Paper Men To Air Hopes And Fears

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1. Paper Boats Day by day I float my paper boats one by one down the running Stream. In bid black letters I write my name on them and the name of The village where I live. I hope that someone in some strange land will find them and Know who I am. I load my little boats […]...
2. I'd Mourn the Hopes I’d mourn the hopes that leave me, If thy smiles had left me too; I’d weep when friends deceive me, If thou wert, like them, untrue. But while I’ve thee before me, With heart so warm and eyes so bright, No clouds can linger o’er me, That smile turns them all to light. ‘Tis not […]...
3. Scars on Paper An unwrapped icon, too potent to touch, She freed my breasts from the camp Empire dress. Now one of them’s the shadow of a breast With a lost object’s half-life, with as much Life as an anecdotal photograph: Me, Kim and Iva, all stripped to the waist, Hiking near Russian River on June first ’79: […]...
4. The Poet Fears Failure The poet fears failure & so she says “Hold on pen What if the critics Hate me?” & with that question She blots out more lines Than any critic could. The critic is only doing his job: Keeping the poet lonely. He barks Like a dog at the door When the master comes home. It’s […]...
5. Song of the Moon The moonlight breaks upon the city’s domes, And falls along cemented steel and stone, Upon the grayness of a million homes, Lugubrious in unchanging monotone. Upon the clothes behind the tenement, That hang like ghosts suspended from the lines, Linking each flat to each indifferent, Incongruous and strange the moonlight shines. There is no magic […]...
6. With Penne, Inke, And Paper To A Distressed Friend Here is paper, pen, and inke, That your heart and seale may sinke Into such markes as may expresse A Soule much blest in heavinesse. May your paper seeme as fayre As yourselfe when you appeare: May the Letters which you write Looke like black eye-lids on white. May your penne such fancies bring As […]...
7. The Paper Windmill The little boy pressed his face against the window-pane And looked out At the bright sunshiny morning. The cobble-stones of The square Glistened like mica. In the trees, a breeze danced and Pranced, And shook drops of sunlight like falling golden coins into the brown Water Of the canal. Down stream slowly drifted a long […]...
8. Psalm III: My God, How Many Are My Fears My God, how many are my fears! How fast my foes increase! Conspiring my eternal death, They break my present peace. The lying tempter would persuade There’s no relief from heaven; And all my swelling sins appear Too big to be forgiven. But thou, my glory and my strength, Shall on the tempter tread, Shall […]...
9. The Paper Nautilus For authorities whose hopes Are shaped by mercenaries? Writers entrapped by Teatime fame and by Commuters’ comforts? Not for these The paper nautilus Constructs her thin glass shell. Giving her perishable Souvenir of hope, a dull White outside and smooth- Edged inner surface Glossy as the sea, the watchful Maker of it guards it Day […]...
10. Fears In Solitude A green and silent spot, amid the hills, A small and silent dell! O’er stiller place No singing sky-lark ever poised himself. The hills are heathy, save that swelling slope, Which hath a gay and gorgeous covering on, All golden with the never-bloomless furze, Which now blooms most profusely : but the dell, Bathed by […]...
11. And this of all my Hopes And this of all my Hopes This, is the silent end Bountiful colored, my Morning rose Early and sere, its end Never Bud from a Stem Stepped with so gay a Foot Never a Worm so confident Bored at so brave a Root...
12. As the Heart Hopes It is a year dear one, since you afar Went out beyond my yearning mortal sight­ A wondrous year! perchance in many a star You have sojourned, or basked within the light Of mightier suns; it may be you have trod The glittering pathways of the Pleiades, And through the Milky Way’s white mysteries Have […]...
13. The Family Monkey We bought an electric monkey, experimenting rather Recklessly with funds carefully gathered since Grandfather’s time for the purchase of a steam monkey. We had either, by this time, the choice of an electric Or gas monkey. The steam monkey is no longer being made, said the monkey Merchant. But the family always planned on a […]...
14. There came a Wind like a Bugle There came a wind like a bugle It quivered through the GRASS, And a green chill upon the heat So ominous did pass We barred the windows and the doors As from an emerald GHOST The doom’s electric moccasin That very instant passed. On a strange mob of panting trees, And fences fled away, and […]...
15. John Horace Burleson I won the prize essay at school Here in the village, And published a novel before I was twenty-five. I went to the city for themes and to enrich my art; There married the banker’s daughter, And later became president of the bank- Always looking forward to some leisure To write an epic novel of […]...
16. Frenzy I am not lazy. I am on the amphetamine of the soul. I am, each day, Typing out the God My typewriter believes in. Very quick. Very intense, Like a wolf at a live heart. Not lazy. When a lazy man, they say, Looks toward heaven, The angels close the windows. Oh angels, Keep the […]...
17. When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain, Before high-piled books, in charactery, Hold like rich garners the full ripen’d grain; When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace […]...
18. Sonnet 107: Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul Of the wide world, dreaming on things to come Can yet the lease of my true love control, Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom. The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured, And the sad augurs mock their own presage; Incertainties now crown themselves assured, And peace […]...
19. The Way Of The Wind The wind’s way in the deep sky’s hollow None may measure, as none can say How the heart in her shows the swallow The wind’s way. Hope nor fear can avail to stay Waves that whiten on wrecks that wallow, Times and seasons that wane and slay. Life and love, till the strong night swallow […]...
