43
I do not despise you priests, all time, the world over,
My faith is the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths,
Enclosing worship ancient and modern and all between ancient and modern,
Believing I shall come again upon the earth after five thousand years...
Waiting responses from oracles, honoring the gods, saluting the sun,
Making a fetich of the first rock or stump, powowing with sticks in the circle of obis,
Helping the llama or brahmin as he trims the lamps of the idols,
Dancing yet through the streets in a phallic procession, rapt and austere in the woods a gymnosophist,
Drinking mead from the skull-cup, to Shastas and Vedas admirant, minding the Koran,
Walking the teokallis, spotted with gore from the stone and knife, beating the serpent-skin drum,
Accepting the Gospels, accepting him that was crucified, knowing assuredly that he is divine,
To the mass kneeling or the puritan’s prayer rising, or sitting patiently in a pew...

Down-hearted doubters dull and excluded,
Frivolous, sullen, moping, angry, affected, dishearten’d, atheistical,
I know every one of you, I know the sea of torment, doubt, despair and unbelief...

Be at peace bloody flukes of doubters and sullen mopers,
I take my place among you as much as among any...

I do not know what is untried and afterward,
But I know it will in its turn prove sufficient, and cannot fail...

44

It is time to explain myself—let us stand up.

What is known I strip away,
I launch all men and women forward with me into the Unknown.

The clock indicates the moment—but what does eternity indicate?

We have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and summers,
There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them.

Births have brought us richness and variety,
And other births will bring us richness and variety.

I do not call one greater and one smaller,
That which fills its period and place is equal to any...

Old age superbly rising! O welcome, ineffable grace of dying days!

Every condition promulges not only itself, it promulges what grows after and out of itself,
And the dark hush promulges as much as any...

46
I know I have the best of time and space, and was never measured and never will be measured.

I tramp a perpetual journey, (come listen all!)
My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the woods,
No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,
I have no chair, no church, no philosophy,
I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, exchange,
But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,
My left hand hooking you round the waist,
My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the public road.

Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,
You must travel it for yourself...

47
I am the teacher of athletes,
He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own proves the width of my own,
He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher...

48
I have said that the soul is not more than the body,
And I have said that the body is not more than the soul,
And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self is,
And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud...

I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least,
Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.

Why should I wish to see God better than this day?...

49
And as to you Death, and you bitter hug of mortality, it is idle to try to alarm me.

To his work without flinching the accoucheur comes,
I see the elder-hand pressing receiving supporting,
I recline by the sills of the exquisite flexible doors,
And mark the outlet, and mark the relief and escape.

And as to you Corpse I think you are good manure, but that does not offend me,
I smell the white roses sweet-scented and growing,
I reach to the leafy lips, I reach to the polish’d breasts of melons.

And as to you Life I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths,
(No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.)...


[51]
...Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

52
The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
~

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.—Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathéd horn.  
— William Wordsworth

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea...
--Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan

Byron and Shelley were known in their day as the so-called Satanic School of poets, because they were seen as so morally, socially, and politically radical. On the publication of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimmage (1812), Byron woke up to find himself famous, having created the archetype of the Byronic hero. Caroline Lamb infamously labeled him mad, bad, and dangerous to know. My AI says the quote ‘captured the exact alchemy of Byron’s personal brand—the dangerous fusion of aristocratic elegance, poetic genius, and moral transgression.’ It also set the archetype for beloved bad boys from this day forward. Even a young future Prime Minister (Benjamin Disraeli) imitated Byron’s dandy style as a mode of cultivating popularity. 

So we’ll go no more a-roving
    So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
   And the moon be still as bright.  

For the sword outwears its sheath,
   And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
   And love itself have rest.  

Though the night was made for loving,
   And the day returns too soon,
Yet we’ll go no more a-roving
   By the light of the moon.  
— Lord Byron

Shelley came from a very wealthy aristocratic family and became a close friend of Byron. He was a radical whose writings attacked the church, the monarchy, and dominant politics of the era. Both believed in, advocated for, and lived a philosophy of free love. While it’s reasonable to criticize these ideas in real world practice, they remain a compelling ideal to artists over centuries. This explains part of the enduring appeal of the Romantic Poets. 

He has outsoared the shadow of our night;
Envy and calumny and hate and pain,
And that unrest which men miscall delight,
Can touch him not and torture not again;
From the contagion of the world's slow stain
He is secure, and now can never mourn
A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, from Adonais (en elegy for John Keats)

John Keats was the son of a stable keeper who gave up medicine for poetry. 
He remains a workingman’s hero, producing a large amount of work and dying tragically of TB at only 25.  Having written a group of eternal Odes, his idea of Negative Capability as a demand on a poet continues to have great power over modern aesthetics. He also retains a power as the archetypal tragic genius— a lover, wronged by reviewers, the world, even God or at least his unlucky station in life itself. 

This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
Yet haunt thy day and chill thy dreaming night;
O could I freeze this life into an odesis,
Or rather could this living hand of mine
Squeeze from the sacred vintage of my days
A full cup of rich life, I would resign
The greatest glory that the world can sway,
If I could cast her glories away,
And bring thee to calm rest.
— But I hold it near,
See here it is—I hold it towards you.
— John Keats (perhaps directed to Fanny Brawne)

And did those feet in ancient time.
Walk upon England’s mountains green? 
And was the holy Lamb of God 
On England’s pleasant pastures seen!

And did the Countenance Divine 
Shine forth upon our clouded hills? 
And was Jerusalem builded here 
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold: 
Bring me my arrows of desire! 
Bring me my spear: O clouds, unfold! 
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from Mental Fight, 
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand: 
Till we have built Jerusalem, 
In England’s green and pleasant land.

— William Blake (Prefatory to Milton a Poem)

Hopefully Not In Memory Of D.

He is biting
the hair off his arms.
I have seen it.
There is a cracking
That accompanies the snap of each follicle
the finality
of his teeth meeting
around that bastard blade
and the filth
it carries.
He is chewing his cheeks 
and hanging his hair on
the lampshade
He is living in his head,
that terrible dogsuit,
he is plucking out his
eyeteeth and
injecting them into this palms,
stringing them together with yarn.
I have seen it.
I have seen her
rush to re-place a fallen
comb because if he suspected
someone had held it
he would never touch it again.
It is always at least
100 degrees in the apartment,
no windows and one locked door,
the whole life
is suffocating in stacks of 
RC Cola bottles
and hat boxes,
in a bathroom sink that
requires a chisel,
in a man who is never clean
enough, and a woman
who would sell her collarbone
if it would help.
I know she 
can only weep with
my eyes
and I have counseled her
to leave:
this man and the world
are mutually toxic
to each other,
I have no morbid fascination
with this man,
I want him gone
but there is not enough room
in her brain for the thought
of her life without him.
As if, with her presence
she could set
the broken bones in his mind
As if she could
bleed out the
10 little Satans
he finds hiding
in his fingernails
But he cannot be cured,
Dona, by you,
for all your love
and soft naked stretches
he is still a walking Holocaust
and if you are fishing
for an epitaph,
“I Loved Him”
is a poor excuse for one.
~

