Ice Handler

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1. Blue Island Intersection SIX street ends come together here. They feed people and wagons into the center. In and out all day horses with thoughts of nose-bags, Men with shovels, women with baskets and baby buggies. Six ends of streets and no sleep for them all day. The people and wagons come and go, out and in. Triangles […]...
2. Clark Street Bridge DUST of the feet And dust of the wheels, Wagons and people going, All day feet and wheels. Now. . . . . Only stars and mist A lonely policeman, Two cabaret dancers, Stars and mist again, No more feet or wheels, No more dust and wagons. Voices of dollars And drops of blood . […]...
3. The Song of Quoodle They haven’t got no noses, The fallen sons of Eve; Even the smell of roses Is not what they supposes; But more than mind discloses And more than men believe. They haven’t got no noses, They cannot even tell When door and darkness closes The park a Jew encloses, Where even the law of Moses […]...
4. Clean Curtains NEW neighbors came to the corner house at Congress and Green streets. The look of their clean white curtains was the same as the rim of a nun’s bonnet. One way was an oyster pail factory, one way they made candy, one way paper boxes, strawboard cartons. The warehouse trucks shook the dust of the […]...
5. High Conspiratorial Person OUT of the testimony of such reluctant lips, out of the oaths and mouths of such scrupulous liars, out of perjurers whose hands swore by God to the white sun before all men, Out of a rag saturated with smears and smuts gathered from the footbaths of kings and the loin cloths of whores, from […]...
6. Telegram I SAW a telegram handed a two hundred pound man at a desk. And the little scrap of paper charged the air like a set of crystals in a chemist’s tube to a whispering pinch of salt. Cross my heart, the two hundred pound man had just cracked a joke about a new hat he […]...
7. The Ballad Of A Bachelor Listen, ladies, while I sing The ballad of John Henry King. John Henry was a bachelor, His age was thirty-three or four. Two maids for his affection vied, And each desired to be his bride, And bravely did they strive to bring Unto their feet John Henry King. John Henry liked them both so well, […]...
8. When Gassy Thompson Struck It Rich He paid a Swede twelve bits an hour Just to invent a fancy style To spread the celebration paint So it would show at least a mile. Some things they did I will not tell. They’re not quite proper for a rhyme. But I will say Yim Yonson Swede Did sure invent a sunflower time. […]...
9. Main Street (For S. M. L.) I like to look at the blossomy track of the moon upon the sea, But it isn’t half so fine a sight as Main Street used to be When it all was covered over with a couple of feet of snow, And over the crisp and radiant road the ringing sleighs […]...
10. The Drunkard's Funeral “Yes,” said the sister with the little pinched face, The busy little sister with the funny little tract: – “This is the climax, the grand fifth act. There rides the proud, at the finish of his race. There goes the hearse, the mourners cry, The respectable hearse goes slowly by. The wife of the dead […]...
11. Crabapple Blossoms SOMEBODY’S little girl-how easy to make a sob story over who she was once and who she is now. Somebody’s little girl-she played once under a crab-apple tree in June and the blossoms fell on the dark hair. It was somewhere on the Erie line and the town was Salamanca or Painted Post or Horse’s […]...
12. The Ballad Of The Northern Lights One of the Down and Out that’s me. Stare at me well, ay, stare! Stare and shrink say! you wouldn’t think that I was a millionaire. Look at my face, it’s crimped and gouged one of them death-mask things; Don’t seem the sort of man, do I, as might be the pal of kings? Slouching […]...
13. Straw in the Street Straw in the street where I pass to-day Dulls the sound of the wheels and feet. ‘Tis for a failing life they lay Straw in the street. Here, where the pulses of London beat, Someone strives with the Presence grey; Ah, is it victory or defeat? The hurrying people go their way, Pause and jostle […]...
14. The Shovel Man ON the street Slung on his shoulder is a handle half way across, Tied in a big knot on the scoop of cast iron Are the overalls faded from sun and rain in the ditches; Spatter of dry clay sticking yellow on his left sleeve And a flimsy shirt open at the throat, I know […]...
