Make It Up by Carl Sandburg
involved in love
included in cloud cover
occluded over sound
chop chop
sing the news hounds
indeed
today is not tuesday at least
and the flesh wears itself out
under little
umbrellas stink of rain
I am rememberful
forged in forget-me’s too
your supper
is never served
for I am not bluto
carved crew cut while shaving
into being out
sided
plunk plunk
go the dailies
I am out of toothpaste and silverware
in the rain
in the rain
popeye is waning weak
and I misread my mail
in the deceit of being delivered
Radio Inactive by Edna St. Vincent Millay
i sew or
am seen
in the green smell of felt
tied today to a tuna melt
and breezing through gaps
in the gory alley
below is all the fall
that i am
canopy canopy sing canopy
swing canopy then
everthemore
newfoundlings strewn
reach for backwards
tied to iron
i sway
lacking the nerve to sense any better
and just explode
Stewardess by Gwendolyn Brooks
Damn
it!
I forgot
to polish
my
purse.
Courtly Tennis In Arpeggio by Walt Whitman
I scream to thee incessantly, and if it were but for
scour-hot landscapes and thrilled horses galloping to a clopped cadence of
courage’s creed.
Oh,
But I mistake gruel for beauty and feed my soul’s suffering
with hayseed, stocked with orderly chaotic whims.
You who do not wholly know leaves from branch from trunk
from roots from soil,
We must chart higher offices of foraging for light.
Grassy chances gone-- lobbed and served and chalky with
rough strokes--
I am wet and dull and gay in the backseat of carriages.
I am surcharged and grieving.
I am the apple picker’s pluck, the veiled lady’s stable
flux, the moon lookers soiled prayers, the castle’s mote, the hurt’s waft of
careened joy, the politician’s mucky lurking, the palm tree’s torn frond
dangling shiny in the lamplight.
Nobody seek my herons; they are unused and stubborn; they
are ruffians spent with terror and holiness.
It does not pay to be money-less in the moon-burnt streets,
in the feces dropped, in the potholes flowed with muddy waters, in the coinage
of a new frontier: a cut above lawless splendor, a retreat of homage to a
never-told past.
I, who dream to thee effortlessly, like the baby’s last
mumbles before language takes hold, am soured to drown in the space left after
the flood while the rag pickers take their pick of my spoiled joy.
Laugh.
Go ahead.
I dare you.
Tiny Holdings by Robert Creeley
Somebody told us it was a good idea to flattop these hills.
We heard the different ways to mistake trying for goodwill.
Not of us;
not in us;
not for or against us.
It was a cheap return we avoided like crepuscular gnats. And
if there is purpose in the picture taking of real estate
agents, and
if there are poinsettias in our cereal, and if we behave
like garfish in eel grass, then perhaps
there is no real “decision” to be made,
ever.
We will keep stuffing our pockets with ones.
We will walk faster than most joggers.
You see,
the deer here are lazy with Dear-John esteem,
and my holdings are merely gravel
and forced salutations.
Feel free to regret the boulevards their lights,
their pushpin dots of direction and swindled or swooped
curve.
I know these things by smell alone.
We
and you
and I
and they cannot be stopped.
It is finished.
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