National Poetry Month
Because today is the last day of National Poetry Month, here's some more poems I'd like to share. Hope you enjoy!
Let Me Begin Again
by Philip Levine
Let me begin again as a speck
of dust caught in the night winds
sweeping out to sea. Let me begin
this time knowing the world is
salt water and dark clouds, the world
is grinding and sighing all night, and dawn
comes slowly and changes nothing. Let
me go back to land after a lifetime
of going nowhere. This time lodged
in the feathers of some scavenging gull
white above the black ship that docks
and broods upon the oily waters of
your harbor. This leaking freighter
has brought a hold full of hayforks
from Spain, great jeroboams of dark
Algerian wine, and quill pens that can't
write English. The sailors have stumbled
off toward the bars of the bright houses.
The captain closes his log and falls asleep.
1/10'28. Tonight I shall enter my life
after being at sea for ages, quietly,
in a hospital named for an automobile.
The one child of millions of children
who has flown alone by the stars
above the black wastes of moonless waters
that stretched forever, who has turned
golden in the full sun of a new day.
A tiny wise child who this time will love
his life because it is like no other.
I Am Learning To Abandon The World
by Linda Pastan
I am learning to abandon the world
before it can abandon me.
Already I have given up the moon
and snow, closing my shades
against the claims of white.
And the world has taken
my father, my friends.
I have given up melodic lines of hills,
moving to a flat, tuneless landscape.
And every night I give my body up
limb by limb, working upwards
across bone, towards the heart.
But morning comes with small
reprieves of coffee and birdsong.
A tree outside the window
which was simply shadow moments ago
takes back its branches twig
by leafy twig.
And as I take my body back
the sun lays its warm muzzle on my lap
as if to make amends.
Six Haiku
by Karen Anderson
1
The white vapor trail
Scrawls slowly on the sky
Without any squeak.
2
Gilt and painted clouds
Float back through the shining air,
What, are these stars, too?
3
In the heavy world’s
Shadow, I watch the Sputnik
Coasting in sunlight.
4
Those crisp cucumbers
Not yet planted on Syrtis -
How I desire one!
5
In the fantastic
Seas of Venus, who would dare
To imagine gulls?
6
When Proxima sets
What constellations do they
Dream around our sun?
Eighteen Years Old, October Eleventh
by Joe Haldeman
Drunk for the first time in her life,
she tossed her head in a horsey laugh
and that new opal gift sailed off her sore earlobe,
in a graceful parabola,
pinged twice on the stone porch floor,
and rolled off to hide behind the rose bushes.
It gathered dust and silt for two centuries.
The mansion came down in a war.
For twelve thousand years
the opal hid in dark rubble, unmoving.
An arctic chill worked down through it, and deeper,
and glaciers pushed the rubble thousands of miles,
very fast, as opals measure time.
After millions of years (the Sun just measurably cooler)
a female felt the presence of a stone,
and waved away yards of snow and ice;
waved away dozens of yards
of frozen dirt and crushed rock,
and held, in what resembled a hand,
this bauble of gold and rainbow stone:
felt the sense of loss in that silly girl,
dead as a trilobite;
felt the pain that had gone into penetrating
the soft hyperbolic paraboloid of cartilage
that then displayed the decoration;
felt its sexual purpose:
to attract a dissimilar pattern of genes
to combine and recombine a trillion trillion times,
and become herself.
She briefly cherished the stone,
and returned it to its waiting.
Ravens
by Theodora Goss
Some men are actually ravens.
Oh, they look like men.
Some of them in suits,
some of them in shirts embroidered
with the names of baseball teams,
some in uniforms, fighting in wars we only see
on television.
But underneath, they are ravens.
Look carefully, and you will find their skins of feathers.
Once, I fell in love with a raven man.
I knew that to keep him I had to take his skin,
his skin of feathers, long and black as night,
like ebony, tarmac, licorice, black holes.
I found it (he had taken it off to play baseball)
and hid it in the attic.
He was mine for seven years.