Ashkenazi Venus

Absent as amputation
this is how
love affairs end.
but we wind down
into close friends,
a casual intimacy and
five nights a week
alone.
Somehow, my love
my pointless shepherd,
you will learn
to steer thyself
and I
will practice
emotional mathematics
to see how to add
me up
to see what I equal
and who equals me.
Tough as a thug
love dies like a pig
snorting blood and dirt
frothing with terror and foam,
a fat Russian pig
who reacts and reacts
stretches and snaps back
making scenes
about as private
as a bread line.
But this is subtle also, 
no sharp lip 
points kisses toward
me mouthwise, only cheek
that significant inch
too far left
or right;
And I’ve never
been one for subtlety –
vulgar silence offends me
I would just as soon
vanish under his chin
and ride that apple up
and down
on that accent
the words that he speaks 
marchingly
but that halt
at the tiny guillotines
in my mouth;
And what’s left
for me to chew
is the meat and potatos
of a broken heart
a real 
sticks-to-the-ribs
main course
and I would pull up
to the table
if I had the arms,
your Venus,
if I had the arms.
~

Phil Vincent

My son,
I enlarged you
until you could be seen under X-ray
bright and shiny
as a first tooth
white and jagged
you would not be softened
by my teething lullabies.
You are my test
my trial by sores
you pound my head and say:
“Look what you have grown!”
this little bead
my quiet clot,
I could roll you between my thumb
and finger, shoot you
like a pee-wee
the baby marbles I was always 
in such danger of choking on;
now I am the human bomb and
this little ticker gives kisses
But if I have rewritten
my body with language
then I am guilty of you
You are disease
and I am a disjointed poetry;
I am the parasite
I formed around you
I live so that you might have
my life
to give for one of your own.
And I loathe this creation of mine
even as I take the credit
I am as proud as any mother
who sculpts a fine bullet
nourishes it, and finally
marvels at its perfection
as it enters her eye
Yes, and you are blooming
in my brain even now
as I sip the sick stalk
and picture you tasting my death
one finger at a time
But to die at 25
is a life in exile from 
a place that does not exist
And if my body is a string of words
I make up as I go,
then let my life sentence sing 
sometimes in sign language
a snapping ballet
for two strong hands,
and sometimes in tears,
that plague of drowning in the
tiny bedroom that now
is mother’s den,
I cry at dinner to bleed out
Phil Vincent
my homemade affliction
my family member
and I write to ink you 
out, damn spot
when you scream for nursery rhymes
that I must write
because there is no better metaphor
for a headful of poetry
than a tumor
in the brain.
~

A Season In Health

Don’t call me brave
pin that on them
with less to lose.
I am not sharp or
bright enough to
illuminate it;
I break the way
I always break –
in a diagnosis that
puts a pistol in my mouth
or a green light
not long enough
for me to cross,
I break in the field
that is my breast, my
wide and white breast
that holds none
of its indigenous milk
There will be no child
for me to cripple genetically.
My life is a lesson
of losses –
I learn one at a time.
I break
until there are no 
parts of me I recognize, until
I am the stranger 
I shouldn’t talk to
but who says
Nevertheless,  Live
who says to Patrik
who put a piston in his mouth
held it in the rub
of his fingers
Patrik,  Live
because the murderer 
of my friend
is my enemy;
I break for him
and for me,
even if I’m not
the filth-eater
I see in my mouth
I’ve swallowed my share
of shit;
even if I’m not
the cripple walking
with a poem crutch
whole afternoons have
limped past while I
have yet to set foot
on my avenue.
And Jerry Lewis says
with a diagnosis of 
neuromuscular disease
you might as well
put a pistol in your mouth
I break
under what I have seen –
the inside of that machine
the doctors use
to observe me
and my own hands
screaming black and
bruised rage at
the injections I allowed,
even if you know
firsthand the tragedy
I have bled dry
I haven’t forgiven you
your two good legs
when I dream at night
I am flying
I dream I’m an angel
with feet too small
for earthly shoes
then wake to find only
my pistol kiss
And I break
Nevertheless, I live
in those mornings 
waking in the arms
of the only one
whose arms are allowed;
I wish my cricket knees
up and around
the hips, the waist,
the double clutch of what 
sometimes is the proudest
expression of love
and sometimes is just
the best sticky aspirin
for what ails me;
I break and he
holds my pieces together
without ever knowing me
whole: he has never
seen me dance or
use a knife and fork
he doesn’t know the glory
of me on top
and grinding
or me before I learned 
that grief and love are 
not enough but will
have to do 
because I will never
put a pistol
in my mouth.
~

GIFTS

Jerusalem rejoices in the destruction of her ancient enemies
and in the creation of newer, more dangerous enemies.
“I don’t suppose they’d let me play godmother,”
she protests to the Lord,
“but it would please me.
If they only knew how much I glow
in the reflected twisted prisms of their furious light,
and how their violent need to wipe me from the face of the earth
proves I am the face of the earth,
or even better.”

                “Or worse,” the Lord comments
                as he puts the last finishing touches
                to a bitter aching cry
                going hopelessly human, the way humans go hopelessly mad.

                “What about your own people?”
                the Lord reminds her.
                “Oh, them,” Jerusalem pauses a moment,
                smoothing her hair with a half-steady hand,
                then shrugging carefully.
                “I thought they were yours.”

                “They have my promise,” the Lord repeats absently,
                “but they’re your people and what about them?”
                “And what about me?” asks Jerusalem after a moment.
                The Lord turned silently and looked at her
                till she looked away.
                “Still,” she returned deliberately
                to a lighter subject, “I would like to praise my enemies.
                Their hatred oils my skin, highlights my hair,
                and the very best I drink like wine,
                like sweet and reckless wine that lets me forget
 
                the way you forget me.
                For a while.
                I will praise them, why not?”
                But her face was still turned from the Lord.
‘
                “If you feel compelled to inflict gratitude at random,”
                The Lord observed, “you can always thank me.
                I made your enemies precisely to increase your beauty,
                and you never thank me.”
                “No,” Jerusalem turned back to the Lord.
                “You made me, and you made me love you.
                Do you want praise now, as well?”

                “Then don’t praise your enemies,” the Lord answered,
                “and leave me alone when I’m working.”
                “You work too much,” Jerusalem pouted.
                “Your own people need you,” the Lord prodded.
                “And you don’t?” Jerusalem whispered bitterly.
                “Then I’ll turn my people
                against you till you do.”
                She jumped off time like any cliff
                leaving behind the amethyst shadow of her anger.
                The Lord laughs ruefully
                and continues to create more beautiful enemies
                as gifts for his beloved.
                ~ ~ ~
      

IF JERUSALEM WERE FRESH BREAD


They knead her with their fists like dough,
armies, kitchens.
They bake her in the oven of their hatred,
in the oven of their love
and cannot tell the difference.
They take her out and into their arms,
there’s no smell like fresh bread
and fill their mouths with her stones
and live forever and die forever
and cannot tell the difference.
There are ovens in her memory
but not for bread.
If Jerusalem were fresh bread
for every little family, for weddings,
for festivals,
the first thing they do
still wearing their aprons
with dinner places set
and slim candles lit
is reach for a big knife
to slice her in pieces
and then each other,
and cannot tell the difference.
~

     She had been unable to forget about him. On the first night, she had stayed awake beside him all night until morning. Were you afraid he might die, or did you want to see his eyes? Eyes which looked intoxicated from pain. Eyes which seemed to be drunk from wine, the hundred—year-old wines of Shiraz. It was close to morning when you realized that those eyes were yearning for the war, not for life. When once again he came to and his lips moved, you brought your ear close to his mouth. He said: “The direction of Mecca, the direction of those killed...”

