Poetry & Poets

I was born in Boston in
1949. I never wanted
this fact to be known, in
fact I’ ve spent the better
half of my adult life
trying to sweep my early
years under the carpet
and have a life that
was clearly just mine
and independent of
the historic fate of
my family. Can you
imagine what it was
like to be one of them,
to be built like them,
to talk like them
to have the benefits
of being born into such
a wealthy and powerful
American family. I went
to the best schools,

Please! Keep
reading me
Blake
because you’ re going to make
me the greatest
poet of
all time

Keep smoothing
the stones in the
driveway
let me fry an egg
on your ass
& I’ ll pick up
the mail.

I feel your
absence in
the morning
& imagine your
instant mouth
let me move
in with you —
Travelling
wrapping your limbs
on my back
I grow man woman
Child
I see wild wild wild

Soon I shall take more
I will get more light
and I'll know what I think
about that

All things belie me, I think, but I
look at them though. Well boys, at
least you’ re not dead, right? What’ s
the date today? Until something. What?
Of the lady of the whitening blow.
I’ m ashamed to keep on babbling
as if I’ ve always been oneself,
diamond flow through. Humble
flannel skeleton. Grin, laugh unbecoming
Living at the bottom of the water may
have been obvious all the time. But
I forget. What’ s my plot? Hand
of a child, paw of an animal. Paint
it red & make a pawprint in the psalter.

It was a poem
men took because it said ovary

didn’ t take my
political poems
they took the one that said ovary

Are you sure it was because it
said ovary?

Yes, for them that’ s logical.

---------------------------

Destroy another
city
What
else
is war for? So

you’ ll go down
each of you does. dies in
whirlwind

she doesn’ t wear
costume jewelry
& she knew that walt disney
was/is making a fortune off
false-eyelashes and that time magazine is the
authority on the knee/grow.
her makeup is total-real.

breath,
life after seven decades plus three years
is a lot of breathing. seventy three years on this
earth is a lot of taking in and giving out, is a
life of coming from somewhere and for many a bunch
of going nowhere.

how do we celebrate a poet who has created
music with words for over fifty years, who has
showered magic on her people, who has redefined
poetry into a black world exactness
thereby giving the universe an insight into
darkroads?

on thoth’ s tits
From Sonnet 75 (“So are you to my thoughts as food to life”)

A groovy day, a fish fillet, an elf hair,
A cosmonaut, a microdot, a hoedown,
A trusty door, the finest whore on welfare,
A neocon who’ s keeping on the lowdown,

A purple fist, a Federalist, a sunspot,
A bird that’ s got a big big butt to study,
A guy named Toots, ten dumb galoots, a gunshot,
Die Fledermaus by good ol’ Strauss (my buddy),

Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of his audience
the poet like an acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making

This poem is concerned with language on a very plain level.
Look at it talking to you. You look out a window
Or pretend to fidget. You have it but you don’ t have it.
You miss it, it misses you. You miss each other.

The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot.
What’ s a plain level? It is that and other things,
Bringing a system of them into play. Play?
Well, actually, yes, but I consider play to be