I had to make promises:
not to hurt ravens, to give our children names
like Sky, and Rain Cloud, and Nest-of-Twigs,
spend one night a week in the bole of an old oak tree
that had been hollowed out by who-knows-what.
I had to eat worms. (Yes, I ate worms.)
You do crazy things for raven men.
In return,
he spent six nights a week in my arms.
His black feathers fell around me.
He gave me three children
(Sky, Rain Cloud, Nest-of-Twigs,
whom we called Twiggy).
And I was happy,
which is more than most people achieve.
You know where this is going.
One day, I threw a stone at a raven.
I was not angry, he was not doing anything in particular.
It is just
that raven men are always lost.
Think of it as destiny,
Think of it as inevitable.
I was not tired of our nights together,
with the moon gleaming on his feathers.
No.
Or maybe he found his skin in the attic?
Maybe I had taken his skin and he found it,
and he picked three feathers from it
and touched each of our children,
and they flew away together?
Maybe that's how I lost them?
I don't even remember.
Loving raven men will make you crazy.
In the mornings I see them hurrying to their offices,
the men in suits. And I see them in bars
shouting for their basketball teams, and I see them
on television in wars that have no names,
and I say, that one is a raven man,
and that one, and that one.
Sometimes I stop one and say,
will you send my raven man back to me?
And my raven children?
Some night, when the moon is gleaming,
the way it used to gleam
on long black feathers falling
around my face?
Reasons For Numbers
by Lisel Mueller
1
Because I exist
2
Because there must be a reason
why I should cast a shadow
3
So that good can try to be better
and become best
and beginning grow into middle and end
4
So the round earth can have its corners
and the house will not fall down around me
So the seasons will go on holding hands
and the string quartet play forever
5
For the invention of Milton and Shakespeare
and the older invention
of the wild rose, mother
to the petals
of my hand
6
Because
five
senses
are
not
enough
7
Because luck
is always odd
and the division
of history
into lean and fat
years
mysterious
8
To make the spider
possible
and the black ball which tells me
the game is up
but also to let
the noise of the world
make itself heard
as music
9
For the orbit of Jupiter
Saturn
Venus
Mars
Mercury
Uranus
Mickey Mantle
Lou Gehrig
Babe Ruth
10
Created functionless, for the sheer play
of the mind in its tens of thousands of moves
There is nothing like it in nature
The Migration of Darkness
by Peter Payack
Each evening, shortly after sunset,
darkness covers the land.
Having mystified thinkers for millennia,
the mechanism for this occurrence
has now been identified: migration.
Darkness, it has been found, is composed
of an almost infinite number of particles,
which roost and reproduce up north
where they have fewer natural enemies:
Forest fires, lampposts, lasers, blazing sunlight,
torches, candles, lighthouses, limelight, and electricity
are relatively rare in the polar regions.
These lightweight bits of darkness
flock together and fly south each evening
to more fertile land in a never-ending search
for an abundant food supply.
With the coming of the rising sun,
they return to their northern nesting grounds.
However, not all specks of darkness migrate.
Some that are less adventurous
or downright lazy
choose to stay behind.
These covey together, in varying numbers,
seeking shelter from the strong sunlight
by gathering under leafy trees, behind
large rocks, and underneath umbrellas;
hiding in alleys, between parked cars,
in caves, and inside empty pockets.
These clusters are perceived by us as shadows.
They have a somewhat shorter life span
than those which migrate.
Weather Forcast
by Harold Pinter
The day will get off to a cloudy start.
It will be quite chilly
But as the day progresses
The sun will come out
And the afternoon will be dry and warm
In the evening the moon will shine
And be quite bright.
There will be, it has to be said,
A brisk wind
But it will die out by midnight.
Nothing further will happen.
This is the last forecast.
All Watched Over
by Machines of Loving Grace
by Richard Brautigan
I'd like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.
I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.
I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.
Use of Weapons
by Iain M. Banks
Those lazy curls of smoke above the city,
Black wormholes in the air of noontime’s bright Ground Zero.
Did they tell you what you wanted to be told?
