New poems this week as usual. My old poems are from my last poetry eBook, New Days & New Ways, a collection from 2011. I published a book of very short stories before this book and a "flash fiction fable" after it. Both books sought to create an  extended narrative through short prose pieces  that together told a story.

And poems from my  library.









My first new poem for this week, from last week.














First from my library this week is from the anthology, American  Diaspora, Poetry of Displacement, published by University of Iowa Press in 2001.

The poem is by Gustavo Perez Firmat. Born in Cuba and raised in Miami, the poet earned his Ph.D in Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan. He taught at Duke University from 1979 to 1999 and currently is professor of Humanities at Columbia University.







What Hurts

     for Virgil

We are called broken
because we do not humor the age,
mask our distemper, dress our disdain
in vests and valentines.
We are called broken
because we do not settle,
we roil, we wrack, we wreck
ourselves and our wives and our children,
ourselves and our friends and their children,
ourselves and our wives and their friends.

Truths and trouble we tell them,
hurts and hatreds we tell them,
how it all began and how it will end,
who did what to whom and for what reason,
who's to blame and what the punishments should be.

We spare them nothing.
We tell them todo, then go on to more.
We break them with our brokenness
until they are broken too.












First from New Days & New Ways. The book is divided into five sections, poems in each section intended an elaboration on  the section's title. The first section is titled, "Passages."












a mid-winter poem

     I have the feel
of a string running out,
a slackness in my lifeline,
all that I am reduced to
     loose ends...

I've done many things in my life,
good and worthwhile things,
though none lasted longer than
it took for my shadow

to fade around the corner

my proudest  legacies
remembered only by me -
like clouds blown apart
by the wind, so much more fragile
     than I had imagined
     when doing them

and now the line
that anchored me to the  future
has gone  slack and I feel just another
of the world's many forgettable
     loose ends








These poems are by my second favorite French poet from the turn of the 19th-20th century, Guillaume Apollinaire. Though born in Rome in 1880, Apollinaire's  adult life was centered in Paris, where  came to know well many of the young artists of the new Modernist movement, giving "cubism" its name in the process. The poem is from the book Alcools.

He served France in World War I and was seriously wounded, undergoing two skull operations. He died of Spanish influenza in 1918.

The collection of poems was published in 1995 by Wesleyan University Press, with  translation by Donald Revell.





Marizibill

On High Street in Cologne
She came and went all night
Whoring her tiny her pretty
Board in streetlight
Drunk in cellars

Rescued in Shanghai
En route to Formosa
Apprenticed to poverty
For love of a pimp
Who stank of garlic

I've known all kinds of people
Unequal to their fates
Uncertain as the fallen leaves
Eyes like dampened fires
Hearts like gaping doors


Snow

In the sky angels angels
One is an officer
One is a poulterer
The rest sing

Handsome sky-blue officer
A long time after Christmas spring
Awards the Legion of the Handsome Sun
          The Handsome Sun

The poulterer plucks geese
           Ah snowfall
           Fall! I have
No beloved in my arms.


The Farewell

I picked this sprig of heather
Autumn has died you must  remember
We shall not see each other ever
I'm waiting and you must remember
Time's perfume is a sprig of heather












Just because I don't know now doesn't me I didn't use to know how.




















Next, here's Charles Bukowski, from the collection, Open All Night. The book was published by Ecco in 2000.









ah, ah, ah

I  suppose what disturbs me about  the sages,
the great minds,
is that they are so sure of what they
say.
yet I have to forgive them.
I admire their energy.
(I too have energy but it's not for
finding answers.)

instead of knowing more and more
I know less and less.

instead of becoming more comfortable
I become more
anguished

jesus, I am beginning to sound like
one of those philosophy books in the library
that runs around in circles
like a dog chasing its
tail.

I suppose that what I liked about the libraries
back when I was young
were the old bums
shitting in the crappers and washing their hands and faces
and then falling asleep over a book
their noses inside the books
and they were asleep
and the flies circled them
as the binding of 100,000 dull books
stared at me

all the sages
all the years
wasted.










The second section of New Days & New Days is about the problem we poem-a-day poets have in coming up with a new poem every day, and how we fall back on uninspired days to writing about not being able to write.

And sometime, we just punt, producing some  of my personal favorite poems.

The section's title is "Perils  & Pitfalls of Poem a Day Poets."











adios

     watch
me now

this
is called killing
time

this slack dumbstruck
expression
on my face
like a cow facing his stockyard
executioner is actually a sign of intense mental
inschubobulation
from which
will emerge in good time a poem
for the ages
a poem of the
ages
an old poem
full of old excuses and yesterday's words
piled
one
up-
on
the
other
until there is at least
a page
or maybe two
of
time defied
time denied
time murdered
killed in the killing
of it...

such an astrophysically
galaxy-shifting
result it is, this  killing
of time

much more significant in this
electrophantasmalistic
universe
than any little morning poem
about which the gods would shrug
as time runs out
even for
them
a
dribble
to stasis, entropy
achieved
the end my
friend

adios









This poem is by Frank O'Hara, taken from his book Meditations in an Emergency. The book was published by Grove Press in 1957, my copy, a second edition in 1967.










