The Hermit by Robert Bly Darkness is falling through darkness Falling from ledge To ledge. There is a man whose body is perfectly whole. He stands the storm behind him And the grass blades are leaping in the wind. Darkness is gathered in folds About his feet. He is no one. When we see Him we grow calm And sail on into the tunnels of joyful death.
In Back of the Real by Allen Ginsberg railroad yard in San Jose I wandered desolate in front of a tank factory and sat on a bench near the switchman's shack. A flower lay on the hay on the asphalt highway --the dread hay flower I thought--It had a brittle black stem and corolla of yellowish dirty spikes like Jesus' inchlong crown, and a soiled dry center cotton tuft like a used shaving brush that's been lying under the garage for a year. Yellow, yellow flower, and flower of industry, tough spiky ugly flower, flower nonetheless, with the form of the great yellow Rose in your brain! This is the flower of the World.
plea to a passing maid by Charles Bukowski girl in shorts, biting your nails, revolving your ass, the boys are looking at you -- you hold more, it seems, than Gauguin or Brahma or Balzac, more, at least, than the skulls that swim at our feet, your swagger breaks the Eiffel tower, turns the heads of old newsboys long ago gone sexually to pot; your caged malarkey, your idiot's dance, mugging it, delightful -- don't ever wash stained under- wear or chase your acts of love through neighborhood alleys -- don't spoil it for us, putting on weight and weariness, settling for TV and a namby-pamby husband; don't give up that absurd dispossessed wiggle to water a Saturday's front lawn -- don't send us back to Balzac or introspection or Paris or wine, don't send us back to the incubation of our doubts or the memory of death-wiggle, bitch, madden us with love and hunger, keep the sharks, the bloody sharks, from the heart.
The Current by Raymond Carver These fish have no eyes these silver fish that come to me in dreams, scattering their roe and milt in the pockets of my brain. But there's one that comes-- heavy, scarred, silent like the rest, that simply holds against the current, closing its dark mouth against the current, closing and opening as it holds to the current.
Design by Robert Frost I found a dimpled spider, fat and white, On a white heal-all, holding up a moth Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth— Assorted characters of death and blight Mixed ready to begin the morning right, Like the ingredients of a witches’ broth— A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth, And dead wings carried like a paper kite. What had that flower to do with being white, The wayside blue and innocent heal-all? What brought the kindred spider to that height, Then steered the white moth thither in the night? What but design of darkness to appall?-- If design govern in a thing so small.
Wingless by Jim Carroll Wildlife falls extinct inside tubes burning to the touch moaning wings slide down my windows like lucite tears . . . look here: spiders somersault from attic ceiling like pubic hairs rat genitals scream across sky cathedrals the pure logic of massacre strokes the corporate heart shark blood breaks aqua tides in rushes like flowers offered up from young hands horns of mountain sheep hang from subway fans Airconditioned blood drips like rosaries from} skyscraper to the cosmopolitan eye do bison stomp snowmobile? aborted calves drip fetus flesh across barbecues uptown man paints marsh skies with lead, wingless . . . his head between his legs finely clipped poodles dreaming in penthouse amphitheatres across mother's molding furs.
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace by Richard Brautigan I like to think (and the sooner the better!) of a cybernetic meadow where mammals and computers live together in mutually programming harmony like pure water touching clear sky. I like to think (right now, please!) of a cybernetic forest filled with pines and electronics where deer stroll peacefully past computers as if they were flowers with spinning blossoms. I like to think (it has to be!) of a cybernetic ecology where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by machines of loving grace.
The Man with Night Sweats by Thom Gunn
I wake up cold, I who
Prospered through dreams of heat
Wake to their residue,
Sweat, and a clinging sheet.
My flesh was its own shield:
Where it was gashed, it healed.
I grew as I explored
The body I could trust
Even while I adored
The risk that made robust,
A world of wonders in
Each challenge to the skin.
I cannot but be sorry
The given shield was cracked,
My mind reduced to hurry,
My flesh reduced and wrecked.
I have to change the bed,
But catch myself instead
Stopped upright where I am
Hugging my body to me
As if to shield it from
The pains that will go through me,
As if hands were enough
To hold an avalanche off.
Vespers by Denis Johnson The towels rot and disgust me on this damp peninsula where they invented mist and drug abuse and taught the light to fade, where my top-quality and rock-bottom heart cries because I'll never get to kiss your famous knees again in a room made vague by throwing a scarf over a lamp. Things get pretty radical in the dark: the sailboats on the inlet sail away; the provinces of actuality crawl on the sea; the dusk now tenderly ministers to the fallen parking lots-- the sunset instantaneous on the fenders, memory and peace....the grip of chaos...
This Be The Verse by Philip Larkin They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another's throats. Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don't have any kids yourself.
That Fall by Frederick Seidel The body on the bed is made of china, Shiny china vagina and pubic hair. The glassy smoothness of a woman’s body! I stand outside the open door and stare. I watch the shark glide by . . . it comes and goes — Must constantly keep moving or it will drown. The mouth slit in the formless fetal nose Gives it that empty look — it looks unborn; It comes into the room up to the bed Just like a dog. The smell of burning leaves, Rose bittersweetness rising from the red, Is what I see. I must be twelve. That fall.