Or rain-skinned on a concrete fastness,
Fortress island in the flood;
You walked amongst the smashed machines,
And looked through undrugged eyes
For engines of another war,
And an attrition of the soul and device.
With craft and plane and ship,
And gun and drone and field you played,
And wrote an allegory of your regress
In other people’s tears and blood;
The tentative poetics of your rise
From a mere and shoddy grace.
And those who found you,
Took, remade you
(‘Hey, my boy, it’s you and us knife missiles now,
Our lunge and speed and bloody secret:
The way to a man’s heart is through his chest!’)
-They thought you were their plaything,
Savage child; the throwback from wayback
Expedient because Utopia spawns few warriors.
But you knew your figure cut a cipher
Through every crafted plan,
And playing our game for real
Saw through our plumbing jobs
And wayward glands
To a meaning of your own, in bones.
-The catchment of these cultured lives
Was not in flesh,
And what we only knew,
You felt,
With all the marrow of your twisted cells.
110 Stories
by John M. Ford
This is not real. We've seen it all before.
Slow down, you're screaming. What exploded? When?
I guess this means we've got ourselves a war.
And look at -- Lord have mercy, not again.
I heard that they went after Air Force One.
Call FAA at once if you can't land.
They say the bastards got the Pentagon.
The Capitol. The White House. Disneyland.
I was across the river, saw it all.
Down Fifth, the buildings put it in a frame.
Aboard the ferry -- we felt awful small.
I didn't look until I felt the flame.
The steel turns red, the framework starts to go.
Jacks clasp Jills' hands and step onto the sky.
The noise was not like anything you know.
Stand still, he said, and watch a building die.
There's no one you can help above this floor.
We've got to hold our breath. We've got to climb.
Don't give me that; I did this once before.
The firemen look up, and know the time.
These labored, took their wages, and are dead.
The cracker-crumbs of fascia sieve the light.
The air's deciduous of letterhead.
How dark, how brilliant, things will be tonight.
Once more, we'll all remember where we were.
Forget it, friend. You didn't have a choice.
That's got to be a rumor, but who's sure?
The Internet is stammering with noise.
You turn and turn but just can't turn away.
My child can't understand. I can't explain.
The towers drain out from Boston to LA.
The cellphone is our ganglion of pain.
What was I thinking of? What did I say?
You're safe? The TV's off. What do you mean?
I'm going now, but not going away.
I couldn't touch the answering machine.
I nearly was, but caught a later bus.
I would have been, but had this awful cold.
I spoke with her, she's headed home, don't fuss.
Pick up those tools. The subway job's on hold.
Somebody's got to pay, no matter what.
I love you. Just I love you. Just I love --
The cloud rolls on; I think of Eliot.
Not silence, but an emptiness above.
There's dust, and metal. Nothing else at all.
it's airless and it's absolutely black.
I found a wallet. I'm afraid to call.
I'll stay until my little girl comes back.
You hold your breath whenever something shakes.
St. Vincent's takes one massive trauma case.
The voice, so placid, till the circuit breaks.
Ten minutes just to grab stuff from my place.
I only want to hear them say goodbye.
They could be down there, buried, couldn't they? My friends all made it, and that's why I cry.
He stayed with me, and he died anyway.
We almost tipped the island toward uptown.
Next minute, I'm in Macy's. Who knows how.
I really need to get this bagel down.
He'd haul ass, that's what Jesus would do now.
A fighter plane? Dear God, let it be ours.
We're scared of bombs and so we're loading guns.
Who didn't have a rude word for the towers?
The world's hip-deep in junk that mattered once.
Hands rise to heaven as asbestos falls.
The air is yellow, hideously thick.
A photo, private once, on fifty walls.
A candle in a teacup on a brick.
They found -- can you believe -- a pair of hands.
Oh, that don't hurt. Well, maybe just a bit.
The Winter Garden's shattered but it stands.
A howl is Mene Tekeled in the grit.
Some made it in a basement, so there's hope.
The following are definitely known . . .
You live, is how you learn that you can cope.
Yes, I sincerely want to be alone.
Don't even ask. That's what your tears are for.
The cats are in a shelter; we are not.
