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i wonder if donovan listens to sound just to drown his voice music has its way with memory
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of eleven planets i dreamt and of the sun and the moon all kneeling before me
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each time i walked by i dreamed of the promise hiding behind its doors
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you ponder ramifications forced upon you by the winds of fate
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i would be forever scarred by the memory of the hopes i had for us both the things that we could have grown to be
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he called out to animals he felt the earth firm and yielding under his bare feet
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i am the reflection of all that is good and beautiful and wonderful on this earth
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and suddenly it spread its wings and took off off into the sky
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then he shed all his things slowly and steadily removing all the physical rings
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ha hunger and thirst i do not need you
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i have to work and slave because of you be gone
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but but i ensure that your body is nourished
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i only know that you have made me miserable when i don't satisfy you
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we have in our hands the seeds of all you have thrown without a stance
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as i was flying admiring my flight and regretting his lack of wings
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even if you aren't with me i may not miss but hardly waiting for first kiss
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which is why death never ends the game like a hawk chasing a crow chased off by crows
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like a god with huge blue eyes and limbs of snow the sea and sky lure to the marble terraces the throng of roses young and strong
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some actions do not change the world and some are more dangerous than we could possibly fathom
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today tomorrow what time is now
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she is happy there she resides in peaceful bliss no more pain
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only one letter so you start your path by a blank page clear
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a photograph on the desk it tells tales of youths travels from place to place in time of lessons learned the hard way
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choices left wars occurred that took our dreams away left us all alone a time in the past
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we finally saw the light in the window it only took a lifetime to hear the answers and see the truth a time in the past
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we are children without gifts and christmas morning was pre-empted by the state of the union address
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that makes me so alone one that no longer cares for the others in need where people are discarded
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a world so different i know a world that has made me untouchable that turns its back on those like me
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afternoons they are always like this eternally afternoons
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no mister banker it is not a bright and happy eye it's the fever of a trophy hunter
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man it is time to decide do you want to crawl down the walk of ghosts or proudly tread the alley of justice
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saturated by whispering squirrels daring me to climb their trees
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to many i have seen to many i have believe if not by my wicked ways to achieve a conquerable belief then it should be done by my own music
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i felt i was getting enraged and losing my speech like them losing their dreams
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the former bonded labourers or muktakamaiya as they are called in nepal are a group of people who mostly come from the tharu community the poem shows the poet's sympathetic ire at these freed bonded labourers who become cheerful for very little -translator
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why are you vegetarian the friend asked don't you like chicken and burgers
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the real freedom is first of all from ourselves die wahre freiheit ist in erster linie von uns selbst la verdadera libertad es ante todo de nosotros mismos
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in times of trouble friends will say just ask
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good luck on your journey you take with you the tears that i gave you and my sleep that you stole
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i could forget my lover were it not for the stars which remind me
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comely am i and black pitch-black letters like the black tents of kedar on paper like the white tents of solomon
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here for you are the fruits of my poetry ripe after months of waiting but for my love you need never wait