     She did not say that she did not know which direction it was. She turned the bed in the direction that he pointed to... He wanted to perform his prayers in the direction of the war front, where those killed were and are being piled up on top of one another.
 
     The first night, there was bewilderment and regret... Bewilderment about the heart of a young man who was surrendering to annihilation, regret for the hands that were turning dark... She had thought, how could she say that she could not figure out this chaotic world? She had thought, how could she tell him that she knew him... knew him and all the young men who used to stand on the corner of Daryush Intersection to watch the girls passing by, to watch me passing by? To look at me... to look at me in a way that I would be on fire, and imagine I was sliding into your arms. Now, why don’t you look now? Why do you just stare into space, at the wall, at the window? Why is it that your hazel eyes on your brown sunburnt face do not look at me? If you do not look at me, I will grow old... Girls grow tall with these glances, their breasts bud, and a narrow line of blood begins to run between their thighs, singing... The song of pain and puberty.

     Now he, with a dry mouth, an infected abdomen, and the pain that writhes on his face, and she, the nurse of Ward Four, the nurse of multi-occupancy and private rooms, unable to ask why. No one hears her yelling. The sound of pain that ricochets throughout her entire body, the sound of the hot pebbles that collide in her mouth and do not come out from fear and horror. If only she could utter this three—letter word... If only she could open her mouth and shout as wide as the firmament: Why?
~

     What an endless hallway is this blackness and these voices, moans. She had been afraid of these things, of the moaning, that is why she let go of her life. Now she is paying back for it, paying back for fleeing fear, fleeing death. From behind the blindfold, she struggles to see something. The dirty-looking black floor tiles have no resemblance to the floor of the hospital hallway. Neither does the moaning. Moaning which is not due to illness. Moaning that is yelling, that is desperation, that is pleading, or anger... How many types of moaning can come out of the human throat? How many?

     “No, I swear to God... No, I don’t know...”

     “I’ll tell you...”

     These words, with the scratchy voice, with the crying that accompanies it and the pleading... How could she shut her ears? How could such sounds come out of human larynxes? Why does that person’s throat not rip apart?
 
    “For God’s sake, water...” 

     This voice is desperate. It is pleading for water. How long have they kept her thirsty? Her lips dry before the next voice, a heart-rending cry.

     “It is not minnnnnne...”

     It is as though they are sawing something, an arm, a leg...

     She freezes. Her legs tremble, and she is about to pass out. She must not listen. No!
 
     Do not listen! Do not listen! Count the stairs. When that is done, count sheep. When that is done, grab the stars, count the stars. The number of stars is infinite.

     She counts. Thirteen stairs. It is useless. She then goes to the sheep, then to the stars... Stars, stars. Among the stars is full of the scent of orange blossoms. One star, two stars, twenty stars, one hundred and fifty... three hundred...

     “Take off your blindfold... Sit!”

     She looks. They have shut all the windows. Blackened and shut. The room, it is a big room. The plasterwork on the walls indicates that at one time it was a home. At one time, it had been something else, and other people had lived in it.

     “Do you know this man?”

     She looks. A smashed face. He does not resemble a human. He is standing, with his hands tied behind him. A torn shirt, and red lines drawn on his chest and arms. Is it from fear that she wants to yell? Or disbelief? Hey, nurse, have you never seen a wounded person? Not like this. Not with a scratched face and ripped lips. She closes her eyes not to see.

     “Open them! Open!”

     “No, I can’t. I’m afraid, I swear to God...”

     “I told you, open them.”

     When an agate ring hits her forehead, she opens her eyes. She has to look. She is forced to look.

     “Do you know him?”

     The voice of the man who is wearing a mask is full of ridicule.

     “Obviously, she knows him. Now, do the right thing and tell me...”

     Surely, she would tell, only if they give her a chance to look carefully, and in the midst of all those wounds and all that coagulated blood, to see his blue eyes.

     “Do you want to return to your life, your work, or don’t you?” 

     She would certainly identify him and go back to her life, the same life that she has and does not have. 

     She looks at the big feet that can only be the feet of a giant? A wounded giant. Oh, how big can human feet get, turn red and get infected? You must immediately apply Betadine. You must clean them with some gauze. Touch such feet gently. When you touch them, the skin comes off.
 
     “Do you know him? Do you know him or not?”

     No, she does not know him. She has never seen such a smashed up human being.

     “Look carefully... You still don’t know him?”

     The masked man does not leave her alone. And the eyes finally get used to it. She looks and looks. Oh, my...

     She takes two steps forward. The air becomes heavy with the scent of orange blossoms and coagulated blood... It has been a long time since she has seen him. It has been a long time since I saw you. When was the last time I saw you? Was it on Zand Street? You were waiting for a taxi with the same girl who understood the meaning of strategy and tactic and bourgeoisie and to whom you had given the part of Antigone to play...

     This time, let me play Ophelia.

     You? Do you think you can play a part? And for that matter, Ophelia?
Her eyes had burned. Her cheeks had turned red from anger, but she had turned her back, meaning that she had not seen anyone... Now she could see him.

     “He... was my husband.”
~

Squint
for Andrea

Nothing can dim the light that shines from within.
— Maya Angelou

What would you tell me first if you had to tell me everything

If you stare directly at the sun,
however briefly, squinting to blur the edges
of the light and warmth that it holds,
you may even convince yourself
that you can absorb pure love
without going blind or being ruined by it.
Yet isn’t knowing something to be true,
even with our eyes closed, 
and being completely undone by it,
suflicient proof that we stood
in its presence
close enough to feel it in every fiber of our body,
yet somehow living to tell the tale,
built rather than destroyed.

I squint to blur the sharp edges,
see the differences in softer hues,
remind myself that I’m limited by my own vision.
The world really is small and round after all.
I squint to look serious when I’m trying not to cry,
but then I remember trying not to cry
is a sign of weakness,
and I allow the village to draw from the well.

I squint at the fine print, the liner notes and
the distant friends on the horizon,
the ones visiting after a long time
who are just now within view,
and the dearly departed ones
who are just about out of sight,
until we meet again.

Our vision can be permanently altered.
We can collapse to the ground,
as if by melting
and be reformed.
Repurposed into something entirely new,
able to see the sunrises and sunsets
for what they really are,
hellos and goodbyes,
fresh starts and wiping the slate.
What we do between the two
is up to us.
What you do with the two
is up to you.

