Proclamation Without Pretension

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1. The Artist All day with brow of anxious thought The dictionary through, Amid a million words he sought The sole one that would do. He wandered on from pub to pub Yet never ceased to seek With burning brain and pencil stub The Word Unique. Said he: ‘I’ll nail it down or die. Oh Heaven help me, […]...
2. Mother’s Day Proclamation Arise then…women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts! Whether your baptism be of water or of tears! Say firmly: “We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, For caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn […]...
3. Hymn to Proserpine (After the Proclamation of the Christian Vicisti, Galilæe I have lived long enough, having seen one thing, that love hath an end; Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend. Thou art more than the day or the morrow, the seasons that laugh or that weep; For these give joy and sorrow; but thou, Proserpina, sleep. Sweet is […]...
4. "I Love You Sweatheart&quot A man risked his life to write the words. A man hung upside down (an idiot friend Holding his legs?) with spray paint To write the words on a girder fifty feet above A highway. And his beloved, The next morning driving to work…? His words are not (meant to be) so unique. Does she […]...
5. Indeed, indeed, I cannot tell Indeed, indeed, I cannot tell, Though I ponder on it well, Which were easier to state, All my love or all my hate. Surely, surely, thou wilt trust me When I say thou dost disgust me. O, I hate thee with a hate That would fain annihilate; Yet sometimes against my will, My dear friend, […]...
6. Take Back the Virgin Page Written on Returning a Blank Book Take back the virgin page, White and unwritten still; Some hand, more calm and sage, The leaf must fill. Thoughts come, as pure as light Pure as even you require; But, oh! each word I write Love turns to fire. Yet let me keep the book: Oft shall my […]...
7. The Benefactors Of The Little Box We’ll return the little box Into the arms Of her inconspicuously honest properties We won’t do anything Against her will We’ll simply take her apart We’ll crucify her On her own cross Piece her bloated emptiness And let ooze All the blue cosmic blood she gathered We’ll sweet her clean of stars And anti-stars And […]...
8. Mysterious Humanity I shall tell you stories about scores of troops Sent to the distant Croatian borders Medical soldiers of fortune with a sacred mission: To ease the pain and cure the wounds Of sons and daughters in genocized Bosnia Of which a moment later one would read, Heroic newspeaks roared by a government “We’re healing, we’re […]...
9. Poor Poet ‘A man should write to please himself,’ He proudly said. Well, see his poems on the shelf, Dusty, unread. When he came to my shop each day, So peaked and cold, I’d sneak one of his books away And say ’twas sold. And then by chance he looked below, And saw a stack Of his […]...
10. The Latest School See the flying French depart Like the bees of Bonaparte, Swarming up with a most venomous vitality. Over Baden and Bavaria, And Brighton and Bulgaria, Thus violating Belgian neutrality. And the injured Prussian may Not unreasonably say “Why, it cannot be so small a nationality Since Brixton and Batavia, Bolivia and Belgravia, Are bursting with […]...
11. Walt Whitman The master-songs are ended, and the man That sang them is a name. And so is God A name; and so is love, and life, and death, And everything. But we, who are too blind To read what we have written, or what faith Has written for us, do not understand: We only blink, and […]...
12. Sonnet XIX: You Cannot Love To Humor You cannot love, my pretty heart, and why? There was a time you told me that you would; But now again you will the same deny, If it might please you, would to God you could. What, will you hate? Nay, that you will not, neither. Nor love nor hate, how then? What […]...
13. The Ape And God Son put a poser up to me That made me scratch my head: “God made the whole wide world,” quoth he; “That’s right, my boy,” I said. Said son: “He mad the mountains soar, And all the plains lie flat; But Dad, what did he do before He did all that? Said I: “Creation was […]...
14. Stalk Me Liner Notes – (from Love Is A Dog From Hell) My friend Jenny is really Worried that people are going to follow me around and send me dead animal Parts and doll heads as a result of this song but please, if you feel inclined To send me dead animal parts, think it through. Thanks. […]...
15. Ladies And Gentlemen In Outer Space Here is my philosophy: Everything changes (the word “everything” Has just changed as the Word “change” has: it now Means “no change”) so Quickly that it literally surpasses my belief, Charges right past it Like some of the giant Ideas in this area. I had no beginning and I shall have No end: the beam […]...
16. Willard Fluke My wife lost her health, And dwindled until she weighed scarce ninety pounds. Then that woman, whom the men Styled Cleopatra, came along. And we we married ones All broke our vows, myself among the rest. Years passed and one by one Death claimed them all in some hideous form, And I was borne along […]...
17. Sonnet XLIX: Thou Leaden Brain Thou leaden brain, which censur’st what I write, And say’st my lines be dull and do not move, I marvel not thou feel’st not my delight, Which never felt’st my fiery touch of love. But thou, whose pen hath like a pack-horse serv’d, Whose stomach unto gall hath turn’d thy food, Whose senses, like poor […]...
18. The World State Oh, how I love Humanity, With love so pure and pringlish, And how I hate the horrid French, Who never will be English! The International Idea, The largest and the clearest, Is welding all the nations now, Except the one that’s nearest. This compromise has long been known, This scheme of partial pardons, In ethical […]...
19. Dream Song 103: I consider a song will be as humming-bird I consider a song will be as humming-bird Swift, down-light, missile-metal-hard, & strange As the world of anti-matter Where they are wondering: does time run backward— Which the poet thought was true; Scarlatti-supple; But can Henry write it? Wreckt, in deep danger, he shook once his head, Returning to meditation. And word had sped All […]...