15. The Quality Of Sprawl Sprawl is the quality Of the man who cut down his Rolls-Royce Into a farm utility truck, and sprawl Is what the company lacked when it made repeated efforts To buy the vehicle back and repair its image. Sprawl is doing your farm work by aeroplane, roughly, Or driving a hitchhiker that extra hundred miles […]...
16. Localities WAGON WHEEL GAP is a place I never saw And Red Horse Gulch and the chutes of Cripple Creek. Red-shirted miners picking in the sluices, Gamblers with red neckties in the night streets, The fly-by-night towns of Bull Frog and Skiddoo, The night-cool limestone white of Death Valley, The straight drop of eight hundred feet […]...
17. Real Estate News ARMOUR AVENUE was the name of this street and door signs on empty houses read “The Silver Dollar,” “Swede Annie” and the Christian names of madams such as “Myrtle” and “Jenny.” Scrap iron, rags and bottles fill the front rooms hither and yon and signs in Yiddish say Abe Kaplan & Co. are running junk […]...
18. In The Naked Bed, In Plato's Cave In the naked bed, in Plato’s cave, Reflected headlights slowly slid the wall, Carpenters hammered under the shaded window, Wind troubled the window curtains all night long, A fleet of trucks strained uphill, grinding, Their freights covered, as usual. The ceiling lightened again, the slanting diagram Slid slowly forth. Hearing the milkman’s clop, His striving […]...
19. PORTRAITS FROM MEMORY I Through my bedroom window The coal carts jolted over the cobbles A slow heavy rhythm full, Light and fast returning empty. The coal office manager was a dwarf With sixty year old skin On a ten year old’s body and Hornrims on a wizened wizard’s face. The enormous shire horses neighed In warning if […]...
20. Finis Now it’s over, and now it’s done; Why does everything look the same? Just as bright, the unheeding sun, Can’t it see that the parting came? People hurry and work and swear, Laugh and grumble and die and wed, Ponder what they will eat and wear, Don’t they know that our love is dead? Just […]...
21. Vehicles This is a place on the way after the distances can no longer be kept straight here in this dark corner Of the barn a mound of wheels has convened along raveling courses to stop in a single moment And lie down as still as the chariots of the Pharaohs some in pairs that rolled […]...
22. Potions The old woman made mint Candy for the children Who’d bolt through her front door, Silhouettes of the great blue Heron. She sold ten-dollar potions From a half-lit kitchen. Chinese boxes Furnished with fliers & sinkers. Sassafras & lizard tongues. They’d walk out Of the woods or drive in from cities, Clutching lovesick dollar bills […]...
23. Among Those Killed In The Dawn Raid Was A Man Aged A Hundred When the morning was waking over the war He put on his clothes and stepped out and he died, The locks yawned loose and a blast blew them wide, He dropped where he loved on the burst pavement stone And the funeral grains of the slaughtered floor. Tell his street on its back he stopped […]...
24. A Teamster's Farewell Sobs En Route to a Penitentiary GOOD-BY now to the streets and the clash of wheels and Locking hubs, The sun coming on the brass buckles and harness knobs. The muscles of the horses sliding under their heavy Haunches, Good-by now to the traffic policeman and his whistle, The smash of the iron hoof on […]...
25. Savoir Faire CAST a bronze of my head and legs and put them on the king’s street. Set the cast of me here alongside Carl XII, making two Carls for the Swedish people and the utlanders to look at between the palace and the Grand Hotel. The summer sun will shine on both the Carls, and November […]...
26. A Quick One Before I Go There comes a time in every man’s life When he thinks: I have never had a single Original thought in my life Including this one & therefore I shall Eliminate all ideas from my poems Which shall consist of cats, rice, rain Baseball cards, fire escapes, hanging plants Red brick houses where I shall give […]...
27. Don Quixote The knight of immortal youth At the age of fifty found his mind in his heart And on July morning went out to capture The right, the beautiful, the just. Facing him a world of silly and arrogant giants, He on his sad but brave Rocinante. I know what it means to be longing for […]...