20. False Notions, Fears, And Other Things Of Wood Repeatedly, that sturdy stump in me Bears up like stone, Beneath some ritual I see: The blinding axe Swings up, holds, That moment of its weightlessness Inscrutable Till I confirm the arm is mine; I will it, grip, Feel moist the swelling handle, The shudder rude, The difference fallen. Toward that chopping block I carry […]...
21. Paper towel She wrapped a paper towel around his softened cock In what he thought was quaint affection, that was new, An after-thought perhaps, refined appreciation? She had never talked a lot in bed just let her actions Tell her needs in ways he understood with very little Coaching. And when he asked about the towel she […]...
22. A Scrap of Paper “Will you go to war just for a scrap of paper?” Question Of the German Chancellor to the British Ambassador, August 5, 1914. A mocking question! Britain’s answer came Swift as the light and searching as the flame. “Yes, for a scrap of paper we will fight Till our last breath, and God defend the […]...
23. The Hand That Signed The Paper The hand that signed the paper felled a city; Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath, Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country; These five kings did a king to death. The mighty hand leads to a sloping shoulder, The finger joints are cramped with chalk; A goose’s quill has put an end to […]...
24. Sonnet CVII: Not Mine Own Fears, Nor the Prophetic Soul Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul Of the wide world dreaming on things to come, Can yet the lease of my true love control, Suppos’d as forfeit to a confin’d doom. The mortal moon hath her eclipse endur’d And the sad augurs mock their own presage; Incertainties now crown themselves assur’d And peace […]...
25. Broadway Under Grand Central’s tattered vault maybe half a dozen electric stars still lit One saxophone blew, and a sheer black scrim Billowed over some minor constellation Under repair. Then, on Broadway, red wings In a storefront tableau, lustrous, the live macaws Preening, beaks opening and closing Like those animated knives that unfold all night In […]...
26. Sonnet 28 – My letters! all dead paper, mute and white! My letters! all dead paper, mute and white! And yet they seem alive and quivering Against my tremulous hands which loose the string And let them drop down on my knee to-night. This said,-he wished to have me in his sight Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring To come and touch […]...
27. Sonnet XXVI: I Ever Love To Despair I ever love where never hope appears, Yet hope draws on my never-hoping care, And my life’s hope would die, but for despair; My never-certain joy breeds ever-certain fears; Uncertain dread gives wings unto my hope, Yet my hope’s wings are laden so with fear As they cannot ascend to my hope’s sphere; […]...
28. Reproach Had I but known yesterday, Helen, you could discharge the ache Out of the cloud; Had I known yesterday you could take The turgid electric ache away, Drink it up with your proud White body, as lovely white lightning Is drunk from an agonised sky by the earth, I might have hated you, Helen. But […]...
29. Now Close the Windows Now close the windows and hush all the fields: If the trees must, let them silently toss; No bird is singing now, and if there is, Be it my loss. It will be long ere the marshes resume, I will be long ere the earliest bird: So close the windows and not hear the wind, […]...
30. Hope is a strange invention Hope is a strange invention A Patent of the Heart In unremitting action Yet never wearing out Of this electric Adjunct Not anything is known But its unique momentum Embellish all we own...
31. 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 […]...
32. Factory Windows are Always Broken FACTORY windows are always broken. Somebody’s always throwing bricks, Somebody’s always heaving cinders, Playing ugly Yahoo tricks. Factory windows are always broken. Other windows are let alone. No one throws through the chapel-window The bitter, snarling, derisive stone. Factory windows are always broken. Something or other is going wrong. Something is rotten I think, in […]...
33. Sense Of Something Coming I am like a flag in the center of open space. I sense ahead the wind which is coming, and must live It through. While the things of the world still do not move: The doors still close softly, and the chimneys are full Of silence, The windows do not rattle yet, and the dust […]...
34. 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 […]...
35. The Galley-Slave Oh gallant was our galley from her caren steering-wheel To her figurehead of silver and her beak of hammered steel; The leg-bar chafed the ankle and we gasped for cooler air, But no galley on the waters with our galley could compare! Our bulkheads bulged with cotton and our masts were stepped in gold We […]...
36. The Worlds in this World Doors were left open in heaven again: Drafts wheeze, clouds wrap their ripped pages Around roofs and trees. Like wet flags, shutters Flap and fold. Even light is blown out of town, Its last angles caught in sopped Newspaper wings and billowing plastic – All this in one American street. Elsewhere, somewhere, a tide Recedes, […]...
37. Wires The widest prairies have electric fences, For though old cattle know they must not stray Young steers are always scenting purer water Not here but anywhere. Beyond the wires Leads them to blunder up against the wires Whose muscle-shredding violence gives no quarter. Young steers become old cattle from that day, Electric limits to their […]...
38. LAMENT How I loathe this land of my exile, Concrete upon concrete, Steel upon steel, Glass upon glass In massed battalions And no way back. My mind moves to a far-off place To a hill-top where the wind is my succour, Its blow and howl and rage Over the springing turf and heather Calms as the […]...
39. Horse Fiddle FIRST I would like to write for you a poem to be shouted in the teeth of a strong wind. Next I would like to write one for you to sit on a hill and read down the river valley on a late summer afternoon, reading it in less than a whisper to Jack on […]...
40. Wolf Knife In the mid August, in the second year Of my First Polar Expedition, the snow and ice of winter Almost upon us, Kantiuk and I Attempted to dash the sledge Along Crispin Bay, searching again for relics Of the Frankline Expedition. Now a storm blew, And we turned back, and we struggled slowly In snow, […]...