Shine in the pain and the pleasure,
in the doubt and the daring,
the grief and the gratitude,
loss and love.

Shine like the loneliest heart at Carnival.
newly softened and warmed over
by the song it just heard.

Shine like a glittery Pegasus
with a diamond tipped unicorn horn,
flying beside a comet
over the nebulous neon noise of 
the Las Vegas Strip on New Year s Eve.

Shine like the vibrant tableau of lit candles,
celebrating the transparently thin veil
between life and death, all across Oaxaca,
blending with the sacred stars
from a boundless bucolic bird’s eye view,
on Dia de Los Muertos.

Shine like the unexpecting eyes
of a Transylvanian youth,
visiting Paris for the very first time,
sinking their tastebuds into their very first bite
of whipped cream and Nutella crepe
at midnight,
right when the Eiffel Tower is set ablaze.

Shine so bright when you’re walking
down the street in Tehran, and
someone compliments your glow,
you can turn to them and simply say
It is your eyes that are beautiful
because that may well be
the fiercest response
to a compliment of all time.

Shine like lightening lavishly living in a lighthouse
on the coast of Maine
helping wayward ships find their way safely to shore.
Then give those vessels the grit and grace
to go back out again in the storm.

Shine so purely and unobstructedly
when you walk in a room it
makes others squint,
giving them both the permission and courage
to trust the same light they still have within them.
What would I say first if I had to tell you everything?
Shine like you were made to,
like you’re supposed to.
You were born on purpose
for a purpose.

For whether you’re coming or going
you’re part of me now, so
you’re never further off
than my horizon,
you feel closer
with every breath 
and I can see you, if
I squint.
~

Keep

Keep it simple.
Keep writing, keep reading,
keep fighting, keep pleading,
keep lighting and keep leading.
Keep your heart open and your mind aware
Keep coming back for more.
Keep going, keep giving, keep doing.
Keep daring to believe
in a better way of living.
Keep loving and creating.
Keep each other sheltered, sound and warm.
Keep being sanctuary in the storm.
Keep being true to form.
Keep it together, but don’t forget
to keep it loose too.
Keep getting home safe.
Keep it real, and keep the faith.
I love you.
Goodbye for now.
~

The Whole Mess ... Almost

           By Gregory Corso

I ran up six flights of stairs
to my small furnished room   
opened the window
and began throwing out
those things most important in life

First to go, Truth, squealing like a fink:
“Don’t! I’ll tell awful things about you!”
“Oh yeah? Well, I’ve nothing to hide ... OUT!”
Then went God, glowering & whimpering in amazement:   
“It’s not my fault! I’m not the cause of it all!” “OUT!”   
Then Love, cooing bribes: “You’ll never know impotency!   
All the girls on Vogue covers, all yours!”
I pushed her fat ass out and screamed:
“You always end up a bummer!”
I picked up Faith Hope Charity
all three clinging together:
“Without us you’ll surely die!”
“With you I’m going nuts! Goodbye!”

Then Beauty ... ah, Beauty—
As I led her to the window
I told her: “You I loved best in life
... but you’re a killer; Beauty kills!”   
Not really meaning to drop her
I immediately ran downstairs
getting there just in time to catch her   
“You saved me!” she cried
I put her down and told her: “Move on.”

Went back up those six flights
went to the money
there was no money to throw out.
The only thing left in the room was Death   
hiding beneath the kitchen sink:
“I’m not real!” It cried
“I’m just a rumor spread by life ... ”   
Laughing I threw it out, kitchen sink and all   
and suddenly realized Humor
was all that was left—
All I could do with Humor was to say:   
“Out the window with the window!”
~

FANTASY

Fantaisie

There is an air for which I’d gladly give
All Mozart, all Rossini, all Von Weber,
A languid, ancient, solemn-sounding air
That yields its secret charm to me alone.

Each tiine it happens that I hear it played
My heart grows younger by two hundred years
I live in former times . .  . and see portrayed
A green slope gilded by the setting sun, 

And then a feudal castle flanked with stone,
Its windows tinted to a glowing rose, 
Bounded by spacious parks and with its feet
Bathed by a stream that through a garden flows.

And then a lady in a window high,
Fair-haired, dark-eyed; and dressed in an ancient style
Whom, in another life, perhaps I’ve seen,
And whom I now remember with a sigh.
        
     Translation by Anthony Bower
~

THE CYDALISES

Les Cydalises

Where are our sweethearts?'
They are in the grave
They are more fortunate
In a better place!

They dwell n‘ar angels,
In the depth of the blue sky,
And they sing praises
Of the Mother of God!

0 pure betrothed!
0 young maid in flower!
Forsaken loved one,
Blighted by grief!

Profound eternity
Smiled'm your eyes . . . 
Lights smothered by the world,
Be rekindled' m heaven!

     Translation by Daisy Aldan
~
 
EL DESDICHADO

El  Desdichado (translation--the disinheritied or unfortunate one)

I am the dark, the widowed, the disconsolate.
I am the prince of Aquitaine whose tower is down.
My only star is dead, and star-configurate
my lute wears Melancholy’s mark, a blackened sun.
Here in the midnight of the grave, give back, of late
my consolation, Pausilippe, the Italian
sea, with that flower so sweet once to my desolate
heart, and the trellis where the vine and rose are one.
Am I Love? Am I Phoebus, Biron, Lusignan?
Crimson the queen’s kiss blazes still upon my face.
The siren’s naked cave has been my dreaming place.
Twice have I forced the crossing of the Acheron
and‘played on Orpheus’ lyre in alternate complaint
Melusine’s cries against the moaning of the Saint.

     Translation by Richmond Lattimore
~

GOLDEN VERSES

Vers dorés

Man, free thinker! do you believe you alone can reason
In this world where life surges everywhere?
The forces that are yours are ordered by your freedom,
But the Universe is missing from all your deliberations.

Respect an active spirit in the 'beast:
Each flower is a soul open to Nature;
In metal dwells a mystery of love;
“All things are sentient!” And mold your being.

Beware of a spying gaze in the blind wall:
The Word is bound to matter. . .
Do not set it to profane usage!

Often in the meanest being a God is hidden;
And as the eyelid covers the nascent eye,
The Spirit grows under the surface of stones!

     Translation by Daisy Aldan
~

From the Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed... 

From The New Colossus by Emmma Lazarus

...From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame...
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Come Up from the Fields Father

By Walt Whitman

Come up from the fields father, here’s a letter from our Pete,
And come to the front door mother, here’s a letter from thy dear son...

Lo, ’tis autumn,
Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder,
Cool and sweeten Ohio’s villages with leaves fluttering in the moderate wind,
Where apples ripe in the orchards hang and grapes on the trellis’d vines...   

Open the envelope quickly,   
O this is not our son’s writing, yet his name is sign’d,
O a strange hand writes for our dear son, O stricken mother’s soul!
All swims before her eyes, flashes with black, she catches the main words only,
Sentences broken, gunshot wound in the breast, cavalry skirmish, taken to hospital,
At present low, but will soon be better.