Aus einem April

          We dust the walls.
            and of course we are weeping larks
falling all over the heavens with our shoulders clasped
in someone's armpits, so tightly! and our throats are full.
        Haven't you ever fallen in love at Christmas
             and didn't it move everyone who saw you?
                  isn't that what the tree means? the pure pleasure
of making weep those whom you cannot move by your flights!
            It's enough to drive one to suicide.
And the rooftops are falling apart like the applause

of rough, long-nailed, intimate, roughened-by-kisses, hands.
Fingers more breathless than a tongue laid upon the lips
in the hour of sunlight, early morning, before the mist  rolls
in from the sea; and out there everything is turbulent and green.











Another from last week. It is a wild, pulse-pounding life I lead.

















The next poem is by Cathy Song, taken from her book Picture Bride, winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award in 1982. The book was published by Yale University Press. She has published four additional collections of poetry since then.

Song, born in Hawaii in 1955, was educated at Wellesley College and Boston University.






Seed

We speak of naming our daughters,
still
inside you. Still inside me.
Separate, moist, quiescent.
Our meetings are conspiracies.
I bring the water,
you prepare for hunger.
I portion out the spirits,
the ritual of breaking bread.
You part the water,
come flying back to me
on boneless wings,
quiet fish.












The third section of my eBook, New Days & New Ways, is titled "Human  Is As Human Does." This poem is from that section.











all brothers to all brothers

     yes,
it's true,
I talk to my animals...

even Reba
who can't hear me,
but she can see my lips move
and know she's on my mind, like
the blind cat knows she is not alone in the dark
when I stroke her head as I pass,
like the friendly nod I exchange with people
I pass on the street because we all need
to know we are not alone in the dark -

such an acknowledgement of our shared passage
we should pass on to the creatures around us -

balm to repair the primordial weld  that has bound
us all since creation, the weld that is separating now
as all become remote from the others...

if you believe in God, remember that he created us all
as part of his plan and it is not our place to redraw
the blueprints of his creation;

if you do not  believe in God, remember instead
that we are all creatures at base of common offspring,
basic elements that give us all, as our relatives,
the snake, the bird, the fish in the ocean, the lion
in the field, our neighbor across the fence, the
daffodil growing wild as any creature on the meadow,
the earth beneath our feed and the stars that shine overhead,

all brothers of all brothers in our most basic
construction...








Here are  two short poems by Jim Carroll, from his book Void of Course, Poems 1994-1997. The book was published by Penguin Poets in 1998.

Best known for his book, The Basketball Diaries, Carroll published his first collection of poetry in 1973. The poet, an autobiographer, and punk musician, was born in 1949 and died (at his writing desk, it is said) in 2009.

Not big on titles, apparently, all the poems in this book are simply titled "Poem." Personally, I find that to be an affectation and a disservice to readers.



Poem

Vertigo, discord and certain trees
Formed the matrix for all alphabets.
Each letter is true
Every word is false
                                                  
                                                           Over there
in that cabinet lives the salamander
Which  I mentioned
With her  entourage of fireflies.

Ask your question
                            The moment I open those doors

The stand back quickly

                                                  She answers with flames

And don't dare underestimate

                                                         The distance of her fire


Poem

Your spirit was deep
It suffused grace surely as amber

Now it's a small sick bird
That pins around the gravel

No flying, no color, now warmth for a hand             











Another from last week.















The next poem is by my poet-friend Charles Levenstein, taken from his book Poems of World War III. His book was published by Lulu Press in 2006.

Chuck is Professor Emeritus of Work Environment Policy at the University of Massachusetts. In addition to his poetry, he is editor of New Solutions Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health Policy and author of numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals as well as several non-poetry books.




Cowboys

Old people remember December 7,
I don't even though I was branded
like a stray calf, Don't Fence Me In,
song on our lips later
when we angled to contain
sheep-herding Russians,
stuffed our brand new stuffing
in ship and shore containers,
peddled store-bought turkeys
to the hungry world. Cowboys
and cattle from Texas to Alaska,
sent Union Pacific into space,
never neglecting, but never forgot
Butch Cassidy in Central America,
fruit, coffee and cows all the way
to  Argentina, American gauchos and
good friends fought rustlers and
horse thieves, helped good folks
of Chile, the  good folks of El  Salvador,
I can't even remember how the cowboys
brought down the Sandinista,
something about a truck drivers' strike
after years and years of raids -
More sheepherders and farmers trying
to steal our grazing land.
Not to mention the empire  of black gold,
the King Ranch of the Middle East,
cowboys and skull caps,
just like Texas,
Sam Houston against all those Mexicans
(who were descended from Spain
who got their looks from North Africa
so you  get the connection).
Our oil, our oil.
Now  we have a new date
to  brand on kid's behinds,
another Alamo.
You better believe that blood
will mix with  oil in Casar's salad.
September 11 - a familiar ring.











