More and more there is this animal
Looking out through my eyes
At all the traffic on the road to nowhere
At all the shiny stuff around to buy
At all the wires in the air
At all the people shopping
For the same blank stare
At America the drastic
That isolated geographic
That's become infested with millionaires
When you grow up surrounded
By willful ignorance
You have to believe
Mercy has its own country
And that it's round and borderless
And then you have to grow wings
And rise above it all
Like there
Where that hawk is circling
Above that strip mall
More and more there is this animal
Looking out through my eyes
Seeing that animals only take from this world
What they need to survive
But she is prowling through all the religions of men
Seeing that time and time and time again
Their gods have made them
Special and above
Nature's law
And the respect thereof
And I think when you grow up surrounded
By willful ignorance
You have to believe that mercy has its own country
And that it's round and borderless
And then you just grow wings
And rise above it all
Like there where that hawk is circling
Above that strip mall
Ask any eco-system
Harm here is harm there
And there and there
And aggression begets aggression
It's a very simple lesson
That long preceded any king of heaven
And there's this brutal imperial power
That my passport says I represent
But it will never represent where my heart lives
Only vaguely where it went
Cuz I know when you grow up surrounded
By willful ignorance
You learn that mercy has its own country
And that it's round and borderless
And then you just grow wings
And rise above it all
Like there
Where that hawk is circling
Above that strip mall
Thursday, June 5, 2008
More soon
...the animal i am knows very well
that Nature is our teacher and our mother
and God is just a story that we tell.
- Ani DiFranco
Icarus, from Evolve
that Nature is our teacher and our mother
and God is just a story that we tell.
- Ani DiFranco
Icarus, from Evolve
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Everest, by Ani DiFranco
from the depth of the pacific
to the height of everest
and still the world is smoother
than a shiny ball-bearing
so i take a few steps back
and put on a wider lens
and it changes your skin,
your sex, and what your wearing
distance shows your silloutte
to be a lot like mine
like a sphere is a sphere
and all of us here
have been here all the time
you brought me to church,
cinder blocks, flourescent light
you brought me to church
at 7 o'clock on a sunday night
and the band was rocking
and the floors were scrubbed clean
and everybody had a tambourine
so i took a deep breath and became
the white girl with the hair
and you sat right beside me
while everybody stared
and through the open window
i think the singing went outside
and floated up to tell
all the stars not to hide
cuz by the time church let out
the sky was much clearer
and the moon was so beautiful,
that the ocean held up a mirror
as we walked home we spoke slowly
we spoke slow,
and we spoke lowly
like it was taking more time
than usual to choose
the words to go
with your squeaky sandle shoes
like time is not a thing
that's ours to lose
from the height of the pacific
to the depths of everest
to the height of everest
and still the world is smoother
than a shiny ball-bearing
so i take a few steps back
and put on a wider lens
and it changes your skin,
your sex, and what your wearing
distance shows your silloutte
to be a lot like mine
like a sphere is a sphere
and all of us here
have been here all the time
you brought me to church,
cinder blocks, flourescent light
you brought me to church
at 7 o'clock on a sunday night
and the band was rocking
and the floors were scrubbed clean
and everybody had a tambourine
so i took a deep breath and became
the white girl with the hair
and you sat right beside me
while everybody stared
and through the open window
i think the singing went outside
and floated up to tell
all the stars not to hide
cuz by the time church let out
the sky was much clearer
and the moon was so beautiful,
that the ocean held up a mirror
as we walked home we spoke slowly
we spoke slow,
and we spoke lowly
like it was taking more time
than usual to choose
the words to go
with your squeaky sandle shoes
like time is not a thing
that's ours to lose
from the height of the pacific
to the depths of everest
Friday, March 28, 2008
For Meg
The Propagation of the Species
Jennifer Michael Hecht
It is likely that someone
will be standing there at the end
of time, looking up at the fireball
or down at the organs of desire.
It won’t be us, but only because odds
are odds: uncanny, cranky, spare. Thus
we may conclude the world to be a safe
enough place. These are the cares
of the day, the age of probability
having replaced historic ne’er-do-wells
with numbers. As for us, we live in
surprise; why not share this mood
and facial disposition with some scion
of the future generation?
We spent our meditation-time instead
confessing. The exercise delivered
unexpected fruit. Perhaps we’ve better quarry
than the truth.
The fruit of all of this is
possession and release,
mango and bananas.
Especially bananas. Try expressing
to a friend, when next you are feeling
unglued or blue, say: I’m bananas. Explain
to others that your lover, while very
sweet and handsomely randy, is a mite bananas;
is bananas. With a meaningful look in your eye,
gesture an unpeeling.
