Pennsylvania

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1. The Pennsylvania Disaster ‘Twas in the year of 1889, and in the month of June, Ten thousand people met with a fearful doom, By the bursting of a dam in Pennsylvania State, And were burned, and drowned by the flood oh! pity their fate! The embankment of the dam was considered rather weak, And by the swelled body […]...
2. Memoir of a Proud Boy HE lived on the wings of storm. The ashes are in Chihuahua. Out of Ludlow and coal towns in Colorado Sprang a vengeance of Slav miners, Italians, Scots, Cornishmen, Yanks. Killings ran under the spoken commands of this boy With eighty men and rifles on a hogback mountain. They killed swearing to remember The shot […]...
3. 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 […]...
4. The Helmet All the way On the road to Gary He could see Where the sky shone Just out of reach And smell the rich Smell of work As strong as money, But when he got there The night was over. People were going To work and back, The sidewalks were lakes No one walked on, The […]...
5. What Work Is We stand in the rain in a long line Waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work. You know what work is if you’re Old enough to read this you know what Work is, although you may not do it. Forget you. This is about waiting, Shifting from one foot to another. Feeling the light rain […]...
6. The Abortion Somebody who should have been born Is gone. Just as the earth puckered its mouth, Each bud puffing out from its knot, I changed my shoes, and then drove south. Up past the Blue Mountains, where Pennsylvania humps on endlessly, Wearing, like a crayoned cat, its green hair, Its roads sunken in like a gray […]...
7. 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 […]...
8. 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 […]...
9. Out Of The Arm Of One Love out of the arm of one love And into the arms of another I have been saved from dying on the cross By a lady who smokes pot Writes songs and stories And is much kinder than the last, Much much kinder, And the sex is just as good or better. It isn’t pleasant to […]...
10. I WILL NOT EAT MY POEM I kill for pleasure Not for gain. A man much more Than you my hands Find knives & flash them. I am guilty In my works While in their eyes I seek redemption. I find myself Forgotten Angry at the thought Of bread. I will not Eat my poem(A. Artaud) Much less be raped By […]...
11. To the East and to the West TO the East and to the West; To the man of the Seaside State, and of Pennsylvania, To the Kanadian of the North-to the Southerner I love; These, with perfect trust, to depict you as myself-the germs are in all men; I believe the main purport of These States is to found a superb friendship, […]...
12. Fog Portrait RINGS of iron gray smoke; a woman’s steel face… looking… looking. Funnels of an ocean liner negotiating a fog night; pouring a taffy mass down the wind; layers of soot on the top deck; a taffrail… and a woman’s steel face… looking… looking. Cliffs challenge humped; sudden arcs form on a gull’s wing in the […]...
13. Leather Leggings THEY have taken the ball of earth and made it a little thing. They were held to the land and horses; they were held to the little seas. They have changed and shaped and welded; they have broken the old tools and made new ones; they are ranging the white scarves of cloudland; they are […]...
14. Psalm of Those Who Go Forth Before Daylight THE POLICEMAN buys shoes slow and careful; The teamster buys gloves slow and careful; They take care of their feet and hands; They live on their feet and hands. The milkman never argues; He works alone and no one speaks to him; The city is asleep when he is on the job; He puts a […]...
15. The Mercy The ship that took my mother to Ellis Island Eighty-three years ago was named “The Mercy.” She remembers trying to eat a banana Without first peeling it and seeing her first orange In the hands of a young Scot, a seaman Who gave her a bite and wiped her mouth for her With a red […]...
16. You Felons on Trial in Courts YOU felons on trial in courts; You convicts in prison-cells-you sentenced assassins, chain’d and hand-cuff’d with iron; Who am I, too, that I am not on trial, or in prison? Me, ruthless and devilish as any, that my wrists are not chain’d with iron, or my ankles with iron? You prostitutes flaunting over the trottoirs, […]...
17. Name of a Tree Some days I am Ana’s teacher, some days she is mine. This morning, we look through her kitchen window, The one she can’t get clean, cobwebs massed Between sash and pane. The sky is blue-gold, almost The color of home. Ana, I say, each winter I get more lonely. Both of us would like the […]...
18. The Iron Wedding Rings In these days of peace and money, free to all the Commonweal, There are ancient dames in Buckland wearing wedding rings of steel; Wedding rings of steel and iron, worn on wrinkled hands and old, And the wearers would not give them, not for youth nor wealth untold. In the days of black oppression, when […]...
19. Summer Holiday When the sun shouts and people abound One thinks there were the ages of stone and the age of bronze And the iron age; iron the unstable metal; Steel made of iron, unstable as his mother; the tow- ered-up cities Will be stains of rust on mounds of plaster. Roots will not pierce the heaps […]...
20. Just Before April Came THE SNOW piles in dark places are gone. Pools by the railroad tracks shine clear. The gravel of all shallow places shines. A white pigeon reels and somersaults. Frogs plutter and squdge-and frogs beat the air with a recurring thin steel sliver of melody. Crows go in fives and tens; they march their black feathers […]...
21. A Fence NOW the stone house on the lake front is finished and the Workmen are beginning the fence. The palings are made of iron bars with steel points that Can stab the life out of any man who falls on them. As a fence, it is a masterpiece, and will shut off the rabble And all […]...