Pedestrians rule the Roeblings' bridge once more.
A memory of home is what we've got.
Tribeca with no people, that's plain wrong.
It's just a shopping bag, but who can tell?
Okay, okay, I'm moving right along.
The postcards hit two dollars, and they sell.
Be honest, now. You're proud of living here.
If this is Armageddon, make it quick.
Today, for you, the rose is free, my dear.
We're shooting down our neighbors. Now I'm sick.
I can't do that for fifty times the fare.
A coronary. Other things went on.
It goes, like, something mighty, and despair.
All those not now accounted for are gone.
Here is the man whose god blinked in the flash,
Whose god says sinful people should be hurt,
The man whose god is kneeling in the ash,
The man whose god is dancing on the dirt.
Okay, I ate at Windows now and then.
This fortune-teller went to Notre Dame?
They knocked 'em down. We'll stack 'em up again.
Oh, I'd say one or two things stayed the same.
Some nights I still can see them, like a ghost.
King Kong was right about the Empire State.
I'd rather not hear what you'll miss the most.
A taller building? Maybe. I can wait.
I hugged the stranger sitting next to me.
So this is what you call a second chance.
One turn aside, into eternity.
This is New York. We'll find a place to dance. With resolution wanting, reason runs To characters and symbols, noughts and ones.
Why It Often Rains in the Movies
by Lawrence Rabb
Because so much consequential thinking
happens in the rain. A steady mist
to recall departures, a bitter downpour
for betrayal. As if the first thing
a man wants to do when he learns his wife
is sleeping with his best friend, and has been
for years, the very first thing
is not to make a drink, and drink it,
and make another, but to walk outside
into bad weather. It’s true
that the way we look doesn’t always
reveal our feelings. Which is a problem
for the movies. And why somebody has to smash
a mirror, for example, to show he’s angry
and full of self-hate, whereas actual people
rarely do this. And rarely sit on benches
in the pouring rain to weep. Is he wondering
why he didn’t see it long ago? Is he wondering
if in fact he did, and lied to himself?
And perhaps she also saw the many ways
he’d allowed himself to be deceived. In this city
it will rain all night. So the three of them
return to their houses, and the wife
and her lover go upstairs to bed
while the husband takes a small black pistol
from a drawer, turns it over in his hands,
the puts it back. Thus demonstrating
his inability to respond to passion
with passion. But we don’t want him
to shoot his wife, or his friend, or himself.
And we’ve begun to suspect
that none of this is going to work out,
that we’ll leave the theater feeling
vaguely cheated, just as the movie,
turning away from the husband’s sorrow,
leaves him to be a man who must continue,
day after day, to walk outside into the rain,
outside and back again, since now there can be
nowhere in this world for him to rest.
Attack of the Crab Monsters
by Lawrence Rabb
Even from the beach I could sense it-
lack of welcome, lack of abiding life,
like something in the air, a certain
lack of sound. Yesterday
there was a mountain out there.
Now it’s gone. And look
at this radio, each tube neatly
sliced in half. Blow the place up!
That was my advice.
But after the storm and the earthquake,
after the tactic of the exploding plane
and the strategy of the sinking boat, it looked
like fate and I wanted to say, “Don’t you see?
So what if you’re a famous biochemist!
Lost with all hands is an old story.”
Sure, we’re on the edge
of an important breakthrough, everyone
hearing voices, everyone falling
into caves, and you’re out
wandering through the jungle
in the middle of the night in your negligee.
Yes, we’re way out there
on the edge of science, while the rest
of the island continues to disappear until
nothing’s left except this
cliff in the middle of the ocean,
and you, in your bathing suit,
crouched behind the scuba tanks.
I’d like to tell you
not to be afraid, but I’ve lost
my voice. I’m not used to all these
legs, these claws, these feelers.
It’s the old story, predictable
as fallout-the rearrangement of molecules.
And everyone is surprised
and no one understands
why each man tries to kill
the thing he loves, when the change
comes over him. So now you know
what I never found the time to say.
Sweetheart, put down your flamethrower.