Ah now the single figure to me,
Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio with all its cities and farms,
Sickly white in the face and dull in the head, very faint,
By the jamb of a door leans.

Grieve not so, dear mother, (the just-grown daughter speaks through her sobs,
The little sisters huddle around speechless and dismay’d,)
See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be better.
Alas poor boy, he will never be better, (nor may-be needs to be better, that brave and simple soul,)
While they stand at home at the door he is dead already,
The only son is dead.

But the mother needs to be better,
She with thin form presently drest in black,
By day her meals untouch’d, then at night fitfully sleeping, often waking,
In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep longing,   
O that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent from life escape and withdraw,
To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son.
~

Let America Be America Again

By Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above...
~

America

By Allen Ginsberg

America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956.   
I can’t stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
~

In There

By Andy Clausen

I looked him in the eye
He saw & reflected my futility honed
        helpless compassion
& I bolted from the mirror
couldn’t bear the endless pathetic grief
		 & desperation in either eye
with no way to help him
			     in there
~

What I Love at Work 
            
The morning stethoscope ritual: 
lifting it from around my neck, warming its bell 
on my hands so the patient won’t jump. 
Inserting the gray tips into my ears,  
opening the back of the patient’s gown
then resting my left hand on their shoulder.  
Take a deep breath, I say, auscultating lung fields  
between scapulae, moving down the spine,  
one side to the other: the tidal flow of critical 
gasses exchanging, the blow and breach  
of the chest’s twin whales inhaling, exhaling. 
I listen for bibasilar crackles of heart failure,  
coarse congestion of pneumonia, wheeze of asthma.  
Egophony, rattles, rhonchi, stridor. Or silence–– 
from emphysema, cancer, a lobectomy.  
The overlay of intestinal borborygmi, the clicks  
and gurgles of peristalsis through the belly.  
All the while I’m marveling at the body’s  
largest organ: noting skin color, tattoos, scars,  
tan lines, wrinkles, hair, visible ribs, soft  
fleshy rolls. Thousands of people, thousands  
of bodies––and the brief, breathtaking intimacy  
of eavesdropping on organs performing  
their moment-to-moment miracles.
~

To the 35-Year-Old in Room 519

It’s almost 7 am; you’re probably waking now
as night nurses hustle around, finishing up. 

I’m driving in for my morning shift, hoping 
the benzos are working and you aren’t

in four-point restraints again. So many things 
about the body you don’t likely know, perhaps 

don’t need to—like the heart’s Purkinjie fibers, 
the kidney’s glomerular filtration rate, the salt

concentration in tears. I doubt you’ve heard
about cytokines, or how alcohol kicks Kupffer cells 

into overdrive, ruins the liver. But when I asked 
how many glasses of wine you drink a day, 

and you said a couple—of course, I wasn’t referring 
to sixteen-ounce tumblers. By now, you should know 

why your belly is bloated, your eyes jaundiced, 
and why you vomit blood: ascites, cirrhosis

and portal hypertension, the oozing of esophageal 
varicies––bottle by bottle and year after year.

But this time, please, step away from the edge.
Before your slow, slow suicide succeeds.
~

Bone Structure 
 
the bones have hollowed 
become thin and see-through 
 
 	their osseous structure disordered  	
        by leukemia’s fulminate blaze 
 
red marrow crowded out
now     the metamorphosis is complete 
 
 	from the doorway,      chemo bag in hand  
 	I pause    observe him heavily reclined 
 	 	 	 	 
in medicated sleep   the charcoal hollows 
of eye sockets    skin stretched skeletal  
 
 	 over craggy cliffs of cheeks   
         the thin sticks of arms 
 
angling straight out from his shoulders 
in a perfect T            I half expect  
 
         that right in front of me    he’ll wing  
         up from the bed      and fly up into the ethers
~

Crying in the Break Room at 10 am.

Maybe I’m crying because this doctor, this male authority,
shouted in the middle of the nurse’s station when I told him
his patient was actively dying, that we needed comfort care
orders. He yelled at me to stop pushing him, then dismissed
me like I was some green, know-nothing nurse, not a
twenty-year veteran reporting objective signs—and what I
knew in my gut. When I didn’t want to heave her almost
lifeless body onto one more hard gumey, for the CT scan he
just ordered. He was wrong, but I lost my voice. Could 
barely eke out I understand—when I didn’t.

Maybe I’m crying because of what I witnessed: grown sons 
silently dabbing their eyes at the bedside of their comatose
mother. Their grieving father hunched over the side rails,
clinging to the hand of his wife of fifty-five years. How
they all watched the hissing oxygen blow like a hurricane
into the mask, as she struggled for every ragged breath.

Maybe their pain reached out, traced the edges of my own:
watching helplessly as my mother died from lung cancer
just like this. Imagining my family gathered around my bed
one day when I am the one passing.

Maybe after decades of nursing the sick, the dying, the
mourning families, my tears couldn’t wait for one more
shift to end.
~

Spleen (IV)
 From Les Fleurs Du Mal, (Flowers of Evil) translation by William Aggeler

When the low, heavy sky weighs like a lid
On the groaning spirit, prey to long ennuis,
And when, embracing the whole horizon's curve,
It pours on us a black day sadder than nights;

When the earth is changed into a humid dungeon,
Where Hope, like a timid bat,
Goes beating the walls with its wings
And striking its head against rotted ceilings;

When the rain stretching out its immense trails
Imitates the bars of a vast prison,
And when a silent nation of infamous spiders
Comes and stretches its threads in the depths of our brains,

Bells all at once spring up with fury
And hurl a frightful howling at the sky,
Like wandering, homeless spirits
Who begin to wail disconsolately.

— And long hearses, without drums or music,
Defile slowly in my soul; Hope,
Vanquished, weeps, and atrocious, despotic Anxiety,
On my bowed skull plants her black flag.
~

A Season in Hell

by Arthur Rimbaud

Once, if I remember well, my life was banquet where all hearts opened and all wines flowed.
  One evening, I set Beauty on my knee. And found her bitter. And cursed her. 
  I took arms against justice.
  I fled. O witches, poverty, misery, to you I entrust my treasure...
~

...[Y]ou will always end up a self-satisfied man who has done nothingbecasue he wanted to do nothing. Not to mention that your subjective poetry will always be horribly insipid. One day, I hope--many other hope thge same thing--I will see objective poetry according to your principle, I will see it more sincerely than you would! I willbe a worker: this idea holds me back when mad anger drives me toward the battle of PAris--where so manyh workers are dying as I write to you! Work now--never, never, I am on strike.
   Now, I am degrading myslef as much as possible, Why? I want to be a poet, and I am working to make myslef a seer:  you will not understand this, and I don't know how to explain it to you. It is a question of reaching the unknown by derangement of all the senses.
--Letter to Georges Izambard, Mayt 13, 1871

He is as handsome as the retractibility of the claws of birds of prey; or again, as the uncertainty of the muscular movements of wounds in the soft parts of the posterior cervical region; or rather as the perpetual rat-trap, re-set each time by the trapped animal, that can catch rodents indefinitely and works even when hidden beneath straw; and especially as the fortuitous encounter upon a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella!
--Chants of Maldoror, pg. 263

You're tired at last of this ancient world...