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the morning breeze warms the face of every lover but to me it shall always say: all is well with solomon shalom
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just thought i'd tell you while you're sinking whirling down my well
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i'll always be here for you when there's no one out there to comfort you
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at last she put her gum away upon a special little tray and settled back and went to sleep
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if you are the lamp of the heart know where the road is to the house and if you are godlike of attribute know that i am your maser
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i don't know why somehow i've left undone my moral fly
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the tree azalea overwhelms the evening with its scent defining everything and the endless fields walking away suddenly it slices off and is gone the visible object blurs open in front of you the outline of a branch folds back into itself then clarifies just as you turn away and the glass hardens into glassas you go about taking care of things abstractedlyone thing shelved after another as if they were already in the past needing nothing from you until smashing itself on the tile floor the present cracks open the aftermath of itself
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he stamped his feet and opened the door stood on the threshold turned around the desert light shrank his eyes sun slammed his face he almost lost his breath blond shiny grasses ring of distant mountains pinking in the haze the scorched but somehow fertile earth he wiped his brow he couldn't go in he couldn't move he couldn't say why as if he too were a thing dried in sunlight stopped in his tracks in the heat that fixed him in its gaze rattlesnake medusa where he breathed the stinging dusty winds as though a rock inhaling rock his proper evolution and fed on silence as it flowered and fell the fierce clarity the fierce restraint front door behind him hanging open like a thrown shadow as he blazed in place
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reality cons me as it spurs me this is the road to eternalconsanguinity eloping withhope and leaving me to pickup the proverbial bag but that's the argument for
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you see this dog it was but yesterdayi mused forgetful of his presence here till thought on thought drew downward tear on tear when from the pillow where wet-cheeked i lay a head as hairy as faunus thrust its wayright sudden against my face two golden-clearlarge eyes astonished mine a drooping eardid flap me on either cheek to dry the spray i started first as some arcadianamazed by goatly god in twilight grove:but as my bearded vision closelier ranmy tears off i knew flush and rose abovesurprise and sadness thanking the true pan who by low creatures leads to heights of love
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i'm afraid of deathbecause it inflatesthe definitionof what a personis or love untilthey become the same love the beloved immaterial i'm afraid of deathbecause it inventsa different kind oftime a stopped clockthat can't be reset only repurchased an antiquity i'm afraid of death the magician whomakes vanish and whomakes odd things appearin odd places yourname engraves itselfon a stranger's chestin letters of char
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i saw a man pursuing the horizon round and round they sped i was disturbed at this i accosted the man it is futile i said you can never you lie he cried and ran on
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ghostly falls from the fifteenth floorfeathers leaking/ the pillow speakinghow the sleeper's nightly poundingmade the pillow yelp and moanpoor sleeper heard these commentsangered threw said pillow intoan ugly summer night's airthe pillow had little choicethe sleeper's fists the sleeper's mouthnot kind not soft always angrythe sleeper always angry evendreaming the sleeper could notstop rage so the bed was a battlefieldthe pillow an enemy and nowsaid enemy slowly plunges towardsthe courtyard deflated a feral squirrelwatches the fall moves on towardsthe overflowing garbage bins nose opentime to feast
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will she be closer to the falling away of the gaze of things than others hands on the water she calls scene settinghands on the table water over the houses and hills swimmingnot the ocean or the sea but the frame of time she'll tell ofwild happy yeses in her handsshe bites through in rage when ragecomes to her or we do and she's too small a flagwhat does our house say these borrowed things solid and wholefabric lost to her a greasy boy speaks fast at the pizza standmore available to be seen the young in their concernsamidst the old artifice paint a boat and it will mean a dreamput names of your dear ones in it all yourn standing upthese little soft hands she bites through the bright white light of summershines off sand and vinyl siding itself composed against the salt
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snails circlea shed where a child was born she bled into straw who can write this under arcturus rubble of light:we have no wordsfor what is happening still language endurescelan saidas he stood in a torngreen coatshivering a little in a night theater in bremen