You know I always loved you.
Originally posted at http://quadruplify.dreamwidth.org/121299.html || Comments on original post:
Let Me Begin Again
by Philip Levine
Let me begin again as a speck
of dust caught in the night winds
sweeping out to sea. Let me begin
this time knowing the world is
salt water and dark clouds, the world
is grinding and sighing all night, and dawn
comes slowly and changes nothing. Let
me go back to land after a lifetime
of going nowhere. This time lodged
in the feathers of some scavenging gull
white above the black ship that docks
and broods upon the oily waters of
your harbor. This leaking freighter
has brought a hold full of hayforks
from Spain, great jeroboams of dark
Algerian wine, and quill pens that can't
write English. The sailors have stumbled
off toward the bars of the bright houses.
The captain closes his log and falls asleep.
1/10'28. Tonight I shall enter my life
after being at sea for ages, quietly,
in a hospital named for an automobile.
The one child of millions of children
who has flown alone by the stars
above the black wastes of moonless waters
that stretched forever, who has turned
golden in the full sun of a new day.
A tiny wise child who this time will love
his life because it is like no other.
I Am Learning To Abandon The World
by Linda Pastan
I am learning to abandon the world
before it can abandon me.
Already I have given up the moon
and snow, closing my shades
against the claims of white.
And the world has taken
my father, my friends.
I have given up melodic lines of hills,
moving to a flat, tuneless landscape.
And every night I give my body up
limb by limb, working upwards
across bone, towards the heart.
But morning comes with small
reprieves of coffee and birdsong.
A tree outside the window
which was simply shadow moments ago
takes back its branches twig
by leafy twig.
And as I take my body back
the sun lays its warm muzzle on my lap
as if to make amends.
Six Haiku
by Karen Anderson
1
The white vapor trail
Scrawls slowly on the sky
Without any squeak.
2
Gilt and painted clouds
Float back through the shining air,
What, are these stars, too?
3
In the heavy world’s
Shadow, I watch the Sputnik
Coasting in sunlight.
4
Those crisp cucumbers
Not yet planted on Syrtis -
How I desire one!
5
In the fantastic
Seas of Venus, who would dare
To imagine gulls?
6
When Proxima sets
What constellations do they
Dream around our sun?
Eighteen Years Old, October Eleventh
by Joe Haldeman
Drunk for the first time in her life,
she tossed her head in a horsey laugh
and that new opal gift sailed off her sore earlobe,
in a graceful parabola,
pinged twice on the stone porch floor,
and rolled off to hide behind the rose bushes.
It gathered dust and silt for two centuries.
The mansion came down in a war.
For twelve thousand years
the opal hid in dark rubble, unmoving.
An arctic chill worked down through it, and deeper,
and glaciers pushed the rubble thousands of miles,
very fast, as opals measure time.
After millions of years (the Sun just measurably cooler)
a female felt the presence of a stone,
and waved away yards of snow and ice;
waved away dozens of yards
of frozen dirt and crushed rock,
and held, in what resembled a hand,
this bauble of gold and rainbow stone:
felt the sense of loss in that silly girl,
dead as a trilobite;
felt the pain that had gone into penetrating
the soft hyperbolic paraboloid of cartilage
that then displayed the decoration;
felt its sexual purpose:
to attract a dissimilar pattern of genes
to combine and recombine a trillion trillion times,
and become herself.
She briefly cherished the stone,
and returned it to its waiting.
Ravens
by Theodora Goss
Some men are actually ravens.
Oh, they look like men.
Some of them in suits,
some of them in shirts embroidered
with the names of baseball teams,
some in uniforms, fighting in wars we only see
on television.
But underneath, they are ravens.
Look carefully, and you will find their skins of feathers.
Once, I fell in love with a raven man.
I knew that to keep him I had to take his skin,
his skin of feathers, long and black as night,
like ebony, tarmac, licorice, black holes.
I found it (he had taken it off to play baseball)
and hid it in the attic.
He was mine for seven years.
