain of a city in growth, and island of light and water. Snow striking up past the graves, the yellow cry of spring.

Whatever can come to a city can come to this city. Under the tall compulsion                                                             of the past I see the city                                 change like a man changing I love this man                                 with my lifelong body of love I know you                                 among your changes                                                             wherever I go Hearing the sounds of building                                                             the syllables of wrecking A young girl watching                                                     the man throwing red hot rivets Coals in a bucket of change How can you love a city that will not stay? I love you                                 like a man of life in change.

Leaves like yesterday shed, the yellow of green spring Like today accepted and become one’s self I go, I am a city with bridges and tunnels, Rock, cloud, ships, voices.     To the man where the river met The tracks, now buried deep along the Drive Where blossoms like sex pink, dense pink, rose, pink, red.

Towers falling.     A dream of towers. Necessity of fountains.     And my poor, Stirring among our dreams, Poor of my own spirit, and tribes, hope of towers And lives, looking out through my eyes. The city the growing body of our hate and love. The root of the soul, and war in its black doorways. A male sustained cry interrupting nightmare. Male flower heading upstream.

Among a city of light, the stone that grows. Stigma of dead stone, inert water, the tattered Monuments rivetted against flesh. Blue noon where the wall made big agonized men Stand like sailors pinned howling on their lines, and I See stopped in time a crime behind green glass, Lilies of all my life on fire. Flash faith in a city building its fantasies.

I walk past the guards into my city of change.

Muriel Rukeyser. 1962

Girl grown woman     fire     mother of fire I go to the stone street turning to fire.      Voices Go screaming        Fire        to the green glass wall. And there where my youth flies blazing into fire The     dance      of sane and insane images, noon Of seasons and days.     Noontime of my one hour.

Saw down the bright noon street the crooked faces Among the tall daylight in the city of change. The scene has walls        stone        glass        all my gone life One wall a web through which the moment walks And I am open, and the opened hour The world as water-garden        lying behind it. In a city of stone, necessity of fountains, Forces water fallen on glass, men with their axes.

An arm of flame reaches from water-green glass, Behind the wall I know waterlilies Drinking their light, transforming light and our eyes Skythrown under water, clouds under those flowers, Walls standing on all things stand in a city noon Who will not believe a waterlily fire. Whatever can happen in a city of stone, Whatever can come to a wall can come to this wall.

I walk in the river of crisis toward the real, I pass guards, finding the center of my fear And you, Dick, endlessly my friend during storm.

The arm of flame striking through the wall of form.

Adrienne Rich, 1973

A man in terror of impotence or infertility, not knowing the difference a man trying to tell something howling from the climacteric music of the entirely isolated soul yelling at Joy from the tunnel of the ego music without the ghost of another person in it, music trying to tell something the man does not want out, would keep if he could gagged and bound and flogged with chords of Joy where everything is silence and the beating of a bloody fist upon a splintered table

Allen Ginsberg, 1980

Pigeons shake their wings on the copper church roof out my window across the street, a bird perched on the cross surveys the city's blue-grey clouds. Larry Rivers 'll come at 10 AM and take my picture. I'm taking your picture, pigeons. I'm writing you down, Dawn. I'm immortalizing your exhaust, Avenue A bus. O Thought, now you'll have to think the same thing forever!

William Blake, 1793

Why should I care for the men of Thames Or the cheating waves of charter'd streams Or shrink at the little blasts of fear That the hireling blows into my ear

Tho born on the cheating banks of Thames Tho his waters bathed my infant limbs The Ohio shall wash his stains from me I was born a slave but I go to be free.

Patti Smith, from Early Works 1970--1979

picture this. I’ll play the killer. 16 millimeter. ebony and ivory. the purest contrast. iris closed. open sesame. a screen of creamy white satin. on that wedding lap a white persian cat. a pale hand pets. milk purr. pan up slow. it’s me see. in a black silk suit. dark glasses. kid gloves. as sinister as the law allows. I’ve returned from the opera. prowl cat tom cat. if I’m male it doesn’t matter.

I’m on the ledge. that’s a several story drop. how did I execute my brilliant cat walk? that’s up to you, franju. but there I am. perched on her window sill like a dirty bluebird. the back of my neck is wet. I sit there what seems for hours. a human chess game. she makes the first move.

it’s quite simple. she gets up to adjust her sloppy stocking. her easter spikes could use some vaseline. her matt gesture is reflected in black patent leather. shoot to the ruffled vanity. mirror image. look at the kisser gazing from that mica. lipstick so thick you could carve your initials in it.

no alias not me. my initials are PLS and I’d be pleased to leave my monogram. close-up shot of my steady fist. I’m cool as menthol, the kind of confidence one achieves thru an open nose.

cocaine. I can do it. watch me raise my leather fingers. bluebeard itching for a fleshy white neck. I strike. she’s no match for me. the cold adhesive touch of the octopus. I remove my glove. struggle struggle. glub glub. she’s gone.

as the opening credits roll up. the killer, swift as an athlete, is escaping. springing from roof top to roof top. racing against pyramid shapes into the black seine.

search party music. the killer. 16 mm. black and white. g. franju. with patti smith.

george franju. media me. shoot me on the kodak. I’ll do it for free.

Hart Crane, 1926

Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge The dice of drowned men’s bones he saw bequeath An embassy. Their numbers as he watched, Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured.

And wrecks passed without sound of bells, The calyx of death’s bounty giving back A scattered chapter, livid hieroglyph, The portent wound in corridors of shells.

Then in the circuit calm of one vast coil, Its lashings charmed and malice reconciled, Frosted eyes there were that lifted altars; And silent answers crept across the stars.

Compass, quadrant and sextant contrive No farther tides ... High in the azure steeps Monody shall not wake the mariner. This fabulous shadow only the sea keeps.

Catullus, trans. Carl Sesar 1974

Quaenam te mala mens, miselle Rauide, agit praecipitem in meos iambos? quis deus tibi non bene aduocatus uecordem parat excitare rixam? an ut peruenias in ora uulgi? quid uis? qualubet esse notus optas? eris, quandoquidem meos amores cum longa uoluisti amare poena.

Lost your mind Ravidus, you poor ass, landing smack into one of my poems like this? Is some god getting you into trouble because you didn't say your prayers right? Or are you just out to get talked about? What do you want? To be famous, never mind how? Okay you will, and being that it's my girl you're after, you're going to suffer for a long, long time.