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all i did was write them downwherever i was at the time hanginglaundry baking bread driving to illinois my name was attached to themon the page but not in my headbecause the bird i listened to outsidemy window said i couldn't complainabout the blank in place of my nameif i wished to hold both ends of the wirelike a wire and continue to sing insteadof complain it was my plight my thorn my gift the one word in three i waspermitted to call it by the muse who tookmercy on me as long as i didn't explain
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is the harp too obsolete when the wren took his awl to the infested branchhe fed me an idea there
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a rough sound was polished until it became a smoother sound which was polished until it became music then the music was polished until it became the memory of a night in venice when tears of the sea fell from the bridge of sighs which in turn was polished until it ceased to be and in its place stood the empty home of a heart in trouble then suddenly there was sun and the music came back and traffic was moving and off in the distance at the edge of the city a long line of clouds appeared and there was thunder which however menacing would become music and the memory of what happened after venice would begin and what happened after the home of the troubled heart broke in two would also begin
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the lost pines inn would be a good name for a motel or no sheep in the meadow the lost egos the downtown country inn mike and ann's doug and diane's bob and joe's or just joe's hotel warm toes hotel anything goes inn the come inn the company retreat the hermit's den la cave the little house hotel the reliquary the happy family inn the rooster's coop the corky floor the henhouse hotel the egg-in-a-nest the rooks retreat the cooks inn the beat a retreat and a music group could call itself crested loader or -second crossing or car train or thumb on the space bar or the unlike minimums the shepherds without sheep sheep without sleep two feminines autism the twice maniacs the genetics the nasty uncles interfering women but streets get named typically after numbers or trees of they're given the names of prominent as well as lesser-known citizens or the names of great cities of the world or the great letters of the alphabet from a to z but in celebration of the things we consume the names of products and objects should be given to some streets and to encourage pursuit of intellectual professions a city's central thoroughfare might be called mathematics avenue neurochemistry street jurisprudence boulevard or lit crit street while at the edge of town the thoroughways and by ways could commemorate abstractions and generalized conditions and another great name for a motel would be the soporif's inn or the archive and duke high spot drummer archimedes shadow ranger and gamelon might name some of the horses at work under the hood of the blue -horse power p t cruiser that got me home by bedtime
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such nothingness on the other side of whichinfinity slidinto eternity insisting that we had lived together forever and did
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i was an open man of the open streets a burnished sieve of common purpose scrawled on walls thrashed cans and blasted caps for equivalence i wasn't alone the boulevards teemed with wiggly kids and mooing parents slow as boulders in the plaza palabra on a green iron bench a grand senora suffered the odes of schoolboys and thugs smiled behind an opal fan while they searched for words to match their tumultuous nights and all words fit
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note on poem from you envelop me: numbers for poems and text at the beginning of each poem in italics are taken from psalms these particular psalms often identified as nachman's healing psalms were chosen by rebbe nachman of breslov and are traditionally read during mourning this practice exemplifies nachmans' use of sacred texts as meditative tools and highlights his religious philosophy which revolves around intimacy and direct conversation with divine
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here a description of stalemate looking past shore here is the fragment the stunted word store life brings us to the dedication of the droning fisherman all his preparations for autumn thermal thigh-high rubbers
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and i'd like to get naked and into bed and be hot radiating heat from the inside these sweaters and fleeceys do nothing to keep out the out or keep my vitals in some drafty body i've got leaking in and out in all directions i'd like to get naked into bed but hot on this early winter afternoon already dusky grim and not think of all the ways i've gone about the world and shown myself a fool shame poking holes in my thinned carapace practically lacy and woefully feminine i'd like to get naked into bed and feel if not hot then weightless as i once was in the sensory deprivation tank in madison wisconsin circa i paid money for that perfectly body-temperatured silent pitch dark tank to do what play dead and not die that was before email before children before i knew anything more than the deaths of a few loved ones which were poisoned nuts of swallowed grief but nothing of life of life giving which cuts open the self bursting busted unsolvable i'd like to get naked into the bed of my life but hot hot my little flicker-self trumped up somehow blind and deaf to all the dampening misery of my friends' woe-oh-ohs and i'd like a little flashlight to write poems with this lousy day not this poem i'm writing under the mostly flat blaze of bulb but a poem written with the light itself a tiny fleeting love poem to life hot hot hot a poem that would say oh look here a bright spot of life oh look another