I had to make promises:
not to hurt ravens, to give our children names
like Sky, and Rain Cloud, and Nest-of-Twigs,
spend one night a week in the bole of an old oak tree
that had been hollowed out by who-knows-what.
I had to eat worms. (Yes, I ate worms.)
You do crazy things for raven men.
In return,
he spent six nights a week in my arms.
His black feathers fell around me.
He gave me three children
(Sky, Rain Cloud, Nest-of-Twigs,
whom we called Twiggy).
And I was happy,
which is more than most people achieve.
You know where this is going.
One day, I threw a stone at a raven.
I was not angry, he was not doing anything in particular.
It is just
that raven men are always lost.
Think of it as destiny,
Think of it as inevitable.
I was not tired of our nights together,
with the moon gleaming on his feathers.
No.
Or maybe he found his skin in the attic?
Maybe I had taken his skin and he found it,
and he picked three feathers from it
and touched each of our children,
and they flew away together?
Maybe that's how I lost them?
I don't even remember.
Loving raven men will make you crazy.
In the mornings I see them hurrying to their offices,
the men in suits. And I see them in bars
shouting for their basketball teams, and I see them
on television in wars that have no names,
and I say, that one is a raven man,
and that one, and that one.
Sometimes I stop one and say,
will you send my raven man back to me?
And my raven children?
Some night, when the moon is gleaming,
the way it used to gleam
on long black feathers falling
around my face?
Reasons For Numbers
by Lisel Mueller
1
Because I exist
2
Because there must be a reason
why I should cast a shadow
3
So that good can try to be better
and become best
and beginning grow into middle and end
4
So the round earth can have its corners
and the house will not fall down around me
So the seasons will go on holding hands
and the string quartet play forever
5
For the invention of Milton and Shakespeare
and the older invention
of the wild rose, mother
to the petals
of my hand
6
Because
five
senses
are
not
enough
7
Because luck
is always odd
and the division
of history
into lean and fat
years
mysterious
8
To make the spider
possible
and the black ball which tells me
the game is up
but also to let
the noise of the world
make itself heard
as music
9
For the orbit of Jupiter
Saturn
Venus
Mars
Mercury
Uranus
Mickey Mantle
Lou Gehrig
Babe Ruth
10
Created functionless, for the sheer play
of the mind in its tens of thousands of moves
There is nothing like it in nature
The Migration of Darkness
by Peter Payack
Each evening, shortly after sunset,
darkness covers the land.
Having mystified thinkers for millennia,
the mechanism for this occurrence
has now been identified: migration.
Darkness, it has been found, is composed
of an almost infinite number of particles,
which roost and reproduce up north
where they have fewer natural enemies:
Forest fires, lampposts, lasers, blazing sunlight,
torches, candles, lighthouses, limelight, and electricity
are relatively rare in the polar regions.
These lightweight bits of darkness
flock together and fly south each evening
to more fertile land in a never-ending search
for an abundant food supply.
With the coming of the rising sun,
they return to their northern nesting grounds.
However, not all specks of darkness migrate.
Some that are less adventurous
or downright lazy
choose to stay behind.
These covey together, in varying numbers,
seeking shelter from the strong sunlight
by gathering under leafy trees, behind
large rocks, and underneath umbrellas;
hiding in alleys, between parked cars,
in caves, and inside empty pockets.
These clusters are perceived by us as shadows.
They have a somewhat shorter life span
than those which migrate.
Weather Forcast
by Harold Pinter
The day will get off to a cloudy start.
It will be quite chilly
But as the day progresses
The sun will come out
And the afternoon will be dry and warm
In the evening the moon will shine
And be quite bright.
There will be, it has to be said,
A brisk wind
But it will die out by midnight.
Nothing further will happen.
This is the last forecast.
All Watched Over
by Machines of Loving Grace
by Richard Brautigan
I'd like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.
I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.
I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.
Use of Weapons
by Iain M. Banks
Those lazy curls of smoke above the city,
Black wormholes in the air of noontime’s bright Ground Zero.
Did they tell you what you wanted to be told?