It is your autobiography
you are living. The actor eating scampi
to my left says he is not yet off-book, but
will be. Folks, I am ever-so-slightly off-book;
Friends, I am bananas.
We parse the problem, nouning out the principle
players: friends, families, prospects. I interview
the possibility of a child;
ask it questions. Intone the word: Interested?
Then: Want to learn the word for widget?
Want to read Beowulf? Want to get named?
Shall we grin and bear it?
I admit, existence is where woeful
was conjured. Nonetheless, to recommend it,
there is Jell-O; average rainfall; the anchovy
app at Luna’s; and the fact that in the middle, many
change their minds on the whole shebang — get
a good one off in both directions. But you and I
are going to have to choose.
It is our autobiography
we are eating; you snooze you
lose. Still, in the midst of going too slowly,
all hell has been known to break loose.
A gang of snails attacks a tree sloth, steals her wallet.
Down at the station, police chief
questions: How’d they get ya?
Sloth says, I dunno, it all happened so fast.
Ain’t it the truth. All this wallowing
in the details of engagement
and when the battle comes,
it isn’t quite expected. It’s slower. Also,
over much too fast to make a fair
assessment. Lounging in her tea tree,
chewing leaves and dreaming, she sees
them: tiny, slimy things with spiral shells
and damp antennae that float like sea anemone
above their wet-tongue heads. She wonders
softly: Is it a moment for decision?
Shall I bolt or battle? Or better yet,
might this pass me by without regret?
It took days for the battalion
to cross the stretch of trunk and reach
her, yet she was still mulling it over
when she found herself succumbed.
Years later, still on her way home
from the station, she wondered what
she had wanted with a wallet, anyway.
There is no way to parry ordinary disaster.
There are no odds worth playing.
Animal-stars from early motion-pictures
eat bonbons and wear feathered mules
in their trailers; the old-age home; the zoo.
What, on the other hand, will become
of you and I?
Side by side, the Studebakers inside us
ride along the Côte du Rhone,
our hair getting tangled in the violent wind of speed.
And how do you propose we un-knot
all these tangles? Not, I trust,
on the rocks below: brave souls pick
a hotel from the travel guide and go.
What do fools do? Don’t know.
Probably the same but badly.
Bombardiers stay home. Bombardiers
know too much of bombs to roam.
Still, it is a question of the result
of one’s actions. Mendel was a monk,
watching pea-pods, but had a wild effect
on pillow talk in centuries to follow;
mumblings of the pregnant engineer.
What do you get from a threesome of a tiger,
a scorpion, and a fly?
Bumble-bee.
How do you get a zebra? Mix a horse
and a tiger.
How you get a tiger? Mix a lion
with that same zebra from before.
Let us accept a rainy August day
as if it were a single, unlikely fabrication.
As if these movies had
never been on television before, as if we’d
never heard of Mamie Eisenhower,
as if her tiny bangs could still cause us to smile.
The recovering tree sloth hangs upside-down,
her three-toed feet hooked to the fat branch
above her as she lollingly observes
the tropic scene. Much, she muses,
to which we cling, turns out to be . . .
ah well. She’s lost her train of thought,
chewing a mild leaf and swinging gently
with the breeze.
Odds of the home-front; odds of the sun;
odds of a herringbone. Run, run, run.
Jennifer Michael Hecht
It is likely that someone
will be standing there at the end
of time, looking up at the fireball
or down at the organs of desire.
It won’t be us, but only because odds
are odds: uncanny, cranky, spare. Thus
we may conclude the world to be a safe
enough place. These are the cares
of the day, the age of probability
having replaced historic ne’er-do-wells
with numbers. As for us, we live in
surprise; why not share this mood
and facial disposition with some scion
of the future generation?
We spent our meditation-time instead
confessing. The exercise delivered
unexpected fruit. Perhaps we’ve better quarry
than the truth.
The fruit of all of this is
possession and release,
mango and bananas.
Especially bananas. Try expressing
to a friend, when next you are feeling
unglued or blue, say: I’m bananas. Explain
to others that your lover, while very
sweet and handsomely randy, is a mite bananas;
is bananas. With a meaningful look in your eye,
gesture an unpeeling.
It is your autobiography
you are living. The actor eating scampi
to my left says he is not yet off-book, but
will be. Folks, I am ever-so-slightly off-book;
Friends, I am bananas.
We parse the problem, nouning out the principle
players: friends, families, prospects. I interview
the possibility of a child;
ask it questions. Intone the word: Interested?
Then: Want to learn the word for widget?
Want to read Beowulf? Want to get named?
Shall we grin and bear it?
I admit, existence is where woeful
was conjured. Nonetheless, to recommend it,
there is Jell-O; average rainfall; the anchovy
app at Luna’s; and the fact that in the middle, many
change their minds on the whole shebang — get
a good one off in both directions. But you and I
are going to have to choose.
