~the Power Of A Tear~
Pounds of pain punctured my progress
Tons of trouble terminated my tranquility
Swarms of stress subtracted my substance
My heart exploded like a thousand thunders
My mind melted and my spirit splintered
Hanging by a thread destined to burst
I tried to wash away the wounds with words
But the stains were deeply dyed in concrete colors
Verbal detergents were badly and sadly defeated
How Pleasant To Know Mr. Lear
How pleasant to know Mr. Lear,
Who has written such volumes of stuff.
Some think him ill-tempered and queer,
But a few find him pleasant enough.
His mind is concrete and fastidious,
His nose is remarkably big;
His visage is more or less hideous,
His beard it resembles a wig.
A Tale Of The Thirteenth Floor
The hands of the clock were reaching high
In an old midtown hotel;
I name no name, but its sordid fame
Is table talk in hell.
I name no name, but hell's own flame
Illumes the lobby garish,
A gilded snare just off Times Square
For the maidens of the parish.
The revolving door swept the grimy floor
The Weary One
The weary one, orphan
of the masses, the self,
the crushed one, the one made of concrete,
the one without a country in crowded restaurants,
he who wanted to go far away, always farther away,
didn't know what to do there, whether he wanted
or didn't want to leave or remain on the island,
the hesitant one, the hybrid, entangled in himself,
had no place here: the straight-angled stone,
the infinite look of the granite prism,
Wild Dreams Of A New Beginning
There's a breathless hush on the freeway tonight
Beyond the ledges of concrete
restaurants fall into dreams
with candlelight couples
Lost Alexandria still burns
in a billion lightbulbs
Lives cross lives
idling at stoplights
Beyond the cloverleaf turnoffs
'Souls eat souls in the general emptiness'
Divorce
Woke up suddenly thinking I heard crying.
Rushed through the dark house.
Stopped, remembering. Stood looking
out at bright moonlight on concrete.
In Beauty
In beauty we dwell
Blooming stark from spring,
Who moves with flight,
Seasons the air
In our abode
Concrete as gleam
Novelised with boons
Built in rock-like base
To glow as Eden.
Our hands knitted
Where They Come From?
Bullet or a bomb
Both are blind and numb
Wall or a roof
Body or a soul
Wherever they hit
They make a pit
Make all foul
Trees and flowers
People like towers
Concrete or soil
Letters From A Man In Solitary
1
I carved your name on my watchband
with my fingernail.
Where I am, you know,
I don't have a pearl-handled jackknife
(they won't give me anything sharp)
or a plane tree with its head in the clouds.
Trees may grow in the yard,
but I'm not allowed
to see the sky overhead...
Description Of Love
A true lover is proved such by his pain of heart;
No sickness is there like sickness of heart.
The lover's ailment is different from all ailments;
Love is the astrolabe of God's mysteries.
A lover may hanker after this love or that love,
But at the last he is drawn to the KING of love.
However much we describe and explain love,
When we fall in love we are ashamed of our words.
Explanation by the tongue makes most things clear,
But love unexplained is clearer.
Populist Manifesto No. 1
Poets, come out of your closets,
Open your windows, open your doors,
You have been holed-up too long
in your closed worlds.
Come down, come down
from your Russian Hills and Telegraph Hills,
your Beacon Hills and your Chapel Hills,
your Mount Analogues and Montparnasses,
down from your foothills and mountains,
out of your teepees and domes.
The Great Chinese Dragon
The great Chinese dragon which is the greatest dragon in all the
world and which once upon a time was towed across the
Pacific by a crew of coolies rowing in an open boat—was
the first real live dragon ever actually to reach these shores
And the great Chinese dragon passing thru the Golden Gate
spouting streams of water like a string of fireboats then broke
loose somewhere near China Camp gulped down a hundred
Chinese seamen and forthwith ate all the shrimp in San Francisco Bay
Things I Didn'T Know I Loved
it's 1962 March 28th
I'm sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
night is falling
I never knew I liked
night descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain
I don't like
comparing nightfall to a tired bird
I didn't know I loved the earth
can someone who hasn't worked the earth love it
Kral Majales (King Of May)
And the Communists have nothing to offer but fat cheeks and eyeglasses and
lying policemen
and the Capitalists proffer Napalm and money in green suitcases to the
Naked,
and the Communists create heavy industry but the heart is also heavy
and the beautiful engineers are all dead, the secret technicians conspire for
their own glamour
in the Future, in the Future, but now drink vodka and lament the Security
Forces,
and the Capitalists drink gin and whiskey on airplanes but let Indian brown
Five For Country Music
I. Insomnia
The bulb at the front door burns and burns.
If it were a white rose it would tire of blooming
through another endless night.
The moon knows the routine;
it beats the bushes from east to west
and sets empty-handed. Again the one
she is waiting for has outrun the moon.
Embarrassed
It made her feel sad and embarrassed
Situation was so sudden and not assessed
Circumstances too were not so pressed
Emotions ran high and worries suddenly traced
She did hide face and almost wept
No one was ready to look and accept
Was it a good offer or to reject?
Who on the earth is so perfect?
In The Baggage Room At Greyhound
I
In the depths of the Greyhound Terminal
sitting dumbly on a baggage truck looking at the sky
waiting for the Los Angeles Express to depart
worrying about eternity over the Post Office roof in
the night-time red downtown heaven
staring through my eyeglasses I realized shuddering
these thoughts were not eternity, nor the poverty
of our lives, irritable baggage clerks,
Lonely Tree
Oh Tree
Don't cry
As you are alone
In this concrete jungle
Throw your seeds
Let them sprout
On the stony hearts
Making them soft soil
Let your saplings
Grow into
Gathering Mushrooms
The rain comes flapping through the yard
like a tablecloth that she hand-embroidered.
My mother has left it on the line.
It is sodden with rain.
The mushroom shed is windowless, wide,
its high-stacked wooden trays
hosed down with formaldehyde.
And my father has opened the gates of Troy
to that first load of horse manure.
Barley straw. Gypsum. Dried blood. Ammonia.
Hill Top
On green grass near hill top sat one poet
Seized with serious thought but very quiet
He was lean and thin but on simple diet
He mastered an art in composing the duet
He had masterly skill but not looking smart
Thoughts were slowly entering part by part
It was not age of cars but small wheeled cart
This was only refuge where he had very good start