To the States

To the States or any one of them, or any city of the States, Resist
      much, obey little,
Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved,
Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city, of this earth, ever after-
ward resumes its liberty.

Walt Whitman
1860/1881

the blossoming figure
of my bloodied spit stain
is a pulseless heart, silent!
in the snow
straining for existence
immortilized by winter

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love comes again
love, with the wind
love, never thick-skinned


not that heinous kind
that hideous, hateful kind
not manufactured love
like frozen, steely
winters, like iron
and smells and feels
like iron, and 
never once steals your
stomach, or heart
or feels like blisters, open
and splintered.


not that kind
love, hopefully 
unlike time!

Ode to Heaven

P. B. Shelley

(1819)

Chorus Of Spirits

First Spirit

Palace-roof of cloudless nights?
Paradise of golden lights!
Deep, immeasurable, vast,
Which art now, and which wert then!
Of the Present and the Past,
Of the eternal Where and When,
Presence-chamber, temple, home,
Ever-canopying dome,
Of acts and ages yet to come!

Glorious shapes have life in thee,
Earth, and all earth's company;
Living globes which ever throng
Thy deep chasms and wildernesses;
And green worlds that glide along;
And swift stars with flashing tresses;
And icy moons most cold and bright,
And mighty suns beyond the night,
Atoms of intensest light.

Even thy name is as a god,
Heaven! for thou art the abode
Of that Power which is the glass
Wherein man his nature sees.
Generations as they pass
Worship thee with bended knees.
Their unremaining gods and they
Like a river roll away:
Thou remainest such -- alway! --

Second Spirit

Thou art but the mind's first chamber,
Round which its young fancies clamber,
Like weak insects in a cave,
Lighted up by stalactites;
But the portal of the grave,
Where a world of new delights
Will make thy best glories seem
But a dim and noonday gleam
From the shadow of a dream!

Third Spirit

Peace! the abyss is wreathed with scorn
At your presumption, atom-born!
What is Heaven? and what are ye
Who its brief expanse inherit?
What are suns and spheres which flee
With the instinct of that Spirit
Of which ye are but a part?
Drops which Nature's mighty heart
Drives through thinnest veins! Depart!

What is Heaven? a globe of dew,
Filling in the morning new
Some eyed flower whose young leaves waken
On an unimagined world:
Constellated suns unshaken,
Orbits measureless, are furled
In that frail and fading sphere,
With ten millions gathered there,
To tremble, gleam, and disappear.

Two by Paul Muldoon

Beijing

I could still hear the musicians

cajoling those thousands of clay

horses and horsemen through the squeeze

when I woke beside Carlotta.

Life-size, also. Also terra-cotta.

The sky was still a terra-cotta frieze

over which her grandfather still held sway

with the set square, fretsaw, stencil,

plumb line, and carpenter's pencil

his grandfather brought from Roma.

Proud-fleshed Carlotta. Hypersarcoma.

For now our highest ambition

was simply to bear the light of the day

we had once been planning to seize.

Bob Dylan at Princeton, November 2000

We cluster at one end, one end of Dillon Gym.

"You know what, honey? We call that a homonym."

We cluster at one end, one end of Dillon Gym.

"If it's fruit you're after, you go out on a limb."

The last time in Princeton, that ornery degree,

those seventeen-year locusts hanging off the trees.

That last time in Princeton, that ornery degree,

his absolute refusal to bend the knee.

His last time in Princeton, he wouldn't wear a hood.

Now he's dressed up as some sort of cowboy dude.

That last time in Princeton, he wouldn't wear a hood.

"You know what, honey? We call that disquietude.

It's that self-same impulse that has him rearrange

both 'The Times They Are A-Changin'' and 'Things Have Changed'

so that everything seems to fall within his range

as the locusts lock in on grain silo and grange."

blackberry smush-art

the blackberry smush-art
like rorschach sweet tarts
was stored in museums
and never given its freedom!


(SPACE)


the sweet
blackberry smush-art
from feet
like rorschach sweet tarts
upbeat
an upscale upstart
discreet
handmade counterpart
defeat!
by berry smush-art

I'm sorry I didn't wake you earlier this week
the sun was there, against the sheets
but I knew you needed some sleep
and the bed was wrestled and weak


I ate the bread for breakfast
and planned to buy more at the bread store
the eggs were still in the chickens
and the milk was old


I roamed, waiting for you to wake
cheerfully, I found your copy of Dickens
suddenly stricken, my proud individualism
was long missing, yet never missed


I closed the curtains and planted a kiss
knowing is would likely be missed
life's grasp is much tighter than we said
we would ever let it be.

black crows

on

black pianos

dancing

singing songs

that

strangely sound

like

music and

get

me dancing

I don't know what I see
And I don't see much
I leave the first page blank
Because I know it won't dissapoint
(Okay, so. Okay, right. I know
I know. Okay)
I wasn't born yesterday
But I might as well have been, everyday
Its not at all like oranges
Because they don't grow backwards everyday
Wildlife, if not caged,
Has the uncanny ability to completely ignore us
If we could ignore ourselves as such,
We would be more worthy to cage wildlife
Space travel is off
We're getting more primitive, but with technology
This time!
Why am I so negative? I'm not.
I didn't eat dinner. By choice (echo).
This will go to the Black Hole
The wierdos congregate at the Black Hole
This will join them.

Perfume

Don't put your perfume on my ice cream

you know what I mean, your perfume

is a dream, unlike my ice cold

reality, unlike your perfume

well, ice cream may be too optimistic, but I'm

not pessimistic, I just don't need your perfume

dream. We just breath - hic -

we change quick. We - ahhh - perfume

Dream.  Our thoughts stick your thoughts

my ice cream is suddenly slick. Your perfume

air-thick. don't. put. your. thoughts. on. Me. Just

just just. Smile. And breath breath the perfume steam.

And when it ends you'll be thankful for

the more painful road not taken.