It is our autobiography
we are eating; you snooze you
lose. Still, in the midst of going too slowly,
all hell has been known to break loose.
A gang of snails attacks a tree sloth, steals her wallet.
Down at the station, police chief
questions: How’d they get ya?
Sloth says, I dunno, it all happened so fast.
Ain’t it the truth. All this wallowing
in the details of engagement
and when the battle comes,
it isn’t quite expected. It’s slower. Also,
over much too fast to make a fair
assessment. Lounging in her tea tree,
chewing leaves and dreaming, she sees
them: tiny, slimy things with spiral shells
and damp antennae that float like sea anemone
above their wet-tongue heads. She wonders
softly: Is it a moment for decision?
Shall I bolt or battle? Or better yet,
might this pass me by without regret?
It took days for the battalion
to cross the stretch of trunk and reach
her, yet she was still mulling it over
when she found herself succumbed.
Years later, still on her way home
from the station, she wondered what
she had wanted with a wallet, anyway.
There is no way to parry ordinary disaster.
There are no odds worth playing.
Animal-stars from early motion-pictures
eat bonbons and wear feathered mules
in their trailers; the old-age home; the zoo.
What, on the other hand, will become
of you and I?
Side by side, the Studebakers inside us
ride along the Côte du Rhone,
our hair getting tangled in the violent wind of speed.
And how do you propose we un-knot
all these tangles? Not, I trust,
on the rocks below: brave souls pick
a hotel from the travel guide and go.
What do fools do? Don’t know.
Probably the same but badly.
Bombardiers stay home. Bombardiers
know too much of bombs to roam.
Still, it is a question of the result
of one’s actions. Mendel was a monk,
watching pea-pods, but had a wild effect
on pillow talk in centuries to follow;
mumblings of the pregnant engineer.
What do you get from a threesome of a tiger,
a scorpion, and a fly?
Bumble-bee.
How do you get a zebra? Mix a horse
and a tiger.
How you get a tiger? Mix a lion
with that same zebra from before.
Let us accept a rainy August day
as if it were a single, unlikely fabrication.
As if these movies had
never been on television before, as if we’d
never heard of Mamie Eisenhower,
as if her tiny bangs could still cause us to smile.
The recovering tree sloth hangs upside-down,
her three-toed feet hooked to the fat branch
above her as she lollingly observes
the tropic scene. Much, she muses,
to which we cling, turns out to be . . .
ah well. She’s lost her train of thought,
chewing a mild leaf and swinging gently
with the breeze.
Odds of the home-front; odds of the sun;
odds of a herringbone. Run, run, run.
A poem I hope doesn't apply to me for years and years
In View of the Fact
by A. R. Ammons
The people of my time are passing away: my
wife is baking for a funeral, a 60-year-old who
died suddenly, when the phone rings, and it's
Ruth we care so much about in intensive care:
it was once weddings that came so thick and
fast, and then, first babies, such a hullabaloo:
now, it's this that and the other and somebody
else gone or on the brink: well, we never
thought we would live forever (although we did)
and now it looks like we won't: some of us
are losing a leg to diabetes, some don't know
what they went downstairs for, some know that
a hired watchful person is around, some like
to touch the cane tip into something steady,
so nice: we have already lost so many,
brushed the loss of ourselves ourselves: our
address books for so long a slow scramble now
are palimpsests, scribbles and scratches: our
index cards for Christmases, birthdays,
Halloweens drop clean away into sympathies:
at the same time we are getting used to so
many leaving, we are hanging on with a grip
to the ones left: we are not giving up on the
congestive heart failure or brain tumors, on
the nice old men left in empty houses or on
the widows who decide to travel a lot: we
think the sun may shine someday when we'll
drink wine together and think of what used to
be: until we die we will remember every
single thing, recall every word, love every
loss: then we will, as we must, leave it to
others to love, love that can grow brighter
and deeper till the very end, gaining strength
and getting more precious all the way. . . .
by A. R. Ammons
The people of my time are passing away: my
wife is baking for a funeral, a 60-year-old who
died suddenly, when the phone rings, and it's
Ruth we care so much about in intensive care:
it was once weddings that came so thick and
fast, and then, first babies, such a hullabaloo:
now, it's this that and the other and somebody
else gone or on the brink: well, we never
thought we would live forever (although we did)
and now it looks like we won't: some of us
are losing a leg to diabetes, some don't know
what they went downstairs for, some know that
a hired watchful person is around, some like
to touch the cane tip into something steady,
so nice: we have already lost so many,
brushed the loss of ourselves ourselves: our
address books for so long a slow scramble now
are palimpsests, scribbles and scratches: our
index cards for Christmases, birthdays,
Halloweens drop clean away into sympathies:
at the same time we are getting used to so
many leaving, we are hanging on with a grip
to the ones left: we are not giving up on the
congestive heart failure or brain tumors, on
the nice old men left in empty houses or on
the widows who decide to travel a lot: we
think the sun may shine someday when we'll
drink wine together and think of what used to
be: until we die we will remember every
single thing, recall every word, love every
loss: then we will, as we must, leave it to
others to love, love that can grow brighter
and deeper till the very end, gaining strength
and getting more precious all the way. . . .