28. Would You Believe It? One year ago I wished that I A banker great might be With a hundred million dollars And financial majesty; A mighty Wall Street banker With a whopping lot of power And an income of somewhere around A thousand plunks per hour; A solid Wall Street banker With securities in sacks And with clever men […]...
29. Buffalo Bill BOY heart of Johnny Jones-aching to-day? Aching, and Buffalo Bill in town? Buffalo Bill and ponies, cowboys, Indians? Some of us know All about it, Johnny Jones. Buffalo Bill is a slanting look of the eyes, A slanting look under a hat on a horse. He sits on a horse and a passing look is […]...
30. Solomon To Sheba Sang Solomon to Sheba, And kissed her dusky face, ‘All day long from mid-day We have talked in the one place, All day long from shadowless noon We have gone round and round In the narrow theme of love Like a old horse in a pound.’ To Solomon sang Sheba, Plated on his knees, ‘If […]...
31. A Joyful Song Of Five Come, let us all sing very high And all sing very loud And keep on singing in the street Until there’s quite a crowd; And keep on singing in the house And up and down the stairs; Then underneath the furniture Let’s all play Polar bears; And crawl about with doormats on, And growl and […]...
32. The Brain is wider than the Sky The Brain is wider than the Sky For put them side by side The one the other will contain With ease and You beside The Brain is deeper than the sea For hold them Blue to Blue The one the other will absorb As Sponges Buckets do The Brain is just the weight of God […]...
33. The Flower-Fed Buffaloes THE flower-fed buffaloes of the spring In the days of long ago, Ranged where the locomotives sing And the prarie flowers lie low: The tossing, blooming, perfumed grass Is swept away by wheat, Wheels and wheels and wheels spin by In the spring that still is sweet. But the flower-fed buffaloes of the spring Left […]...
34. Carlovingian Dreams COUNT these reminiscences like money. The Greeks had their picnics under another name. The Romans wore glad rags and told their neighbors, “What of it?” The Carlovingians hauling logs on carts, they too Stuck their noses in the air and stuck their thumbs to their noses And tasted life as a symphonic dream of fresh […]...
35. Crumbling is not an instant's Act Crumbling is not an instant’s Act A fundamental pause Dilapidation’s processes Are organized Decays. ‘Tis first a Cobweb on the Soul A Cuticle of Dust A Borer in the Axis An Elemental Rust Ruin is formal Devil’s work Consecutive and slow Fail in an instant, no man did Slipping is Crash’s law....
36. Jones's Porvate Argyment That air same Jones, which lived in Jones, He had this pint about him: He’d swear with a hundred sighs and groans, That farmers MUST stop gittin’ loans, And git along without ’em: That bankers, warehousemen, and sich Was fatt’nin’ on the planter, And Tennessy was rotten-rich A-raisin’ meat and corn, all which Draw’d money […]...
37. Jungheimer's In western fields of corn and northern timber lands, They talk about me, a saloon with a soul, The soft red lights, the long curving bar, The leather seats and dim corners, Tall brass spittoons, a nigger cutting ham, And the painting of a woman half-dressed thrown reckless across a bed after a night of […]...
38. The Twenty Hoss-Power Shay You have heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay That was built in such a logical way It ran a hundred years to a day. And then, of a sudden, it up and bust, And all that was left was a mound of dust? Holmes-O. W.-told it well In a rhyme of his-what there was to […]...
39. Graceland TOMB of a millionaire, A multi-millionaire, ladies and gentlemen, Place of the dead where they spend every year The usury of twenty-five thousand dollars For upkeep and flowers To keep fresh the memory of the dead. The merchant prince gone to dust Commanded in his written will Over the signed name of his last testament […]...
40. This heart that broke so long This heart that broke so long These feet that never flagged This faith that watched for star in vain, Give gently to the dead Hound cannot overtake the Hare That fluttered panting, here Nor any schoolboy rob the nest Tenderness builded there....