22. Iron GUNS, Long, steel guns, Pointed from the war ships In the name of the war god. Straight, shining, polished guns, Clambered over with jackies in white blouses, Glory of tan faces, tousled hair, white teeth, Laughing lithe jackies in white blouses, Sitting on the guns singing war songs, war chanties. Shovels, Broad, iron shovels, Scooping […]...
23. The Secret of the Machines We were taken from the ore-bed and the mine, We were melted in the furnace and the pit We were cast and wrought and hammered to design, We were cut and filed and tooled and gauged to fit. Some water, coal, and oil is all we ask, And a thousandth of an inch to give […]...
24. Cargoes QUINQUIREME of Nineveh from distant Ophir, Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine, With a cargo of ivory, And apes and peacocks, Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine. Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus, Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores, With a cargo of diamonds, Emeralds, amythysts, Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold […]...
25. Smoke and Steel SMOKE of the fields in spring is one, Smoke of the leaves in autumn another. Smoke of a steel-mill roof or a battleship funnel, They all go up in a line with a smokestack, Or they twist… in the slow twist… of the wind. If the north wind comes they run to the south. If […]...
26. So Now? the words have come and gone, I sit ill. The phone rings, the cats sleep. Linda vacuums. I am waiting to live, Waiting to die. I wish I could ring in some bravery. It’s a lousy fix But the tree outside doesn’t know: I watch it moving with the wind In the late afternoon sun. […]...
27. The Red Son I LOVE your faces I saw the many years I drank your milk and filled my mouth With your home talk, slept in your house And was one of you. But a fire burns in my heart. Under the ribs where pulses thud And flitting between bones of skull Is the push, the endless mysterious […]...
28. Aztec You came from the Aztecs With a copper on your fore-arms Tawnier than a sunset Saying good-by to an even river. And I said, you remember, Those fore-arms of yours Were finer than bronzes And you were glad. It was tears And a path west and a home-going when I asked Why there were scars […]...
29. The Mayor of Gary I ASKED the Mayor of Gary about the 12-hour day and the 7-day week. And the Mayor of Gary answered more workmen steal time on the job in Gary than any other place in the United States. “Go into the plants and you will see men sitting around doing nothing-machinery does everything,” said the Mayor […]...
30. The Sniper Because back home in Tennessee I was a champeen shot, They made a sniper outa me An’ ninety krouts I got: I wish to Christ I’d not! Athinkin’ o’ them blasted lives It’s kindo’ blue I be; Them lads no doubt had kids an’ wives An’ happy home like me: Them stiffs I still can […]...
31. The Skyscraper Loves Night ONE by one lights of a skyscraper fling their checkering cross work on the velvet gown of night. I believe the skyscraper loves night as a woman and brings her playthings she asks for, brings her a velvet gown, And loves the white of her shoulders hidden under the dark feel of it all. The […]...
32. The Grey Monk “I die, I die!” the Mother said, “My children die for lack of bread. What more has the merciless Tyrant said?” The Monk sat down on the stony bed. The blood red ran from the Grey Monk’s side, His hands and feet were wounded wide, His body bent, his arms and knees Like to the […]...
33. Oft, in the Stilly Night Oft, in the stilly night, Ere slumber’s chain has bound me, Fond memory brings the light Of other days around me; The smiles, the tears, Of boyhood’s years, The words of love then spoken; The eyes that shone, Now dimm’d and gone, The cheerful hearts now broken! Thus, in the stilly night, Ere slumber’s chain […]...
34. The Light of Other Days OFT, in the stilly night, Ere slumber’s chain has bound me, Fond Memory brings the light Of other days around me: The smiles, the tears Of boyhood’s years, The words of love then spoken; The eyes that shone, Now dimm’d and gone, The cheerful hearts now broken! Thus, in the stilly night, Ere slumber’s chain […]...
35. These Fought in Any Case These fought in any case, And some believing Pro domo, in any case….. Died some, pro patria, Walked eye-deep in hell Believing in old men’s lies, then unbelieving Came home, home to a lie, Home to many deceits, Home to old lies and new infamy; Usury age-old and age-thick And liars in public places. Daring […]...
36. Epic I have lived in important places, times When great events were decided, who owned That half a rood of rock, a no-man’s land Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims. I heard the Duffys shouting “Damn your soul” And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen Step the plot defying blue cast-steel- “Here is the march along […]...
37. Faith is the Pierless Bridge Faith is the Pierless Bridge Supporting what We see Unto the Scene that We do not Too slender for the eye It bears the Soul as bold As it were rocked in Steel With Arms of Steel at either side It joins behind the Veil To what, could We presume The Bridge would cease to […]...
38. 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 […]...
39. The Three Fishers 1 Three fishers went sailing away to the west, 2 Away to the west as the sun went down; 3 Each thought on the woman who loved him the best, 4 And the children stood watching them out of the town; 5 For men must work, and women must weep, 6 And there’s little to […]...
40. Parted Sleepless I listen to the surge and drone And drifting roar of the town’s undertone; Till through quiet falling rain I hear the bells Tolling and chiming their brief tune that tells Day’s midnight end. And from the day that’s over No flashes of delight I can recover; But only dreary winter streets, and faces […]...