20. Babi Yar No monument stands over Babi Yar. A drop sheer as a crude gravestone. I am afraid. Today I am as old in years As all the Jewish people. Now I seem to be a Jew. Here I plod through ancient Egypt. Here I perish crucified, on the cross, And to this day I bear the […]...
21. I Am 25 With a love a madness for Shelley Chatterton Rimbaud And the needy-yap of my youth has gone from ear to ear: I HATE OLD POETMEN! Especially old poetmen who retract Who consult other old poetmen Who speak their youth in whispers, Saying: I did those then but that was then that was then O I […]...
22. Sonnet XXVIII: You That With Allegory's Curious Frame You that with allegory’s curious frame, Of others’ children changelings use to make, With me those pains for God’s sake do not take: I list not dig so deep for brazen fame. When I say “Stella,” I do mean the same Princess of Beauty, for whose only sake The reins of Love I love, though […]...
23. 'Twas fighting for his Life he was ‘Twas fighting for his Life he was That sort accomplish well The Ordnance of Vitality Is frugal of its Ball. It aims once kills once conquers once There is no second War In that Campaign inscrutable Of the Interior....
24. Conjugal A man is bending his wife. He is bending her Around something that she has bent herself Around. She is around it, bent as he has bent Her. He is convincing her. It is all so private. He is bending her around the bedpost. No, he Is bending her around the tripod of his camera. […]...
25. I'm going to give up loving you i’m going to give up loving you I’m going to hate you instead Living’s so difficult difficult baby Hating’s like staying in bed You expect too much when i’m loving you I haven’t got it in me to give Love keeps on keeps on at me baby It makes a man frightened to live Hating’s […]...
26. The Zeroes taught us Phosphorous The Zeroes taught us Phosphorous We learned to like the Fire By playing Glaciers when a Boy And Tinder guessed by power Of Opposite to balance Odd If White a Red must be! Paralysis our Primer dumb Unto Vitality!...
27. Sardis (Revelations, iii. 1-6) “Write to Sardis,” saith the Lord, “And write what He declares, He whose Spirit, and whose word, Upholds the seven stars: All thy works and ways I search, Find thy zeal and love decay’d; Thou art call’d a living church, But thou art cold and dead. “Watch, remember, seek, and strive, Exert […]...
28. The harm of Years is on him The harm of Years is on him The infamy of Time Depose him like a Fashion And give Dominion room. Forget his Morning Forces The Glory of Decay Is a minuter Pageant Than least Vitality....
29. Saddest Poem I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. Write, for instance: “The night is full of stars, And the stars, blue, shiver in the distance.” The night wind whirls in the sky and sings. I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. On nights […]...
30. The Song of the Beasts (Sung, on one night, in the cities, in the darkness.) Come away! Come away! Ye are sober and dull through the common day, But now it is night! It is shameful night, and God is asleep! (Have you not felt the quick fires that creep Through the hungry flesh, and the lust of delight, And […]...
31. Talisman it is written The act of writing is Holy words are Sacred and your breath Brings out the God in them I write these words Quickly repeat them Softly to myself This talisman for you Fold this prayer Around your neck fortify Your back with these Whispers May you walk ever Loved and in love […]...
32. Early Darkness How can you say Earth should give me joy? Each thing Born is my burden; I cannot succeed With all of you. And you would like to dictate to me, You would like to tell me Who among you is most valuable, Who most resembles me. And you hold up as an example The pure […]...
33. The Buyers Father drank himself to death, Quite enjoyed it. Urged to draw a sober breath He’d avoid it. ‘Save your sympathy,’ said Dad; ‘Never sought it. Hob-nail liver, gay and glad, Sure, I bought it.’ Uncle made a heap of dough, Ponies playing. ‘Easy come and easy go,’ Was his saying. Though he died in poverty […]...
34. I reason, Earth is short I reason, Earth is short And Anguish absolute And many hurt, But, what of that? I reason, we could die The best Vitality Cannot excel Decay, But, what of that? I reason, that in Heaven Somehow, it will be even Some new Equation, given But, what of that?...
35. There was a Young Lady Whose Eyes There was a young lady whose eyes, Were unique as to colour and size; When she opened them wide, People all turned aside, And started away in surprise....
36. To My Brothers Small, busy flames play through the fresh-laid coals, And their faint cracklings o’er our silence creep Like whispers of the household gods that keep A gentle empire o’er fraternal souls. And while for rhymes I search around the poles, Your eyes are fixed, as in poetic sleep, Upon the lore so voluble and deep, That […]...
37. Modern Love IV: All Other Joys of Life All other joys of life he strove to warm, And magnify, and catch them to his lip: But they had suffered shipwreck with the ship, And gazed upon him sallow from the storm. Or if Delusion came, ’twas but to show The coming minute mock the one that went. Cold as a mountain in its […]...
38. 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...
39. Vision I love all things that pass: their briefness is Music that fades on transient silences. Winds, birds, and glittering leaves that flare and fall – They fling delight across the world; they call To rhythmic-flashing limbs that rove and race… A moment in the dawn for Youth’s lit face; A moment’s passion, closing on the […]...
40. Sonnet 145: Those lips that Love's own hand did make Those lips that Love’s own hand did make Breathed forth the sound that said “I hate” To me that languished for her sake; But when she saw my woeful state, Straight in her heart did mercy come, Chiding that tongue that ever sweet Was used in giving gentle doom, And taught it thus anew to […]...