Getting at the Really True Number
No water-drinker ever wrote a poem that lasted. –Horace
Our wearisome calculations have
ended the blue ( ) results may
only be farmed by nuns and water-
drinkers ( ) tolerant
in the long dream.
You cultivate indoor plants
we laugh, deathless. Until
the translation, meaning
molested. Hark!
Seventy!
(I used a prompt suggested by Robin at Kelli Russell Agodon's very cool Book of Kells.)
07 April 2011
06 April 2011
A Break from Our Sponsor
That is, this is a break from me. I want to honor another who is writing a poem a day for this month, only his poem-a-day consists of one (lonely, ebullient, zen) word. Barwin, Gary, whose work I totally dig. I guess I'll eventually add his Serif of Nottingblog to the blog roll, though it doesn't seem fair because is he really working as hard as Robin, Charlie and Ada and those nice grad students at Rutgers?
All's fair in love, war, and art.
Today, his word is ... hmmm, actually, you'll have to check it out.
All's fair in love, war, and art.
Today, his word is ... hmmm, actually, you'll have to check it out.
03 April 2011
Thanatology in April
Thanatology
Speaking personally I ask simply that I be sped
to the county morgue in an old gold convertible
Caddy propped against a guitar—the one
I can’t play. Speaking personally I request
that I be donated to arts, not science. Speaking
I ask to be wheeled to the crematorium in a red wagon
yanked by neighborhood tots who haven’t learned
to fear deadness here. I demand the Marseillaise be
sung immediately upon my demise, my tongue snipped
and buried far back in a spot that is no garden, hardly
in nature, my brown body painted blue, my gray dyed,
nails vamp, hands holding a manifesto. Any manifesto.
Except the futurists'! Crazy bastards! Personally I
ask to be firmly lassoed to the Vermont mountainside
and left for wolves’ delectation. Unless they want cake.
But first (first!) get me to the city hospital to be plumped
fat with air, plugged into heart and lung machines so
I'm back just a minute to call my Katie, tell her what
happened and how they all are, there on the other side,
and who I shared a cigarette with, thinking it over, saying
little, little, less, tired of it, tired but finally able.
Speaking personally I ask simply that I be sped
to the county morgue in an old gold convertible
Caddy propped against a guitar—the one
I can’t play. Speaking personally I request
that I be donated to arts, not science. Speaking
I ask to be wheeled to the crematorium in a red wagon
yanked by neighborhood tots who haven’t learned
to fear deadness here. I demand the Marseillaise be
sung immediately upon my demise, my tongue snipped
and buried far back in a spot that is no garden, hardly
in nature, my brown body painted blue, my gray dyed,
nails vamp, hands holding a manifesto. Any manifesto.
Except the futurists'! Crazy bastards! Personally I
ask to be firmly lassoed to the Vermont mountainside
and left for wolves’ delectation. Unless they want cake.
But first (first!) get me to the city hospital to be plumped
fat with air, plugged into heart and lung machines so
I'm back just a minute to call my Katie, tell her what
happened and how they all are, there on the other side,
and who I shared a cigarette with, thinking it over, saying
little, little, less, tired of it, tired but finally able.
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