See? Poems CAN be funny
The Poets March on Washington
by James Cummins
What do we want?
Immortality!
When do we want it?
Now!
What do we want?
Immortality!
When do we want it?
Now!
What do we want?
Immortality!
When do we want it?
Now
by James Cummins
What do we want?
Immortality!
When do we want it?
Now!
What do we want?
Immortality!
When do we want it?
Now!
What do we want?
Immortality!
When do we want it?
Now
Shoebox/Fort Knox/equinox
I Want to Be Your Shoebox
by Catherine Bowman
(Memphis Minnie’s classic blues line “I want to be your chauffer” was miscopied in an early Folkways recording song transcription as “I want to be your shoebox.”)
I want to be your shoebox
I want to be your Fort Knox
I want to be your equinox
I want to be your paradox
I want to be your pair of socks
I want to be your paradise
I want to be your pack of lies
I want to be your snake eyes
I want to be your Mac with fries
I want to be your moonlit estuary
I want to be your day missing in February
I want to be your floating dock dairy
I want to be your pocket handkerchief
I want to be your mischief
I want to be your slow pitch
I want to be your fable without a moral
Under a table of black elm I want to be your Indiana morel
Casserole. Your drum roll. Your trompe l'oeil
I want to be your biscuits
I want to be your business
I want to be your beeswax
I want to be your milk money
I want to be your Texas Apiary honey
I want to be your Texas. Honey
I want to be your cheap hotel
I want to be your lipstick by Chanel
I want to be your secret passage
All written in Braille. I want to be
All the words you can't spell
I want to be your International
House of Pancakes. I want to be your reel after reel
Of rough takes. I want to be your Ouija board
I want to be your slum-lord. Hell
I want to be your made-to-order smorgasbord
I want to be your autobahn
I want to be your Audubon
I want to be your Chinese bug radical
I want to be your brand new set of radials
I want to be your old-time radio
I want to be your pro and your con
I want to be your Sunday morning ritual
(Demons be gone!) Your constitutional
Your habitual—
I want to be your Tinkertoy
Man, I want to be your best boy
I want to be your chauffeur
I want to be your chauf-
feur, your shofar, I want to be your go for
Your go far, your offer, your counter-offer
your two-by-four
I want to be your out and in door
I want to be your song: daily, nocturnal—
I want to be your nightingale
I want to be your dog's tail
by Catherine Bowman
(Memphis Minnie’s classic blues line “I want to be your chauffer” was miscopied in an early Folkways recording song transcription as “I want to be your shoebox.”)
I want to be your shoebox
I want to be your Fort Knox
I want to be your equinox
I want to be your paradox
I want to be your pair of socks
I want to be your paradise
I want to be your pack of lies
I want to be your snake eyes
I want to be your Mac with fries
I want to be your moonlit estuary
I want to be your day missing in February
I want to be your floating dock dairy
I want to be your pocket handkerchief
I want to be your mischief
I want to be your slow pitch
I want to be your fable without a moral
Under a table of black elm I want to be your Indiana morel
Casserole. Your drum roll. Your trompe l'oeil
I want to be your biscuits
I want to be your business
I want to be your beeswax
I want to be your milk money
I want to be your Texas Apiary honey
I want to be your Texas. Honey
I want to be your cheap hotel
I want to be your lipstick by Chanel
I want to be your secret passage
All written in Braille. I want to be
All the words you can't spell
I want to be your International
House of Pancakes. I want to be your reel after reel
Of rough takes. I want to be your Ouija board
I want to be your slum-lord. Hell
I want to be your made-to-order smorgasbord
I want to be your autobahn
I want to be your Audubon
I want to be your Chinese bug radical
I want to be your brand new set of radials
I want to be your old-time radio
I want to be your pro and your con
I want to be your Sunday morning ritual
(Demons be gone!) Your constitutional
Your habitual—
I want to be your Tinkertoy
Man, I want to be your best boy
I want to be your chauffeur
I want to be your chauf-
feur, your shofar, I want to be your go for
Your go far, your offer, your counter-offer
your two-by-four
I want to be your out and in door
I want to be your song: daily, nocturnal—
I want to be your nightingale
I want to be your dog's tail
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