Promises Like Pie-Crust

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1. Winter Promises Tomatoes rosy as perfect baby’s buttocks, Eggplants glossy as waxed fenders, Purple neon flawless glistening Peppers, pole beans fecund and fast Growing as Jack’s Viagra-sped stalk, Big as truck tire zinnias that mildew Will never wilt, roses weighing down A bush never touched by black spot, Brave little fruit trees shouldering up Their spotless ornaments […]...
2. A Canvas For A Crust Aye, Montecelli, that’s the name. You may have heard of him perhaps. Yet though he never savoured fame, Of those impressionistic chaps, Monet and Manet and Renoir He was the avatar. He festered in a Marseilles slum, A starving genius, god-inspired. You’d take him for a lousy bum, Tho’ poetry of paint he lyred, In […]...
3. A little bread a crust a crumb A little bread a crust a crumb A little trust a demijohn Can keep the soul alive Not portly, mind! but breathing warm Conscious as old Napoleon, The night before the Crown! A modest lot A fame petite A brief Campaign of sting and sweet Is plenty! Is enough! A Sailor’s business is the shore! […]...
4. Promises, Promises I am stretched out under the lean-to Of an old tobacco-shed On a farm in North Carolina. A cardinal sings from the dogwood For the love of marijuana. His song goes over my head. There is such splendour in the grass I might be the picture of happiness. Yet I am utterly bereft Of the […]...
5. Forsaken promises Nothing came to claim my muse, instead I dreamed Of freedoms neatly folded in a treasure chest lying in the debris Of a crater; the best were simple choices, the rest forsaken Promises bombed to shreds beside their makers. All around the sound of raging thunder rumbled In a night lit bright by streaks of […]...
6. 16-bit Intel 8088 chip with an Apple Macintosh You can’t run Radio Shack programs In its disc drive. Nor can a Commodore 64 Drive read a file You have created on an IBM Personal Computer. Both Kaypro and Osborne computers use The CP/M operating system But can’t read each other’s Handwriting For they format (write On) discs in different […]...
7. Mrs. Purkapile He ran away and was gone for a year. When he came home he told me the silly story Of being kidnapped by pirates on Lake Michigan And kept in chains so he could not write me. I pretended to believe it, though I knew very well What he was doing, and that he met […]...
8. Before The Flood Why did he promise me That we would build ourselves An ark all by ourselves Out in back of the house On New York Avenue In Union City New Jersey To the singing of the streetcars After the story Of Noah whom nobody Believed about the waters That would rise over everything When I told […]...
9. AN EPITAPH UPON A CHILD Virgins promised when I died, That they would each primrose-tide Duly, morn and evening, come, And with flowers dress my tomb. Having promised, pay your debts Maids, and here strew violets....
10. Canute the Great I’ll tell of Canute, King of England, A native of Denmark was he, His hobbies was roving and raiding And paddling his feet in the sea. By trade he were what’s called a Viking, Every summer he’d visit our shore, Help himself to whatever he wanted, And come back in the autumn for more. These […]...
11. Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
12. A Revocation WHAT should I say? Since Faith is dead, And Truth away From you is fled? Should I be led With doubleness? Nay! nay! mistress. I promised you, And you promised me, To be as true As I would be. But since I see Your double heart, Farewell my part! Thought for to take ‘Tis not […]...
13. My Child Wafts Peace My child wafts peace. When I lean over him, It is not just the smell of soap. All the people were children wafting peace. (And in the whole land, not even one Millstone remained that still turned). Oh, the land torn like clothes That can’t be mended. Hard, lonely fathers even in the cave of […]...
14. Misgiving All crying, ‘We will go with you, O Wind!’ The foliage follow him, leaf and stem; But a sleep oppresses them as they go, And they end by bidding them as they go, And they end by bidding him stay with them. Since ever they flung abroad in spring The leaves had promised themselves this […]...
15. Sonnet 80: O, how I faint when I of you do write O, how I faint when I of you do write, Knowing a better spirit doth use your name, And in the praise thereof spends all his might To make me tongue-tied speaking of your fame. But since your worth, wide as the ocean is, The humble as the proudest sail doth bear, My saucy bark, […]...
16. Sonnet LXXX O, how I faint when I of you do write, Knowing a better spirit doth use your name, And in the praise thereof spends all his might, To make me tongue-tied, speaking of your fame! But since your worth, wide as the ocean is, The humble as the proudest sail doth bear, My saucy bark […]...
17. Time to play It is a pristine page, clean on the blue screen Where I compose, I don’t expect it to stay that way As words glow from blunt, abused fingers, as insistent Sounds in my head translate into sentence structures, As lips articulate the rhythms and the sounds of the Jumbled lexis as swiftly as I can […]...
18. Ailsie, My Bairn Lie in my arms, Ailsie, my bairn, Lie in my arms and dinna greit; Long time been past syn I kenned you last, But my harte been allwais the same, my swete. Ailsie, I colde not say you ill, For out of the mist of your bitter tears, And the prayers that rise from your […]...
19. TO WILLIAM E. CHANNING The pages of thy book I read, And as I closed each one, My heart, responding, ever said, “Servant of God! well done!” Well done! Thy words are great and bold; At times they seem to me, Like Luther’s, in the days of old, Half-battles for the free. Go on, until this land revokes The […]...
20. Advice to the Grub Street Verse-writers Ye poets ragged and forlorn, Down from your garrets haste; Ye rhymers, dead as soon as born, Not yet consign’d to paste; I know a trick to make you thrive; O, ’tis a quaint device: Your still-born poems shall revive, And scorn to wrap up spice. Get all your verses printed fair, Then let them […]...
