All That Glitters Is Not Gary by Robert Pinsky
They came for me, finally, by the dawn’s early light.
I’d been waiting for them,
hunkered away,
long in the curtains,
glaring in the rocket-colored haze
through a cheap nocturne’s fumes of dismissal.
They came for me.
Knocked down the door of my home.
I had a switchblade comb in my shoe
and a tiny rubber leister in my back pocket.
I had floor crumbs and spills to contend with.
Dementia, or the early signs of it, are possible here.
I admit as little or a much as is allowed.
They broke the door down.
They sashayed through the window too.
They rose well past the occasion.
I am blessed to be a squatter,
a man who identifies with rats and marmalade stains on
carpet.
Resounding speeches were not made.
They told me of resignation and hospital beds.
They wanted to liquidate water to add to their insurance
assets.
They were told to erase the trail of my ways,
and leave business cards for heaven behind.
They did as they were told.
The radio was tuned to a religious station.
I had two slices of bread in the process of becoming
toast.
They told me that I wouldn’t be missed,
that I was obsolete and easily replaceable.
My closet was obliterated.
My phone was smashed.
My shoes and credit cards were torn to bits.
I am a lucky man
to live well on so much ill.
I am saying more than I will ever see,
flag or no flag,
spangled to death and seeing stars,
waving goodbye to those
who came for me
and then left by ways they’d never thought to enter,
leaving the land a tad less free and brave
as the home it had been
before they’d arrived.
The Human Fund By Ezra Pound
Pl
ease, humb --a
-- ly (Lee!
Yes!)
for
give me
4 I
have eat
(en) no more
th
a
n
“I”
should
‘ve …be
cause there are more hinds in sight
then
you
‘d
ever dare
2 imag-
-ine
,so
be blued to
blues
(All) (Ready)
someofthetime
sin (or
con, too)
much urgency
;dot. dot. dash-dashing-dash;
listen: carpe -motherfucking- diem
A-
hole.
The Ayatollah Khomeini And A Houndstooth Coat by Anne
Sexton
i pinch open the drapes
it’s 3:37 a.m.
and the night’s burnt with orange lamplight
a caper-slow wringing of fallen leaves
a destitute shrug sings moody and empty-parking-lot sad
the wind’s loss
the sidewalk’s deadpan struggle
four less cops and the car alarms ring off with your head
i stab at typewriter keys
and rail at blank pages
plunging triscuits in egg-salad mush
as the sweep and shush of scant traffic ponders by
there are no crickets for a hundred miles
and the city lights are dim at best
at 3:37 a.m.
but still
all finger-snapping aside
the ayatollah khomeini sings about his houndstooth coat
and the reaches of squashed grapes
splatter bloody streaks on dull windows
i twitch matches alive
and sneak oil through odd customs
where sandpipers poke despair into muddy courage
maybe there’s a use for all of these delinquent things
all this clabbered joy slunk with wear
but for now i’m spotting bruised blues and watercress
in predawn’s attenuated shuck
while i hold out
or on
still
as if waiting could matter
to anyone outside of this small dark room
whatever time it might be
wherever that is or isn’t
just 3:37 a.m.
or forever
droning static through what dreams don’t last
to a sound asleep arm
and a head jellied to shunt the rest
because
well
sometimes
through soft tawny hues of hate
you glance clockward
and
well
it’s only 3:38
Precluded Preview Of Never Coming Attractions by James
Merrill
A movie showing in an empty theatre.
We are all riveted.
A silent academy haunched in nepotism and back-scratch
favors.
Do the good luck girls all break so easily when auditions
dry up?
Headshots come and go, and they catch you taking a sweater
as your personal.
It is ochre corduroy smiles all around, and we dilute the
poison with hay juice and mulled bathwater for good measure.
The utmost originality is trivial.
The importance of tearing up on cue is a diverse speculation
only, for we’re just grommets and joists playing floor-tile bit parts.
Honk once if you mistake capsules for caplets sometimes.
Give the gaffer and the best boy the finger.
We move along in the magician black of it, spun in furcated
eddies, bleached bright white and stinking of gold watches.
A casual glance caught in slowmo instant replay.
A cameo of true nonbelievers.
A day-for-night drive around and around the block until the
black-and-white sun rears its weary head.
And then you find yourself lost in a cutaway, and that
martini shot has come at last to the busted stale box you call your life.
Action screams itself to a cut’s fiver, and in the nope and
curdle of lying low you seek restitution in what remembrance can only be called
fairly fond.
McQueen never had to beg for a smoke break.
Paul Newman is dead.
A turbulent kid is whisked away parentless into the
spotlight.
There is not time for well whisky now.
The benison-tongued are lunching with spies.
Growing down is all that is left to do.
And in a soon’s now we are trapped undulant with whispers
and badly lit scenes.
The time for approaching is near and far.
All the HID lamps have gone out.
The stars are asleep, drunk and barefoot.
The set’s quiet as a tickle.
Move a muscle.
Go ahead.
See what it gets you.
A Boy And His Gun (unfinished) by Gary Snyder
Left home
just before sunrise,
the holy smack of dawn shucking harvests of death
as I shook off the husk of wormwood dreams,
and galloped towards Calico with revolver in tow.
Trees spotted with owl dust and Chinese-lantern light.
The human-devoid fields before me.
The heart of the world fresh and unspoiled.
Leaving.
And what’s left?
The behind is what creeps up,
and it shudders at my crepitant hesitation,
at the hushed lush wonder of sap-soaked boots on pine
needles.
I am Ephrem The Syrian come for my spoils.
I wander and teach choruses of birds to sing my hymns.
I’ve got enough bullets to last until the end of the world.
Trust me,
there is no dawn lovelier than the last.
That there is never an all,
I believe
that we are all just waiting
biding this beautiful time we’re given--
too diffident to spend it.
And the real answer to it all is
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