Poetry & Poets

Money and fame break in the room
And find the poet all alone.
They lock the door, so he won’ t run,
And turn the radio full-on
And beat the poor dope like a drum.

Thanks for the violence. Thanks for Walt’ s rude muscle
pushing through the grass, for tiny Gulliver crushed
between the giant’ s breasts. Thanks for Moby’ s triangular hump
and Ahab’ s castrated leg. Thanks for the harpoons.
Thanks for this PBS history of the automatic pistol.

They love me so muchthey have imagined me dead because they fear the loss of my genius above all elseHow literarylike Huck FinnEveryone will be weeping
The Desultory Slut
Do you have one of my books to sign?
Oh nocan you please sign here?
Isn’ t it greatThe old bastard finally kicked

Ta daaa!

Wait, I’ m not dead at all. Here I am. It was all a mistake
Do you realize what this means? This means we’ re free
He’ s dead, he’ s dead. Our enemy is finally dead

one comes to language from afar, the ear
fears for its sound-barriers —

but one “comes”; the language “comes” for
The Beckoning Fair One

plant you now, dig you
later, the plaint stirs winter
earth…

air in a hornet’ s nest
over the water makes a
solid, six-sided music…

a few utterly quiet scenes, things
are very far away — “form
is emptiness”

comely, comely, love trembles

and the sweet-shrub

John Gordon Boyd
died on the birthday
of three remarkable, and remarkably different, writers:
Heinrich Heine, Kenneth Patchen, Ross McDonald

John, too, was just as remarkable, blessed with an inherent “graciousness”
and with extraordinary eyes & ears…

I think of two texts
on the grievous occasion of his death:

“Religion does not help me.
The faith that others give to what is unseen,
I give to what I can touch, and look at.
My Gods dwell in temples
made with hands.”
— Oscar Wilde, in De Profundis

Nice spring day off big white cloud
At Inspiration Point escaping time wars
Poet takes book & wine bottle up into Mist Mountains

Since only available agenda is rhyming with silence
Seeking window of opportunity on a wall
I disguise what I have to say by sounding Chinese

Such as stars are now darker and farther away
They take deeper drinks because space is
Drying out afraid to think own thoughts

Once upon a time
I caught a little rhyme

I set it on the floor
but it ran right out the door

I chased it on my bicycle
but it melted to an icicle

I scooped it up in my hat
but it turned into a cat

I caught it by the tail
but it stretched into a whale

I followed it in a boat
but it changed into a goat

When I fed it tin and paper
it became a tall skyscraper

Then it grew into a kite
and flew far out of sight...

“Breadth. Circle. Desert. Monarch. Month. Wisdom. (for which there are
No rhymes)” was just the title, and I only read that far.

That was because I felt like some old agent-of-the-Czar
When a new plotter swims within the scope of his exertions,
And I was scared this hothead would start hedging his assertions
Before I had him dead-to-rights. (A Chekan’ s or a SMERSHian’ s
Lot, you know, is not an happy one.) He might retract.

I wonder what the Greeks kept in these comicstrip canisters.
Plums, milletseed, incense, henna, oregano.
Speak to me, trove. Tell me you contained dried smoked tongue once.
Or a sorcerer or a cosmetologist’ s powders and unguents.
And when John Keats looked at you in a collection of pots
it was poetry at first sight: quotable beautiful
teleological concatenations of thoughts.

Ginsberg, Ginsberg, burning bright,
Taunter of the ultra right,
What blink of the Buddha’ s eye
Chose the day for you to die?

Queer pied piper, howling wild,
Mantra-minded flower child,
Queen of Maytime, misrule’ s lord
Bawling, Drop out! All aboard!

Finger-cymbaled, chanting Om,
Foe of fascist, bane of bomb,
Proper poets’ thorn-in-side,
Turner of a whole time’ s tide,