The Benefactors Of The Little Box

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1. The Owners Of The Little Box Line the inside of the little box With your precious skin And make yourself cozy Just as you would in your own home Make space voyages inside her Gather stars make time squirt its milk And sleep in the clouds Just don’t go around pretending You’re more important than her length And wiser than her […]...
2. The Little Box The little box gets her first teeth And her little length Little width little emptiness And all the rest she has The little box continues growing The cupboard that she was inside Is now inside her And she grows bigger bigger bigger Now the room is inside her And the house and the city and […]...
3. Joy-notes when the time comes Yield To the forces outside you Images simply Of your inner compulsions When the time comes Invite Your enemies inside you Inversions simply Of your face on the world When the time comes Die From the fears that hold you The action simply Of seceding old skins When the time comes […]...
4. The Benefactors Ah! What avails the classic bent And what the cultured word, Against the undoctored incident That actually occurred? And what is Art whereto we press Through paint and prose and rhyme When Nature in her nakedness Defeats us every time? It is not learning, grace nor gear, Nor easy meat and drink, But bitter pinch […]...
5. The Craftsmen Of The Little Box Don’t open the little box Heaven’s hat will fall out of her Don’t close her for any reason She’ll bite the trouser-leg of eternity Don’t drop her on the earth The sun’s eggs will break inside her Don’t throw her in the air Earth’s bones will break inside her Don’t hold her in your hands […]...
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. Some Advice To Those Who Will Serve Time In Prison If instead of being hanged by the neck you’re thrown inside for not giving up hope In the world, your country, your people, if you do ten or fifteen years apart from the time you have left, You won’t say, “Better I had swung from the end of a rope like a flag” You’ll put […]...
8. Daybreak On the tidal mud, just before sunset, Dozens of starfishes Were creeping. It was As though the mud were a sky And enormous, imperfect stars Moved across it as slowly As the actual stars cross heaven. All at once they stopped, And, as if they had simply Increased their receptivity To gravity, they sank down […]...
9. Sonnet 38 – First time he kissed me, he but only kissed First time he kissed me, he but only kissed The fingers of this hand wherewith I write; And ever since, it grew more clean and white, Slow to world-greetings, quick with its ‘Oh, list,’ When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst I could not wear here, plainer to my sight, Than that first kiss. […]...
10. The Comet at Valbury or Yell'ham I It bends far over Yell’ham Plain, And we, from Yell’ham Height, Stand and regard its fiery train, So soon to swim from sight. II It will return long years hence, when As now its strange swift shine Will fall on Yell’ham; but not then On that sweet form of thine....
11. Circumstantial Evidence She does not mind a good cigar (The kind, that is, I smoke); She thinks all men quite stupid are, (But laughs whene’er I joke). She says she does not care for verse (But praises all I write); She says that punning is a curse, (But then mine are so bright!) She does not like […]...
12. Some say goodnight at night Some say goodnight at night I say goodnight by day Good-bye the Going utter me Goodnight, I still reply For parting, that is night, And presence, simply dawn Itself, the purple on the height Denominated morn....
13. LOVE DISLIKES NOTHING Whatsoever thing I see, Rich or poor although it be, ‘Tis a mistress unto me. Be my girl or fair or brown, Does she smile, or does she frown; Still I write a sweet-heart down. Be she rough, or smooth of skin; When I touch, I then begin For to let affection in. Be she […]...
14. Clean Hands IT is something to face the sun and know you are free. To hold your head in the shafts of daylight slanting the earth And know your heart has kept a promise and the blood runs clean: It is something. To go one day of your life among all men with clean hands, Clean for […]...
15. A Pastiche For Eve Unmanageable as history: these Followers of Tammuz to the land That offered no return, where dust Grew thick on every bolt and door. And so the world Chilled, and the women wept, tore at their hair. Yet, in the skies, a goddess governed Sirius, the Dog, Who shines alike on mothers, lesbians, and whores. What […]...
16. 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 […]...
17. Roscoe Purkapile She loved me. Oh! how she loved me! I never had a chance to escape From the day she first saw me. But then after we were married I thought She might prove her mortality and let me out, Or she might divorce me. But few die, none resign. Then I ran away and was […]...
18. From Citron-Bower From citron-bower be her bed, Cut from branch of tree a-flower, Fashioned for her maidenhead. From Lydian apples, sweet of hue, Cut the width of board and lathe, Carve the feet from myrtle-wood. Let the palings of her bed Be quince and box-wood overlaid With the scented bark of yew. That all the wood in […]...
19. Awakening THE LIGHTS shone down the street In the long blue close of day: A boy’s heart beat sweet, sweet, As it flowered in its dreamy clay. Beyond the dazzling throng And above the towers of men The stars made him long, long, To return to their light again. They lit the wondrous years And his […]...