...And you drink an alcohol burning as your life
Your life you drink as a brandy of life 

You walk to Auteuil you want to go on foot to sleep
At home among your South Sea and Guinean fetishes
Christs of another creed another guise
Lowly Christs of dim hopes

Adieu Adieu

The sun a severed neck
~

Let Us Pray 

     by A.J. Houston

my mother would tell me - pray about it 
as if these knees ain’t marked up 
from making pain palatable 
my mother would tell me - wait 
as if the distance between Emitt and Tamir 
medgar and asshata wasn’t long enough 
to fix the broken wings 
on all the angels who lost their way 
every woman in my linage grandmothers included 
labeled me the holder of legacies
a torn tablet away from ten hallowed tales told by mountain tops   
the carrier of dreams 
begged me never to close my eyes 
how you gone see the road you are led to walk 
with head bowed, eyes closed 
they purported the fore thought of my forefinger and thumb 
could master movements making melodies mysteriously out of magic 
my mother told me - pray about it 
practice picking perfect phrases to place privately in your psalms 
these shadows are no longer attached to the form they came with 
they sit in the shade, dance in the dark 
don’t get caught up or caught down in sound 
thunder has been known for not telling the truth 
heaven might not be listening 
ain’t been a direct link between black men and heaven 
without a tree, an officer, some earth or that box arriving first 
I dream in rebellions 
attucks left detailed instructions in my dna 
how to go from motionless to motivated 
how to move unmovable mountains  
history doesn’t stand a chance – never did 
I have seen mounds of stone tablets crushed 
truth would never stand a chance 
not here, not with the permanent erasure of legacies 
makes you wonder if the service of the other 45 
warranted such ungraciously awkward opinions posted on their profiles 
I dream in seditions, mutinous uprisings 
meandering minute men might miss the moment 
impossible to catch your breath 
we’ve been watching it subtracted for centuries 
by infinitesimal segments of steps
recently - discovered words my ancestors couldn’t spell 
my grandfather couldn’t dream, my father wasn’t allowed to say 
I write what I write, say what I say 
for the sake of my fore fathers and time
time has bullied black men brutally 
from birth canal to burial box 
the cacophony of catastrophes and casualties 
suffered under constraint 
my mother would say – pray about it 
as if blacks boys have not been beaten and bludgeoned 
by blue before from the beginning 
can you imagine, huddle masses of history 
holding picket signs marching up your throat 
calling cadence will catch you off guard 
ever catch a dream dreaming of escape, of a way out 
do not get caught up or caught down 
tsunamis has been known for lying too often 
my mother would ask me – can’t you still sing 
can’t you pull me and mine from yo belly 
and yell it to the sun, some of that go down
swing low, sweet sweet fellowship 
fleeting melodies of the fallen 
ain’t there a lake nearby, baptismal, bath tub
ain’t your bones moving like its Sunday morning  
singers serenading you for a sun setting Saturday séance 
ain’t your speech bending its back against your will 
ain’t your tongue tired of twirling, twisting and turning 
telling them ghost to get to work, pick that cotton 
drop them seeds, America needs new trees 
bigger limbs, unaware we see she is in the preparatory stage 
of once again enjoying her guilty pleasures 
my mother told me - pray about it 
as if one black boys knees can lift a nation and grow a mountain 
wishing these pleadings won’t get trapped between 
night and mare, between cloud and sky, between day and dark 
she told me - once heaven starts listening
a hoard of angels will gather their trumpets, wings and weapons 
and be coming from your tongue 
~

  3.

I wanted to feel exalted so I picked up
Doctor Zhivago again. But the newspaper was there
with the horrors of the Olympics, those dead and
perpetually martyred sons of David. I want to present
all Israelis with .357 magnums so that they are
never to be martyred again. I wanted to be exalted
so I picked up Doctor Zhivago again but the TV was on
with a movie about the sufferings of convicts in
the early history of Australia. But then the movie
was over and the level of the bourbon bottle was dropping
and I still wanted to be exalted lying there with
the book on my chest. I recalled Moscow but I could
not place dear Yuri, only you Yesenin, seeing the Kremlin
glitter and ripple like Asia. And when drunk you appeared
as some Bakst stage drawing, a slain Tartar. But that is
all ballet. And what a dance you had kicking your legs from
the rope—We all change our minds, Berryman said in Minnesota
halfway down the river. Villon said of the rope that my neck
will feel the weight of my ass. But I wanted to feel exalted
again and read the poems at the end of Doctor Zhivago and
just barely made it. Suicide. Beauty takes my courage
away this cold autumn evening. My year-old daughter’s red
robe hangs from the doorknob shouting Stop.
~

  19 

Naturally we would prefer seven epiphanies a day and an earth
not so apparently devoid of angels. We become very tired with
pretending we like to earn a living, with the ordinary objects and
events of our lives. What a beautiful toothbrush. How wonderful
to work overtime. What a nice cold we have to go with the cold
crabbed spring. How fun to have no money at all. This thin soup
tastes great. I’m learning something every morning from cheap wine
hangovers. These rejection slips are making me a bigger person.
The mailbox is always so empty let’s paint it pink. It’s good for
my soul that she prefers to screw another. Our cat’s right eyeball
became ulcerated and had to be pulled but she’s the same old cat.
I can’t pay my taxes and will be sent to prison but it will probably
be a good experience. That rattlesnake striking at dog and daughter
was interesting. How it writhed beautifully with its head cut
off and dog and daughter were tugging at it. How purging to lose
our last twenty dollars in a crap game. Seven come eleven indeed.
But what grand songs you made out of an awful life though you had
no faith that less was more, that there was some golden splendor
in humiliation. After all those poems you were declared a coward
and a parasite. Mayakovsky hissed in public over your corpse and
work only to take his own life a little while later. Meanwhile
back in America Crane had his Guggenheim year and technically jumped
ship. Had he been seven hundred feet tall he would have been OK. 
I suspect you would have been the kind of friends you both needed
so badly. So many husbands have little time For their homosexual
friends. But we should never imagine we love this daily plate of shit.
The horses in the yard bite and chase each other. I’ll make a carol
of my dream: carried in a litter by lovely women, a 20 lb. bag of cocaine,
angels shedding tunics in my path, all dead friends come to life again.
~