Or rain-skinned on a concrete fastness,
Fortress island in the flood;
You walked amongst the smashed machines,
And looked through undrugged eyes
For engines of another war,
And an attrition of the soul and device.
With craft and plane and ship,
And gun and drone and field you played,
And wrote an allegory of your regress
In other people’s tears and blood;
The tentative poetics of your rise
From a mere and shoddy grace.
And those who found you,
Took, remade you
(‘Hey, my boy, it’s you and us knife missiles now,
Our lunge and speed and bloody secret:
The way to a man’s heart is through his chest!’)
-They thought you were their plaything,
Savage child; the throwback from wayback
Expedient because Utopia spawns few warriors.
But you knew your figure cut a cipher
Through every crafted plan,
And playing our game for real
Saw through our plumbing jobs
And wayward glands
To a meaning of your own, in bones.
-The catchment of these cultured lives
Was not in flesh,
And what we only knew,
You felt,
With all the marrow of your twisted cells.
110 Stories
by John M. Ford
This is not real. We've seen it all before.
Slow down, you're screaming. What exploded? When?
I guess this means we've got ourselves a war.
And look at -- Lord have mercy, not again.
I heard that they went after Air Force One.
Call FAA at once if you can't land.
They say the bastards got the Pentagon.
The Capitol. The White House. Disneyland.
I was across the river, saw it all.
Down Fifth, the buildings put it in a frame.
Aboard the ferry -- we felt awful small.
I didn't look until I felt the flame.
The steel turns red, the framework starts to go.
Jacks clasp Jills' hands and step onto the sky.
The noise was not like anything you know.
Stand still, he said, and watch a building die.
There's no one you can help above this floor.
We've got to hold our breath. We've got to climb.
Don't give me that; I did this once before.
The firemen look up, and know the time.
These labored, took their wages, and are dead.
The cracker-crumbs of fascia sieve the light.
The air's deciduous of letterhead.
How dark, how brilliant, things will be tonight.
Once more, we'll all remember where we were.
Forget it, friend. You didn't have a choice.
That's got to be a rumor, but who's sure?
The Internet is stammering with noise.
You turn and turn but just can't turn away.
My child can't understand. I can't explain.
The towers drain out from Boston to LA.
The cellphone is our ganglion of pain.
What was I thinking of? What did I say?
You're safe? The TV's off. What do you mean?
I'm going now, but not going away.
I couldn't touch the answering machine.
I nearly was, but caught a later bus.
I would have been, but had this awful cold.
I spoke with her, she's headed home, don't fuss.
Pick up those tools. The subway job's on hold.
Somebody's got to pay, no matter what.
I love you. Just I love you. Just I love --
The cloud rolls on; I think of Eliot.
Not silence, but an emptiness above.
There's dust, and metal. Nothing else at all.
it's airless and it's absolutely black.
I found a wallet. I'm afraid to call.
I'll stay until my little girl comes back.
You hold your breath whenever something shakes.
St. Vincent's takes one massive trauma case.
The voice, so placid, till the circuit breaks.
Ten minutes just to grab stuff from my place.
I only want to hear them say goodbye.
They could be down there, buried, couldn't they? My friends all made it, and that's why I cry.
He stayed with me, and he died anyway.
We almost tipped the island toward uptown.
Next minute, I'm in Macy's. Who knows how.
I really need to get this bagel down.
He'd haul ass, that's what Jesus would do now.
A fighter plane? Dear God, let it be ours.
We're scared of bombs and so we're loading guns.
Who didn't have a rude word for the towers?
The world's hip-deep in junk that mattered once.
Hands rise to heaven as asbestos falls.
The air is yellow, hideously thick.
A photo, private once, on fifty walls.
A candle in a teacup on a brick.
They found -- can you believe -- a pair of hands.
Oh, that don't hurt. Well, maybe just a bit.
The Winter Garden's shattered but it stands.
A howl is Mene Tekeled in the grit.
Some made it in a basement, so there's hope.
The following are definitely known . . .
You live, is how you learn that you can cope.
Yes, I sincerely want to be alone.
Don't even ask. That's what your tears are for.
The cats are in a shelter; we are not.
