Should I get married? Should I be good?
Astound the girl next door with my velvet suit and faustus hood?
Don’t take her to movies but to cemeteries
tell all about werewolf bathtubs and forked clarinets
then desire her and kiss her and all the preliminaries
and she going just so far and I understand why
not getting angry saying You must feel! It’s beautiful to feel!
Instead take her in my arms lean against an old crooked tombstone
and woo her the entire night the constellations in the sky—-
American beat poet
Ring of Bone by Lew Welch
I saw myself
a ring of bone
in the clear stream
of all of it
and vowed
always to be open to it
that all of it
might flow through
and then heard
“ring of bone” where
ring is what a
bell does
Dear Joanne by Lew Welch
Dear Joanne,
Last night Magda dreamed that she,
you, Jack, and I were driving around
Italy.
We parked in Florence and left
our dog to guard the car.
She was worried because he
doesn’t understand Italian.
Hymnus Ad Patrem Sinensis by Philip Whalen
I praise those ancient Chinamen
Who left me a few words,
Usually a pointless joke or a silly question
A line of poetry drunkenly scrawled on the margin
of a quick splashed picture–bug, leaf,
cariacature of Teacher–
on paper held together now by little more than ink
& their own strength brushed momentarily over it.
Their world and several others since
Gone to hell in a handbasket, they knew it–
Cheered as it whizzed by–
& conked out among the busted spring rain cherryblossom winejars
Happy to have saved us all.
Note: spelling is Whalen’s own
Leonard Durso 