This piece is from the fourth section of New Days & New Ways, "Life on the Fifty Planet."












fat lady with a parasol passes

    ambulance
    then fire truck
    then another ambulance

morning rush
becomes morning  parking lot
four  lanes across

    crash on the interstate
    going west

fat lady
with a parasol
passes
on a bicycle
fat feet pumping
on the pedals

    singing

so I guess it's over
for someone








This poem is by Claire Kageyama-Ramakrishnan. It is taken from her book, Winner of the Four Way Books Intro Prize in Poetry, Shadow Mountain, published in 2008.

Born in Santa Monica and raised in Los Angles, the poet earned her MFA in poetry at the University of Virginia and her Ph.D. in literature and creative writing at the University of Houston. She teaches at Houston Community College.







Terzanelle: Manson Riot

This is a poem with missing details,
of round gouging each barrack's windowpane,
sand crystals falling with powder and shale,

where silence and shame make adults insane.
This is abut a midnight of search lights,
of ground gouging each barrack's windowpane,

of syrup on rice and a cook's big fight.
This is the night of Manzanar's riot.
This is about a midnight of searchlights,

a swift moon and a voice shouting, Quiet!
where the revolving search light is the moon.
This is the night of Manzanar's riot,

windstorm of people, rifle powder fumes,
children wiping their eyes clean of debris,
where the revolving searchlight is the moon,

and children still line to use the latrines.
This is a poem about missing details,
children wiping their eyes clean of debris -
sand crystals falling with powder and shale.











Again from last week. A day begins and ends.

















The next poem from my library is by Devreaux Baker, taken from her book Red Willow People. The book was published by Wild Ocean  Press in 2010.

Her poetry has been widely published in journals and in her own books, Baker taught poetry in schools for many years and is a therapist who combines poetry and creative writing in her therapy.








II (from "Spider Woman"

Your skirt is old as wind before she had a name,
when she was a thought floating

through the mind of the sky,
and birds were the long slow  syllables

of her tongue.

Your hair is long as the mountain's face
hollowing blue rock into bare soil down and down.

Your fingers are as quick as light slipping through
the eyelids of the world, each fracture a quick seam

of yellow that escapes and flies out as kernels of corn,

as tears from earth's echo, her great volcanic heart,
her mountain mind.

Around your throat, a necklace of silver fish dreaming.












This is from "As Is or Ought to Be," section five from New Days & New Ways.










I  could be racing

    I could be racing my Stutz Bearcat
through the high mountain passes
of Abrakzam, if I wanted to, or trading
tequila shots with the Duchess de Whirl...

I could do that...

or I could be riding hell for leather
across the rocky steppes of Kerikombati,
eating roast pig on the pristine white sands
of Jazmaka de Mir, or attending a Hollywood premier
with the bountifully bodacious Hungarian star of the evening,
Lotta Shigotta,
or
I could go hang gliding over the deep red canyons
of Tashtaganskastan, if I wanted, or I might pilot my jumbo
Lear jet to a birthday bash for the Prince of Crisco-Ferlinghetti...

lots of other stuff like that I could be doing today..

but I have a poem to write first, then the new Harry Potter
movie that opened just last night, I could take my niece to that,
and there's my geraniums that need some watering, and a whole
drawer full of socks needing emergency organizational attention,

important stuff...

real life...

real life stuff that proves I'm living
and not just part of someone else's Stutz Bearcat dream










And finally this last piece from New Ways & New Days, this one from the sixth section, simply titled "Out There."











Starburst

    days
like starbursts,
bright
and blazing clear

nights
dark and cold,
the sky
black
on a field
of razzle-dazzle...

somewhere,
anther creature of nights and days
looks to the dark above
his indeterminate head and sees
the brilliant mark of mine
among the billions in the canvas
of his sky,
just as I see above me
the fire that warms his  night
and lights his day...

together
we imagine
the other -
star-gazing brothers
across
the universal divide,
extended family
spanning
the furthermost reaches
of nights and
days...

alone, still,
but no  longer lonely


 Here it is, the last for the week.














As usual, everything belongs to who made it. You're welcome to use my stuff, just, if you do, give appropriate credit to "Here and Now" and to me