Pedestrians rule the Roeblings' bridge once more.
A memory of home is what we've got.
Tribeca with no people, that's plain wrong.
It's just a shopping bag, but who can tell?
Okay, okay, I'm moving right along.
The postcards hit two dollars, and they sell.
Be honest, now. You're proud of living here.
If this is Armageddon, make it quick.
Today, for you, the rose is free, my dear.
We're shooting down our neighbors. Now I'm sick.
I can't do that for fifty times the fare.
A coronary. Other things went on.
It goes, like, something mighty, and despair.
All those not now accounted for are gone.
Here is the man whose god blinked in the flash,
Whose god says sinful people should be hurt,
The man whose god is kneeling in the ash,
The man whose god is dancing on the dirt.
Okay, I ate at Windows now and then.
This fortune-teller went to Notre Dame?
They knocked 'em down. We'll stack 'em up again.
Oh, I'd say one or two things stayed the same.
Some nights I still can see them, like a ghost.
King Kong was right about the Empire State.
I'd rather not hear what you'll miss the most.
A taller building? Maybe. I can wait.
I hugged the stranger sitting next to me.
So this is what you call a second chance.
One turn aside, into eternity.
This is New York. We'll find a place to dance. With resolution wanting, reason runs To characters and symbols, noughts and ones.
Why It Often Rains in the Movies
by Lawrence Rabb
Because so much consequential thinking
happens in the rain. A steady mist
to recall departures, a bitter downpour
for betrayal. As if the first thing
a man wants to do when he learns his wife
is sleeping with his best friend, and has been
for years, the very first thing
is not to make a drink, and drink it,
and make another, but to walk outside
into bad weather. It’s true
that the way we look doesn’t always
reveal our feelings. Which is a problem
for the movies. And why somebody has to smash
a mirror, for example, to show he’s angry
and full of self-hate, whereas actual people
rarely do this. And rarely sit on benches
in the pouring rain to weep. Is he wondering
why he didn’t see it long ago? Is he wondering
if in fact he did, and lied to himself?
And perhaps she also saw the many ways
he’d allowed himself to be deceived. In this city
it will rain all night. So the three of them
return to their houses, and the wife
and her lover go upstairs to bed
while the husband takes a small black pistol
from a drawer, turns it over in his hands,
the puts it back. Thus demonstrating
his inability to respond to passion
with passion. But we don’t want him
to shoot his wife, or his friend, or himself.
And we’ve begun to suspect
that none of this is going to work out,
that we’ll leave the theater feeling
vaguely cheated, just as the movie,
turning away from the husband’s sorrow,
leaves him to be a man who must continue,
day after day, to walk outside into the rain,
outside and back again, since now there can be
nowhere in this world for him to rest.
Attack of the Crab Monsters
by Lawrence Rabb
Even from the beach I could sense it-
lack of welcome, lack of abiding life,
like something in the air, a certain
lack of sound. Yesterday
there was a mountain out there.
Now it’s gone. And look
at this radio, each tube neatly
sliced in half. Blow the place up!
That was my advice.
But after the storm and the earthquake,
after the tactic of the exploding plane
and the strategy of the sinking boat, it looked
like fate and I wanted to say, “Don’t you see?
So what if you’re a famous biochemist!
Lost with all hands is an old story.”
Sure, we’re on the edge
of an important breakthrough, everyone
hearing voices, everyone falling
into caves, and you’re out
wandering through the jungle
in the middle of the night in your negligee.
Yes, we’re way out there
on the edge of science, while the rest
of the island continues to disappear until
nothing’s left except this
cliff in the middle of the ocean,
and you, in your bathing suit,
crouched behind the scuba tanks.
I’d like to tell you
not to be afraid, but I’ve lost
my voice. I’m not used to all these
legs, these claws, these feelers.
It’s the old story, predictable
as fallout-the rearrangement of molecules.
And everyone is surprised
and no one understands
why each man tries to kill
the thing he loves, when the change
comes over him. So now you know
what I never found the time to say.
Sweetheart, put down your flamethrower.
You know I always loved you.
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