Had you a dress
would cover you all
in beautiful echoes
of all the flowers I know,
could you come back again,
bones and all,
just to talk
in whatever sound,
like letters spelling words,
this one says, Mother,
I love you-–
that one, my son.
American poet
from Halfway Down The Coast by Paul Blackburn
And love? What is that
many-faceted mother?
Why I Am Not A Painter by Frank O’Hara
I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,
For instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
“Sit down and have a drink” he
says. I drink, we drink. I look
up. “You have SARDINES in it.”
“Yes, it needed something there.”
“Oh.” I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. “Where’s SARDINES?”
All that’s left is just
letters. “It was too much,” Mike says.
But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven’t mentioned
orange yet. It’s twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a galley
I see Mike’s painting, called SARDINES.
from BOLINAS JOURNAL by Joe Brainard
Last night in the bar a girl Bill and I were talking to especially stands out in my head. A “hippie” type. (Sorry, but that’s what words are for) Very sincere in what she believed in. But what she believed in was totally fucked up. But like I said, very sincere about it all.
It always bothers me, this combination. Of sincere and wrong. It doesn’t seem fair. Sincere should always be right.
HISTORY by Joe Brainard
With history piling up so fast, almost every day is the anniversary of something awful.
untitled anti-war poem by E.E. Cummings
look at this)
a 75 done
this nobody would
have believed
would they no
kidding this was my particular
pal
funny aint
it we was
buddies
i used to
know
him lift the
poor cuss
tenderly this side up handle
with care
fragile
and send him home
to his old mother in
a new nice pine box
(collect
Walt Whitman speaks of tyranny
“There is no week nor day nor hour, when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their supreme confidence in themselves–and lose their roughness and spirit of defiance–Tyranny may always enter–there is no charm, no bar against it–the only bar against it is a large resolute breed of men.”
and women, too
They Feed They Lion by Philip Levine
Out of burlap sacks, out of bearing butter,
Out of black bean and wet slate bread,
Out of acids of rage, the candor of tar,
Out of creosote, gasoline, drive shafts, wooden dollies,
They Lion grow.
Out of the gray hills
Of industrial barns, out of rain, out of bus ride,
West Virginia to Kiss My Ass, out of buried aunties,
Mothers hardening like pounded stumps, out of stumps,
Out of bones’ need to sharpen and the muscles’ to stretch,
They Lion grow.
Earth is eating trees, fence posts,
Gutted cars, earth is calling in her little ones,
“Come home, Come home!” From pig balls,
From the ferocity of pig driven to holiness,
From the furred ear and the full jowl come
The repose of the hung belly, from the purpose
They Lion grow.
From the sweet glues of the trotters
Come the sweet kinks of the fist, from the full flower
Of the hams the thorax of caves,
From “Bow Down” come “Rise Up,”
Come they Lion from the reeds of shovels,
The grained arm that pulls the hands,
They Lion grow.
From my five arms and all my hands,
From all my white sins forgiven, they feed,
From my car passing under the stars,
They Lion, from my children inherit,
From the oak turned to a wall, they Lion,
From they sack and they belly opened
And all that was hidden burning on the oil-stained earth
They feed they Lion and he comes.
VENUS by Paul Blackburn
This star, see,
she comes up and leaves
a track in the sea.
Whatcha gonna do, swim
down that track or
drown in the sea?
ABRI: COTE D’AMOUR by Paul Blackburn
I am an unquiet bird
My head falls forward with fatigue at evening
wings folded
several successes several failures, yes
it’s been a long loveless day
If I’d hunted the stones to the south
. .(the stone outside us is beauty
I might have done better
Well
tomorrow,
no matter, tomorrow. . .
. .(and the stone within us is love
. . . .both
stone will bust the beak
or break the foot or the wing
there is no other way to live
I suppose we are all Orpheus if we would
. .No, I’m not
dozing or dreaming of home
. .I am home.
Leonard Durso 