Now Accepting Compliments by John Ashbery
I first noticed the ambush early one morning before the
walking started.
It was puce;
and the color threw me;
and if there were a disassembly line--
something that could be monitored and controlled--
even in the worst of weeks
(as flying dazes lots of malicious mischief makers)
through and thorough with looped deliverances,
and still water.
Nobody’s getting any deeper.
Still,
put on your pants;
it is movie time.
Shaman Blues by Allen Ginsberg
an earworm for your thoughts bozo who seeks clown suits in
higher places than overly stilted swampcabbage dearly paid for what’s the price
you know it’s not me who crumbs to bums in the ticktock seatime of old nursing
places and where’s home but for the heart’s when in the event of crucial bodhisattva
histrionics it is an if’s eternal entity of being ad hoc and suited to
whatever’s got your tongue, cat. get it?
Poor Man’s Jimmy Stewart by Sylvia Plath
i am awake
this little misstep of who
drenched caring whites away the core
of it
something that would have been blacker if not bold
first
in the heart’s charm
we who glisten less
we who swear to stop cussing
you don’t understand what the screen test shows
nobody would
not even me
i am awake
bite my arm a bit
i want teeth marks on my triceps
just for old time’s sake
please
and not just because
I want to stay
awake
It’s Not Time For Ovations, Just Ovaltine by Dorothy Parker
an extremely precise weather report
of the sort
that rings instead knocks
dashing as a head on rocks
would sound
round
not oval
in the ketchup-colored light
might
look harder to be lost
one less cookie tossed
after last night’s spell
binged it all to hell
it is raining if it is not
a lot
if up you hang
ps-- you rang?
Dictated And Substantially Inarticulate Too by William Carlos
Williams
The mornings start later and later, and the nights get to
happening sooner all the time.
The rain clouds have come to stay.
I do not invest my time in reaping or harvesting.
Most of my trembling is frayed nerves.
Doctor this.
Doctor that.
Do not call me anymore.
My depending is weak.
My wheelbarrow is out of service.
Johnny Don’t March Around Here No More by H.D.
Original limits of imagists like us
-- contrary
. And to think of me as (if no glasses, then with bob, and
petty, and all)
We are
not
so dissimilar
after all.
And I am the honey to your lusts.
Guns drawn
this is not
ever
war. Not
just
yet…
Hope by Wallace Stevens
In the middle there was a dream.
It lay listless on the bed’s folded linen.
Towards the beginning we had streetcars.
We had this Eiffel-Tower dismay to contend with.
You, sir
Are not smog.
You are not the arms and legs of the thing.
We are built to not last,
You see.
And the dream,
Towards the end
Had to be reshaped, soldered, and imagined yet again.
Nothing hurt the shuddering gap between what there was
And what was never up or down
To what you’d always dreamed was gone
But never was.
At least what you suspected was here,
a thing that grew cold and mushy
as old French fries,
stayed put.
There are seraphim in your coca-cola.
Your day is lucky
that way.
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