  21

To answer some of the questions you might ask were you alive and
had we become friends but what do poets ask one another after long
absence? How have you been other than dead and how have I been
dying on earth without naming the average string of complaints which
is only worrying aloud, naming the dreaded motes that float around
the brain, those pink balloons calling themselves poverty, failure,
sickness, lust, and envy. To mention a very few. But you want part-
iculars, not the human condition or a letter to the editor on why
when I’m at my worst I think I’ve been fucked over. So here’s this
Spring’s news: now that the grass is taller I walk in some fear of
snakes. Feeling melancholy I watched my wife plant the garden row
on row while the baby tried to catch frogs. It’s hard not to eat too
much when you deeply love food but I’ve limited myself to a half
gallon of burgundy a day. On long walks my eyes are so sunk back
in my brain they see nothing, then move forward again toward the light
and see a high meadow turning pale green and swimming in the fog
with crows tracing perceptible and geometrical paths just above
the fog but audible. At the shore I cast for fish, some of them
large with deliquescing smelt and alewives in their bellies. Other
than marriage I haven’t been in love for years; close calls over
the world I mentioned to you before, but it’s not love if it isn’t
a surprise. I look at women and know deeply they are from another
planet and sometimes even lightly touching a girl’s arm I know
I am touching a lovely though alien creature. We don’t get back
those days we don’t caress, don’t make love. If I could get you out
in the backcountry down in Key West and get some psilocybin into
you you would cut your legendary vodka consumption. Naturally I
still believe in miracles and the holy fate of the imagination. How
is it being dead and would I like it and should I put it off for a while?
~

According to accounts from his friend Wolf Ehrlich (and other contemporaries who were among the last to see him), Yesenin complained that there was no ink available in his hotel room. Driven by a desperate need to write, he slashed his wrist and used his own blood to pen the eight-line poem on a scrap of paper.  He folded the note and slipped it into Ehrlich’s pocket the day before he died, asking him not to read it until later. Ehrlich forgot about the note until news broke the following morning that Yesenin had been found dead in his room. When he finally opened it, the verses read as a calm, tragic acceptance of mortality.

The Crows

Frank decided to commit suicide '
He was sick of his rosy drinker’s face in the mirror
                                          fat
                              and drooping like a basset hound’s
of his phlegmy voice
and his ex-high school gymnast’s chest
that had rock slid to his belly
              sick of his bunged-up $100 cars
compression shot        popping along like tea kettles
of playing bachelor games with women
whose minds seemed like mouse-traps
or one-way mirrors
empty incomprehensible games
                           that he tired of                              or lost

He drove out into the winter country around Somerville
out into the birches and oaks
He had taken off his belt when he looked up
and saw black forms      flitting
thought that they would shit on him
                                                after he died
that they would dart down and feast on his eyes

He started cursing
alone in the whiteness
shouting       blood pumping
a short strong Irish man throwing snowballs at the crows
~

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

I woke up like an apple falling from a tree
had dreamt of Robert        Rosencrantz and Guildenstem
a different dream play
urban        faggot        socio
                            S & M
Robert was the director
As before
in golden summer
when we did our play
I had been the director
             before his wasting
nervous disease
dizziness
          paralysis unto death
                        that they couldn’t diagnose
and in the dark turbulence of sleep
we had changed places
~

The Hopeful Horse 

Yes
I’m a hypochondriac
but hypochondriacs
have real diseases
Arrested in monkish emptiness
I’m charged with light
and sentenced to bright hell
As a young man I wrung
passion from my situation
now 
now I ride it
flogging the hopeful horse
~

Open Letter

You died on March 17th      and you aren’t even Irish
That’s one for you, Pop
cornball to cornball
Why didn’t you hang around another twelve days
till your eighty-sixth?
We’d have thrown you a party

I’m still not believing it
anxious
as if you didn’t die
as if we just dropped you
You fell out of your body so fast
old and tired
like food through a soggy grocery bag

So I’m still talking to you
although I know you’re not my father anymore
but a strange
figure in death
taggedy doll
revolving down into black water

I should let you go
should let you rest

But I can’t shake this
anxious feeling that I could
save my pop from the big mouth world
If I just knew
how to reach under the water
into the darkness
some blind place
~

Crying

I cried for my father
for his slim muscled legs
because he was too timid and shy
            for death
I cried for my childhood
my bedroom mouse
our long hall       apemen
       and dinosaurs    marching in the darkness
for Bach’s climbing violins
ache of their beauty
too tangled in this world
to ever get out
for women
faces in sunlight
the places they were
songs that played
all those filaments of soul
itching under time’s rock
The crying so deep
             it was like coming
bitter crying
a crying sweet like milk
~

"In July of 1986, Life Magazine gave Highway 50 the moniker "The Loneliest
Road in America". The article claimed that the 287 mile stretch between
Fernley and Great Basin offered no attractions or points of interest, had
little services along the way, and advised travelers to possess “survival
skills”. Nevada embraced the idea and developed a Survival Guide complete
with its own passport to be stamped at stops along the way. As Las Vegas born
poets, we were curious about this idea of loneliness. How have our
perceptions of loneliness changed since 1986? Who decides a point of
interest? Could the landscape alone offer enough of an attraction to make
the dangerous trek worth it? Neither of us had ever explored Northern Nevada. With the help from a generous grant from Nevada Arts Council, we were given the opportunity to travel Highway 50, explore these questions,
and document what we experienced. We responded through poetry, which
you will find in this collection. Our hope is that you might feel inspired to explore undiscovered spaces, both in the landscape and within yourself, that 
bring you to places of connection and imagination. That what was once
remote, becomes stillness, that what was once sparse becomes expansive, 
that what was once rural becomes wild."
~

What We Bring

I fell in love with rubber on road,
open uncluttered stretches
of blacktop,
before I even stole my first car.

Traveling the 50,
isolated with thoughts,
unoccupied of routine,
in a state with more towns
of ghosts than people.

The American ideal, gas powered
independence of movement—
spontaneous exploration
burning up strict itineraries.
What's ahead and behind
happening miles per hour
in the moment.

Rare has road felt open.

Through arid desert ground,
where water finds no point to stop.
The sun, mother-naked of clouds,
cuts the mountains for shadows,
to let lay across a fervent aliveness.

Look not to what is absent
when charactering this highway.
Take care to what is within.

AR
~

Zima Junction

As we get older we get honester, 
that’s something.
And these objective changes correspond
like a language to me and my mutations.
If the way I see you now is not the way
in which we saw you once, if in you
what I see now is new
it was by self-discovery I found it.
I realize that my twenty years might be
less than mature: but for a reassessment:
what I said and ought not to have said,
and ought to have said and was silent...
~

Conversation With an American Writer

‘You have courage,' they tell me.
It's not true. I was never courageous.
I simply felt it unbecoming
to stoop to the cowardice of my colleagues.

I've shaken no foundations.
I simply mocked at pretense and inflation.
Wrote articles. Scribbled no denunciations.
And tried to speak all on my mind.
Yes, I defended men of talent,
branding the hacks, the would-be writers.
But this, in general, we should always do;
and yet they keep stressing my courage.
Oh, our descendants will burn with bitter shame
to remember, when punishing vile acts,
that most peculiar time, when
plain honesty was labeled 'courage'...
~

Golgota

     a poem in draft form by Moniro Ravanipor

 I could escape from them

in a time when the stars and angels
 were masturbating
 and My Land vomited blood
I could fool them 
I hide in the desert or an old inn
sometimes in a garden
Sometimes in a hole

I could save my life
And my shadow was always with me
She follows me.
In the darkness of days and in the light of nights

One day they arrested my shadow
They took her to prison
And suddenly all roads disappeared
And  i didn’t know in which direction i should go
You know that nobody could walk or talk or fuck
without her shadow

When they released her
I saw the traces of wound in her body

She cried: lets go
I asked where
She said: wherever they can’t find us.
They're coming.
Can't you hear their footsteps?

