All night the sound had
come back again,
and again falls
this quiet, persistent rain.
What am I to myself
that must be remembered,
insisted upon
so often? Is it
that never the ease,
even the hardness,
of rain falling
will have for me
something other than this,
something not so insistent —
am I to be locked in this
final uneasiness.
Love, if you love me,
lie next to me.
Be for me, like rain,
the getting out
It ends badly, this glass of wine,
before you drink it
you have to drink a prior glass,
before you sip you gulp,
before you chug the bottle
you pour it down your throat,
before we lie together
naked, we divorce, before we rest
we grow old, it ends in chaos,
but it is delicious,
when we wake it is the past,
we are the faces staring
from the high lit window,
the unmet lovers, the rivals
who do not exist,
united in a radiance
that will not fade at dawn.
The Rajah had a secret, he had green hair,
So he always wore a hat, so that no one would stare.
No one knew his secret in all the land,
Except his barber, who said it looked grand.
Gopal never told a soul, for many a year,
So he went to the forest, out of fear.
He told the tallest tree: 'You must believe me,
The Rajah wears a hat to hide his bright green hair.'
What dire offence from am'rous causes springs,
What mighty contests rise from trivial things,
I sing — This verse to Caryl, Muse! is due:
This, ev'n Belinda may vouchsafe to view:
Slight is the subject, but not so the praise,
If she inspire, and he approve my lays.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore —
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’ Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door —
Only this and nothing more.”
Let’ s not wrestle with water
anymore —
Enters until we flexible
in its acceptance
Persistent in entering
through green or brown windowpanes
jagged from years of sun
Lights out
across the street yr candle
dances still or
flashlight we send
signals
interrupted by slinging branches
Tonight is O. K. —
after all
you walk by the window
tip yr head at the orange sky blue lightning
partially our rainbow
Groping along the tunnel, step by step,
He winked his prying torch with patching glare
From side to side, and sniffed the unwholesome air.
Tins, boxes, bottles, shapes and too vague to know;
A mirror smashed, the mattress from a bed;
And he, exploring fifty feet below
The rosy gloom of battle overhead.
My life is vile
I hate it so
I’ ll wait awhile
And then I’ ll go.
Why wait at all?
Hope springs alive,
Good may befall
I yet may thrive.
It is because I can’ t make up my mind
If God is good, impotent or unkind.
There is a wall of which the stones
Are lies and bribes and dead men's bones.
And wrongfully this evil wall
Denies what all men made for all,
And shamelessly this wall surrounds
Our homesteads and our native grounds.
Sometimes I sit in my blue chair trying to remember
what it was like in the spring of 1950
before the burning coal entered my life.
I study my red hand under the faucet, the left one
below the grease line consisting of four feminine angels
and one crooked broken masculine one
and the right one lying on top of the white porcelain
with skin wrinkled up like a chicken's
beside the razor and the silver tap.