21. The Red Blaze is the Morning The Red Blaze is the Morning The Violet is Noon The Yellow Day is falling And after that is none But Miles of Sparks at Evening Reveal the Width that burned The Territory Argent that Never yet consumed...
22. At leisure is the Soul At leisure is the Soul That gets a Staggering Blow The Width of Life before it spreads Without a thing to do It begs you give it Work But just the placing Pins Or humblest Patchwork Children do To Help its Vacant Hands...
23. Psalm 89 part 1 The faithfulness of God. My never-ceasing songs shall show The mercies of the Lord; And make succeeding ages know How faithful is his word. The sacred truths his lips pronounce Shall firm as heav’n endure; And if he speak a promise once, Th’ eternal grace is sure. How long the race of David held The […]...
24. The Soul's Expression WITH stammering lips and insufficient sound I strive and struggle to deliver right That music of my nature, day and night With dream and thought and feeling interwound And inly answering all the senses round With octaves of a mystic depth and height Which step out grandly to the infinite From the dark edges of […]...
25. How many schemes may die How many schemes may die In one short Afternoon Entirely unknown To those they most concern The man that was not lost Because by accident He varied by a Ribbon’s width From his accustomed route The Love that would not try Because beside the Door It must be competitions Some unsuspecting Horse was tied Surveying […]...
26. The Alchemist in the City My window shews the travelling clouds, Leaves spent, new seasons, alter’d sky, The making and the melting crowds: The whole world passes; I stand by. They do not waste their meted hours, But men and masters plan and build: I see the crowning of their towers, And happy promises fulfill’d. And I – perhaps if […]...
27. Sonnet CXXXIV So, now I have confess’d that he is thine, And I myself am mortgaged to thy will, Myself I’ll forfeit, so that other mine Thou wilt restore, to be my comfort still: But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free, For thou art covetous and he is kind; He learn’d but surety-like to […]...
28. No Neck-Tie Party A prisoner speaks: Majority of twenty-three, I face the Judge with joy and glee; For am I not a lucky chap – No more hanging, no more cap; A “lifer,” yes, but well I know In fifteen years they’ll let me go; For I’ll be pious in my prison, Sing with gusto: Christ Is Risen; […]...
29. Somewhere upon the general Earth Somewhere upon the general Earth Itself exist Today The Magic passive but extant That consecrated me Indifferent Seasons doubtless play Where I for right to be Would pay each Atom that I am But Immortality Reserving that but just to prove Another Date of Thee Oh God of Width, do not for us Curtail Eternity!...
30. The Argument Of His Book I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers, Of April, May, of June, and July-flowers. I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes, Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes. I write of youth, of love, and have access By these to sing of cleanly wantonness. I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by […]...
31. It Is March It is March and black dust falls out of the books Soon I will be gone The tall spirit who lodged here has Left already On the avenues the colorless thread lies under Old prices When you look back there is always the past Even when it has vanished But when you look forward With […]...
32. Sonnet 134: So, now I have confessed that he is thine So, now I have confessed that he is thine, And I my self am mortgaged to thy will, Myself I’ll forfeit, so that other mine Thou wilt restore to be my comfort still. But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free, For thou art covetous, and he is kind, He learned but surety-like […]...
33. May 24, 1980 I have braved, for want of wild beasts, steel cages, Carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters, Lived by the sea, flashed aces in an oasis, Dined with the-devil-knows-whom, in tails, on truffles. From the height of a glacier I beheld half a world, the earthly width. Twice have drowned, thrice let knives […]...
34. No Man can compass a Despair No Man can compass a Despair As round a Goalless Road No faster than a Mile at once The Traveller proceed Unconscious of the Width Unconscious that the Sun Be setting on His progress So accurate the One At estimating Pain Whose own has just begun His ignorance the Angel That pilot Him along...
35. Margaret Fuller Slack I would have been as great as George Eliot But for an untoward fate. For look at the photograph of me made by Penniwit, Chin resting on hand, and deep-set eyes Gray, too, and far-searching. But there was the old, old problem: Should it be celibacy, matrimony or unchastity? Then John Slack, the rich druggist, […]...
36. Poetry it Takes A lot of Desperation Dissatisfaction And Disillusion To Write A Few Good Poems. It’s not For Everybody Either to Write It Or even to Read It....
37. Cacoethes Scribendi If all the trees in all the woods were men; And each and every blade of grass a pen; If every leaf on every shrub and tree Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea Were changed to ink, and all earth’s living tribes Had nothing else to do but act as scribes, And for […]...
38. MY PERFECT ROSE At ten she came to me, three years ago, There was ‘something between us’ even then; Watching her write like Eliot every day, Turn prose into haiku in ten minutes flat, Write a poem in Greek three weeks from learning the alphabet; Then translate it as ‘Sun on a tomb, gold place, small sacred horse’. […]...
39. Hymn 60 The Virgin Mary’s song. Luke 1:46ff. Our souls shall magnify the Lord, In God the Savior we rejoice: While we repeat the Virgin’s song, May the same Spirit tune our voice! [The Highest saw her low estate, And mighty things his hand hath done: His overshadowing power and grace Makes her the mother of his […]...
40. These are the Signs to Nature's Inns These are the Signs to Nature’s Inns Her invitation broad To Whosoever famishing To taste her mystic Bread These are the rites of Nature’s House The Hospitality That opens with an equal width To Beggar and to Bee For Sureties of her staunch Estate Her undecaying Cheer The Purple in the East is set And […]...