She walked away.

This time I follow her
I was shadow of my shadow
My shadow ran 
I asked where are you taking me.

In a voice that was strange and unfamiliar,
She  cried,
Outside the city,
Where they can't reach us.

We were 

Escaping  from the city 
and
I followed her
We finally reached 
Golgota
Jesus was on the cross
And beside him was a cross  ready to use
Then  my shadow  whistled.
The guards came out of hiding 

They arrested me 
They  They crucified me 
and my shadow
 sat beside me and cried.

Christ groans in pain:
My God, my God, you have forgotten me."
~

So below are three things:
—A brief poem by the renegade Aperican poet David Lerner on this, and
— Moniro's Sunday post bravely describing what people experience in Iran
— Moniro's poem about how our shadows pull us all into suffering.
Read, think, and write this week. 

 The Question
      by David Lerner, from Why Rimbaud Went to Africa

The most important question facing the poets of today
is
how well would you do under torture

the most important question facing poets today is
can you tell shit from ice cream
one moment at a time

can we change life or only
name its parts

what’s the longest suicide note in history
and who read it

how many shovels does it take to
dig up the bloody heart of the world
and start it ticking

the most important question for 
the poets of today is

is God just another
comic book hero with a fancy resume
or something we can meet in person
if we have enough nerve

are our poems infectious with beauty
punishing as they glow
shaking the walls of the city

or clumsy paper airplanes
sailing through the air
as it sickens and dies

the most important question facing the poets of today is

when morning cracks hard
and the gray light stutters through the window
and you are afraid

when you move effortlessly from
last night’s nightmare to
the morning’s headlines

can you tell, can you see, have you heart,
will we
~

Golgota
     a poem in draft form by Moniro Ravanipor

 I could escape from them

in a time when the stars and angels
 were masturbating
 and My Land vomited blood
I could fool them 
I hide in the desert or an old inn
sometimes in a garden
Sometimes in a hole

I could save my life
And my shadow was always with me
She follows me.
In the darkness of days and in the light of nights

One day they arrested my shadow
They took her to prison
And suddenly all roads disappeared
And  i didn’t know in which direction i should go
You know that nobody could walk or talk or fuck
without her shadow

When they released her
I saw the traces of wound in her body

She cried: lets go
I asked where
She said: wherever they can’t find us.
They're coming.
Can't you hear their footsteps?

She walked away.

This time I follow her
I was shadow of my shadow
My shadow ran 
I asked where are you taking me.

In a voice that was strange and unfamiliar,
She  cried,
Outside the city,
Where they can't reach us.

We were 

Escaping  from the city 
and
I followed her
We finally reached 
Golgota
Jesus was on the cross
And beside him was a cross  ready to use
Then  my shadow  whistled.
The guards came out of hiding 

They arrested me 
They  They crucified me 
and my shadow
 sat beside me and cried.

Christ groans in pain:
My God, my God, you have forgotten me."
~

THE WINDOW-PANES

The window-panes hide the yellow fog.
The window-panes muzzle the bleak
Row of houses from any noise.
The window-panes can lick itself.
You don’t have to question it.
I have a candle lit in window
For someone.

I will return to those days
of decadence and soixante-neuf.
Along the white houses on
West Cromwell Road, I remembered
Lady Ottoline licked me.

The window-panes are indecisive.
The window-panes allow me to see
A drunk couple trying to have sex
From directly across the street.
These are the wonderful things in the world.
But if I read about them in a novel,
I wouldn’t actually believe it.
~

BURYING THE ASHES

My memory has disappeared, and
maybe you were right about it all.
Why do you ask me?
Life used to be simple and meaningful,
and is no longer;
when I return to my room,
to hear the light wind:
this thought haunts me.
Leaves are swept away by someone.

At least there is heaven to hope for,
or is there? My doubt expressed jeopardizes
my chances of getting in now, at least
I can look at renditions by Italian painters.
When we leave, other life will evolve
for better or worse. I call you tonight
because I haven't a thought.

I heard the story not in its entirety,
the rain storm prevented me to travel
to another city. As I stare into the
gray mass, I envision a sunset that
I cannot see, orange and without form,
but precise as only words can be,
someone always prefers to spit instead of say.
~

CROCODILES

A dark shape. Look at the cups,
the bricks, the lines of children,
and try to find their significance.

We are unable. Their significance
escapes us. Cups, bricks, lines of children.
Let them be, they can never mean.

Look at the cups, bricks, lines of children,
not for their significance, but for what they are.
What they are is not what they mean.

Crocodiles. Damn them! What are they? Ugly?
Look at them! You know what they are. I have
seen a crocodile. No, I haven't.
~

THE NEW SCENE

Sure. It was dead for a while.
But it awoke from the coma.
A distinct line reminded
us of the surface.
Too bad no one can draw anymore.
Instead it is “Do your own thing”
or “Try to express yourself.”
Bands are rehearsing down the street.
I have left the magazine.
They erased the image tediously
without remembering what came before.
Now there are bands like The Strokes.
My days are numbered.
~

LINES WRITTEN IN THE TIME OF PLAGUE

Plague took everything from us.
No more gigs or art museums.
People tried to hoard toilet paper.
Masks were plentiful this year
but no one wanted to wear them.
We waited all year for the sky
to change color.
What looked like blue skies
were actually black as death.

Plague took away every comfortable
chair from us.
I tried to get into old Iggy Pop records,
and I watched more Hulu, Netflix,
and Amazon Prime than ever before.
I was reading Thomas Hardy for a while.
Every smile was an invitation
to a party of death.

Plague took away our laughter.
I only had two emotions left:
super horny and really bored.
I wore a new mask with Dodgers
on it to celebrate their series win.
Every body became extra large.
When we died all our vital organs
exploded in sheer glory.
Only a calm look remained in those eyes.
It hurt but at least it was quiet.
~

Couple

It is enough
to have him 
in the other armchair
he understands
would respond
if I spoke

so I need not

Other loves I have gripped
by the tongue,
stockpiling conversations
against loneliness
French kisses
against the cold

this one,
forever one,
I cup in my silence,
the peace 
only he 
ever gave me.
~

Perfect Moment

After love
your hand clasps mine
the cat’s cheek nestled against my chest
the closet mirror 
shows persimmon leaves
changing color in the rain
~

To Go to Paris

One should go to Paris
for the coffee:
miniature servings, heart-bracing
too hot
sidewalk cafes
ancient cobbles
buildings quaint 
as only the old can be
with that streak of gravitas

Sip, and watch
Frenchwomen, slender, dressed
with an air, well-shod,
tourists, rolling suitcases
always with sneakers,
ironic teenagers,
dapper, cynical men,
language around you 
laughing and purling like rivers
gaiety
tiny sidewalk tables
where a cup lasts an hour

Go to Paris
for the coffee
and find 
everything else
~