20. SOUND, SWEET SONG SOUND, sweet song, from some far land, Sighing softly close at hand, Now of joy, and now of woe! Stars are wont to glimmer so. Sooner thus will good unfold; Children young and children old Gladly hear thy numbers flow. 1820.* – * In the cases in which the date is marked thus (*), it […]...
21. 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 […]...
22. Iambicum Trimetrum Unhappy verse, the witness of my unhappy state, Make thy self flutt’ring wings of thy fast flying Thought, and fly forth unto my love, wheresoever she be: Whether lying restless in heavy bed, or else Sitting so cheerless at the cheerful board, or else Playing alone careless on her heavenly virginals. If in bed, tell […]...
23. Cruisers As our mother the Frigate, bepainted and fine, Made play for her bully the Ship of the Line; So we, her bold daughters by iron and fire, Accost and decoy to our masters’ desire. Now, pray you, consider what toils we endure, Night-walking wet sea-lanes, a guard and a lure; Since half of our trade […]...
24. Carbonara eyes Nicky said I couldn’t write, she’s got a charming Sense of social etiquette – given she’s a bitch (the canine sort, can’t spell for shit or even write A word) but then she has the most expressive eyes. So what she said was no surprise, she’d heard My lamentations, licked my hands, rested forepaws On […]...
25. Marine Snow At Mid-Depths And Down As you descend, slowly, falling faster past You this snow, Ghostly, some flakes bio- Luminescent (you plunge, And this lit snow doesn’t land At your feet but keeps falling below You): single-cell-plant chains, shreds Of zooplankton’s mucus food traps, Fish fecal pellets, radioactive fallouts, Sand grains, pollen….And inside These jagged falling islands Live more microlives, […]...
26. In Childhood things don’t die or remain damaged But return: stumps grow back hands, A head reconnects to a neck, A whole corpse rises blushing and newly elastic. Later this vision is not True: The grandmother remains dead Not hibernating in a wolf’s belly. Or the blue parakeet does not return From the little grave in the […]...
27. Sandpipers Sandland where the salt water kills the sweet potatoes. Homes for sandpipers-the script of their feet is on the sea shingles-they write in the morning, it is gone at noon-they write at noon, it is gone at night. Pity the land, the sea, the ten mile flats, pity anything but the sandpiper’s wire legs and […]...
28. Impromptu, to Lady Winchelsea In vain you boast Poetic Names of yore, And cite those Sapho’s we admire no more: Fate doom’d the Fall of ev’ry Female Wit, But doom’d it then when first Ardelia writ. Of all Examples by the World confest, I knew Ardelia could not quote the best; Who, like her Mistress on Britannia’s Throne; Fights, […]...
29. 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...
30. Sonnet 76: Why is my verse so barren of new pride? Why is my verse so barren of new pride? So far from variation or quick change? Why with the time do I not glance aside To new-found methods, and to compounds strange? Why write I still all one, ever the same, And keep invention in a noted weed, That every word doth almost tell my […]...
31. 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...
32. "Go tell it" What a Message “Go tell it” What a Message To whom is specified Not murmur not endearment But simply we obeyed Obeyed a Lure a Longing? Oh Nature none of this To Law said sweet Thermopylae I give my dying Kiss...
33. I Shall Return I shall return again; I shall return To laugh and love and watch with wonder-eyes At golden noon the forest fires burn, Wafting their blue-black smoke to sapphire skies. I shall return to loiter by the streams That bathe the brown blades of the bending grasses, And realize once more my thousand dreams Of waters […]...
34. Tцrnfallet There is a meadow in Sweden Where I lie smitten, Eyes stained with clouds’ White ins and outs. And about that meadow Roams my widow Plaiting a clover Wreath for her lover. I took her in marriage In a granite parish. The snow lent her whiteness, A pine was a witness. She’d swim in the […]...
35. How Distant How distant, the departure of young men Down valleys, or watching The green shore past the salt-white cordage Rising and falling. Cattlemen, or carpenters, or keen Simply to get away From married villages before morning, Melodeons play On tiny decks past fraying cliffs of water Or late at night Sweet under the differently-swung stars, When […]...
36. 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 […]...
37. Hamlet Off-Stage: Snail Peels Off For quick mental hygiene, the snail’s my white Mobile clinic, Dr. Hoodoo inside. Seriously. The snail’s my man. He’s shy, Shows speedy patience and plays safe, keeps his Hard hat on should a curve come on too fast. And paves his road in case he must return. That’s not timid. That’s prudently Roman....
38. Like Truthless Dreams, So Are My Joys Expired Like truthless dreams, so are my joys expired, And past return are all my dandled days; My love misled, and fancy quite retired – Of all which passed the sorrow only stays. My lost delights, now clean from sight of land, Have left me all alone in unknown ways; My mind to woe, my life […]...
39. 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!...
40. Last Night As I Was Sleeping Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt-marvelous error!- That a spring was breaking Out in my heart. I said: Along which secret aqueduct, Oh water, are you coming to me, Water of a new life That I have never drunk? Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt-marvelous error!- That I had a beehive […]...