Mind and Heart by Charles Bukowski unaccountably we are alone forever alone and it was meant to be that way, it was never meant to be any other way– and when the death struggle begins the last thing I wish to see is a ring of human faces hovering over me– better just my old friends, the walls of my self, let only them be there. I have been alone but seldom lonely. I have satisfied my thirst at the well of my self and that wine was good, the best I ever had, and tonight sitting staring into the dark I now finally understand the dark and the light and everything in between. peace of mind and heart arrives when we accept what is: having been born into this strange life we must accept the wasted gamble of our days and take some satisfaction in the pleasure of leaving it all behind. cry not for me. grieve not for me. read what I’ve written then forget it all. drink from the well of your self and begin again.
This Is Just To Say by William Carlos Williams I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold
Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.
True by Charles Bukowski one of Lorca's best lines is, "agony. always agony..." think of this when you kill a cockroach or pick up a razor to shave or awaken in the morning to face the sun.
Dylan Thomas at his best.
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
He wrote this when he was 16.
The Drunken Boat by Arthur Rimbaud As I was floating down unconcerned Rivers I no longer felt myself steered by the haulers: Gaudy Redskins had taken them for targets Nailing them naked to coloured stakes. I cared nothing for all my crews, Carrying Flemish wheat or English cottons. When, along with my haulers those uproars were done with The Rivers let me sail downstream where I pleased. Into the ferocious tide-rips Last winter, more absorbed than the minds of children, I ran! And the unmoored Peninsulas Never endured more triumphant clamourings The storm made bliss of my sea-borne awakenings. Lighter than a cork, I danced on the waves Which men call eternal rollers of victims, For ten nights, without once missing the foolish eye of the harbor lights! Sweeter than the flesh of sour apples to children, The green water penetrated my pinewood hull And washed me clean of the bluish wine-stains and the splashes of vomit, Carrying away both rudder and anchor. And from that time on I bathed in the Poem Of the Sea, star-infused and churned into milk, Devouring the green azures; where, entranced in pallid flotsam, A dreaming drowned man sometimes goes down; Where, suddenly dyeing the bluenesses, deliriums And slow rhythms under the gleams of the daylight, Stronger than alcohol, vaster than music Ferment the bitter rednesses of love! I have come to know the skies splitting with lightnings, and the waterspouts And the breakers and currents; I know the evening, And Dawn rising up like a flock of doves, And sometimes I have seen what men have imagined they saw! I have seen the low-hanging sun speckled with mystic horrors. Lighting up long violet coagulations, Like the performers in very-antique dramas Waves rolling back into the distances their shiverings of venetian blinds! I have dreamed of the green night of the dazzled snows The kiss rising slowly to the eyes of the seas, The circulation of undreamed-of saps, And the yellow-blue awakenings of singing phosphorus! I have followed, for whole months on end, the swells Battering the reefs like hysterical herds of cows, Never dreaming that the luminous feet of the Marys Could force back the muzzles of snorting Oceans! I have struck, do you realize, incredible Floridas Where mingle with flowers the eyes of panthers In human skins! Rainbows stretched like bridles Under the seas' horizon, to glaucous herds! I have seen the enormous swamps seething, traps Where a whole leviathan rots in the reeds! Downfalls of waters in the midst of the calm And distances cataracting down into abysses! Glaciers, suns of silver, waves of pearl, skies of red-hot coals! Hideous wrecks at the bottom of brown gulfs Where the giant snakes devoured by vermin Fall from the twisted trees with black odours! I should have liked to show to children those dolphins Of the blue wave, those golden, those singing fishes. - Foam of flowers rocked my driftings And at times ineffable winds would lend me wings. Sometimes, a martyr weary of poles and zones, The sea whose sobs sweetened my rollings Lifted its shadow-flowers with their yellow sucking disks toward me And I hung there like a kneeling woman... Almost an island, tossing on my beaches the brawls And droppings of pale-eyed, clamouring birds, And I was scudding along when across my frayed cordage Drowned men sank backwards into sleep! But now I, a boat lost under the hair of coves, Hurled by the hurricane into the birdless ether, I, whose wreck, dead-drunk and sodden with water, neither Monitor nor Hanse ships would have fished up; Free, smoking, risen from violet fogs, I who bored through the wall of the reddening sky Which bears a sweetmeat good poets find delicious, Lichens of sunlight [mixed] with azure snot, Who ran, speckled with lunula of electricity, A crazy plank, with black sea-horses for escort, When Julys were crushing with cudgel blows Skies of ultramarine into burning funnels; I who trembled, to feel at fifty leagues' distance The groans of Behemoth's rutting, and of the dense Maelstroms Eternal spinner of blue immobilities I long for Europe with it's aged old parapets! I have seen archipelagos of stars! and islands Whose delirious skies are open to sailor: - Do you sleep, are you exiled in those bottomless nights, Million golden birds, O Life Force of the future? - But, truly, I have wept too much! The Dawns are heartbreaking. Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter: Sharp love has swollen me up with heady langours. O let my keel split! O let me sink to the bottom! If there is one water in Europe I want, it is the Black cold pool where into the scented twilight A child squatting full of sadness, launches A boat as fragile as a butterfly in May. I can no more, bathed in your langours, O waves, Sail in the wake of the carriers of cottons, Nor undergo the pride of the flags and pennants, Nor pull past the horrible eyes of the hulks.
The Sick Rose by William Blake O Rose, thou art sick! The invisible worm, That flies in the night, In the howling storm, Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy; And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy.
