I have written a couple of poems about trees
poems about trees and snakes and lakes and birds
poems about nature and life in New England
I write crappy poems and eat babies
if you like poems about trees you’ re in for a treat
when I get nervous I get hyper and bump into people
I read to them what MapQuest gave me
round during then in the mom seeker panties
to help me narrow down the slut thing word jobs
rawr I’ m too stupid to be able to make my point clear
For example, I wrote my first poem in 1976 about being in the Vermont house
after my mother’ s death; she died the year before;
she loved that house. My father said he kept having moments
of thinking she must have just stepped outside for a minute
to weed the garden or to walk just a little way
along Prospect Street, for a few minutes only and now
almost now she’ d be coming back, we’ d hear the screen door,
Bev would be back and saying something casual about —
That's what misery is,
Nothing to have at heart.
It is to have or nothing.
It is a thing to have,
A lion, an ox in his breast,
To feel it breathing there.
Corazon, stout dog,
Young ox, bow-legged bear,
He tastes its blood, not spit.
He is like a man
In the body of a violent beast.
Its muscles are his own...
The lion sleeps in the sun.
Its nose is on its paws.
It can kill a man.
Poetry rejoices even if the culture dies,
over the girl with her first electric, how her high,
thin voice, amplified many times
over by the loudspeaker, is like a giant's
in the green grass of the festival site.
Over the fragile bells of digitalis, how they hide
the pistil and the pollen inside.
Rejoices over rain on the Faroe Islands,
over rendezvous on the Champs-Elysées at evening.
It rejoices over Japan, over Korea,
over arts refined over a thousand years —
the art of swordsmanship, or of drinking tea.
It had better been hidden
But the Poets inform:
We are chattel and liege
Of an undying Worm.
Were you, Will, disheartened,
When all Stratford’ s gentry
Left their Queen and took service
In his low-lying country?
How many white cities
And grey fleets on the storm
Have proud-builded, hard-battled,
For this undying Worm?
loquitur the sparrow in the Zoo
No bars are set too close, no mesh too fine
To keep me from the eagle and the lion,
Whom keepers feed that I may freely dine.
This goes to show that if you have the wit
To be small, common, cute, and live on shit,
Though the cage fret kings, you may make free with it.
September 1956
In a famous painting of a founding father
and the back end of a horse
it’ s the horse butt that’ s properly lit
groomed out smooth an immortal peach
Who can say what it means about revolution
that the horse’ s tail emerges as though it had no bones in it
no chunky mechanics of the living
And the horse is not well muscled
but has been living in the rich grass
swollen like a birthday balloon
This is what he dreams of:
a map of burned land,
a mound of dirt
in the early century’ s winter.
A map of burned land?
A country is razed
in the early century’ s winter.
And God descends.
A country is raised
because of industry.
And God descends,
messengers rush inside
because of industry,
in spite of diplomats.
Messengers rush inside
to haunt the darkened aisles.
In spite of diplomats,
the witnesses know well
to haunt the darkened aisles,
experimentally —
Polly put the kettle on,
Polly put the kettle on,
Polly put the kettle on,
We'll all have tea.
Sukey take it off again,
Sukey take it off again,
Sukey take it off again,
They've all gone away.
Polly put the kettle on,
Polly put the kettle on,
Polly put the kettle on,
We'll all have tea.
Suki take it off again,
Suki take it off again,
Suki take it off again,
They've all gone away.
Polly put the kettle on,
Polly put the kettle on,
Polly put the kettle on,
We'll all have tea.
Suki take it off again,
Suki take it off again,
Suki take it off again,
They've all gone away.
