'Tis time this heart should be unmoved,
Since others it hath ceased to move:
Yet though I cannot be beloved,
Still let me love!
My days are in the yellow leaf;
The flowers and fruits of Love are gone;
The worm — the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone!
It needn’ t be tinder, this juncture of the year,
a cigarette second guessed from car to brush.
The woods’ parchment is given
to cracking asunder the first puff of wind.
Yesterday a big sycamore came across First
and Hawthorne and is there yet.
I think it is interesting
though not exactly amusing
how we go from day to day
with no money. How do we
do it, friends ask, suspecting
we really have some stash
stacked away somewhere.
But we certainly do not
and we also do not know
how we do it either.
You sure are lucky,
some of our friends say. I am
none too sure of that though,
as I wait for the winning
lottery numbers to be announced
on CKLW. Thursday in Detroit
is the day of dreams. We have
been dreaming of a place
Above the freeway, over the music,
we speak of the strategy of poems,
bleeding wives who ulcerate
our voices rhythming in the cut-heat
Portland stink from the Willamette River;
arteries of smog fixate this place
in each recording, music, music, on Impulse.
This little racist community has few friends;
thousands of deerslayers hum into Beaverton,
the one talk show driven out for their talk
"I like white ones."
"Here are two."
"I like black."
"But there are so few."
"I want pink ones."
"Two for you."
"I like orange."
"What shall we do-
There isn't an orange,
I've looked them through."
"Awwww."
"Wait! here's a red,
And a yellow too-
That'll make orange
When you get through."
Into her mother’ s bedroom to wash the ballooning body.
“My mother is jelly-hearted and she has a brain of jelly:
Sweet, quiver-soft, irrelevant. Not essential.
Only a habit would cry if she should die.
A pleasant sort of fool without the least iron....
Are you better, mother, do you think it will come today?”
The stretched yellow rag that was Jessie Mitchell’ s mother
Jesus Christ is risen to-day, Halle-halle-lujah.
Our triumphant Holy day,
Who so lately on the Cross
Suffered to redeem our loss.
Haste ye females from your fright,
Take to Galilee your flight;
To his sad disciples say,
Jesus Christ is risen to-day.
In our Paschal joy and feast
Let the Lord of life be blest;
Let the Holy Trine be praised,
And thankful hearts to heaven be raised.
Sometimes I wish I were still out
on the back porch, drinking jet fuel
with the boys, getting louder and louder
as the empty cans drop out of our paws
like booster rockets falling back to Earth
Your jewel box of white balsa strips
and bleached green Czechoslovakian rushes
stands open where you keep it shelved
in the bathroom. Morning and evening
I see you comb its seawrack tangle of shell,
stone, wood, glass, metal, bone, seed
for the bracelet, earring, necklace, brooch
or ring you need. Here's brass from Nepal,
there was a remember when the mama was my girl
the mama was in my girl biding to turn
my girl turn mama when what I got turn to girl in her
my girl in my girl make my girl mama
they both mine
all three
I remember a when when I only dreamed dreams
but my dreams are remembers now
they a when