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my little baby who i will name a weaver of spools and not of dreams with mortal limbs not quite sinew not quite bone paddles a rowboat inside of me and i stay in those moments ever-so-still so that she may reach out to me the midwife says that what i'm feeling is called quickening scientists say that she is dreaming practicing for this life i like to think where in her nursery there will be a machine projecting fake moonbeams and fake stars and fake shadows and fake birds and fake clouds to storm over her
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late in aqua and ermine gardeniasscaling her left sleeve in a spasm of scent her gloves white her smile chastened purse giddywith stars and rhinestones clipped to her brilliantined hair on her free arm that fine negro mr wonderful smith it's the day that isn't february th at the end of the shortest month of the year and the shittiest too everywhereexcept hollywood california where the maid can wear mink and still be a maid bobbing her bandaged head and cursingthe white folks under her breath as she smilesand shoos their silly daughtersin from the night dew
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still somehow we arelaughter we are the doorway out we are the doorway in
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we walked on the bridge over the chicago riverfor what turned out to be the last time and i ate cotton candy that sugary air that sweet blue light spun out of nothingness it was just a moment really nothing more but i remember marveling at the sturdy cablesof the bridge that held us upand threading my fingers through the longand slender fingers of my grandfather an old man from the old worldwho long ago disappeared into the nether regions and i remember that eight-year-old boywho had tasted the sweetness of air which still clings to my mouthand disappears when i breathe
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drunkstheir breath their sweatespecially when they are lying on top of youor when they have fallen off of you and you are listening to them snore and fartwhen they are your father stumbling up the stairs or passed out on the sofain all his clothes smelling of cigarettes vomit and stale women's colognewhen he is smacking your mother around and you can smell her nearyou are supposed to be sleepingwhen they sit next to you on the subwaywhen they yell hey baby as you are walking to schoolwhen they are happy dancing with their pants falling offslobbering on your neck playing cards talking shitjust mean when they are lilies at a funeral bed sheets the day after when the dark has removed its mask
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for breakfast a man must break an egg then not all the king's horses and all the king's men can do very much about it past perfect the broken egg no longer breaks a dead man no longer dies
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i saw once in a rose garden a remarkable statue of the roman she-wolf and her twins a reproduction of an ancient statue not the famous bronze statue so often copied in which the blunt head swings forward toward the viewer like a sad battering ram but an even older statue of provenance less clear the wolf had been cut out of black stone made blacker by the garden's shadows and she stood in profile her elegant head pointed toward something far beyond her her long unmarked body and legs narrower and more finely-boned than the body and legs of wolves as we know them possessed it seemed of a great stillness like the saturated stillness of the roses but tightly-nerved set on the instant to move under her belly stood the boys under her black breasts not babes as one might expect but two lean boys cut from the same shadowed stone as the wolf but disproportionately small grown boys no bigger than starlings though still like the wolf oddly fine of face and limb one boy pressing four fingers again one long breast his other cupped beneath it to catch the falling milk the second boy wrapping both arms around another breast as if to carry it off neither boy suckling both instead turned toward you dreamy sweetly sly as if to chide you for interrupting their feeding or as if they were plotting a good trick
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beautiful those boys among the roses beautiful the black wolf but it was the breasts that held the eye a double row of four black breasts eight smooth breasts each narrowing to a strict point piercing sharp exactly the shape of the ivory tooth of the shark
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it sweeps away depression and todayyou can't tell the heaped pin-whitecherry blossoms abloom alongriverside drive from the clouds aboveit is all kerfluffle all moisture and light and sointo the wind i gopast riverside church and the fairwaymarket past the water treatment plantand in the dusky triangle belowa hulk of rusted railroad beda single hooded boy is shooting hoops it's ten minutes from here to the giant bridgemen's engineering astride the sky heroican animal roar of motors on itthe little red lighthouse at its footbig brother befriending little brotherin the famous children's storyeight minutes back with the wind behind mepassing the boy there alone shootinghis hoops in the gloom a neighborhood committeemust have said that spaceshould be used for something recreationala mayor's aide must have said okayso they put up basketball and handball courtsand if it were a painting or a photoyou would call it american loneliness
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i have nothing to say to you really i just want to see what i'm looking at i want so much not to listen to you after all this time but to hear
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but i'll sing it to myself i'll sing it to the small moth the size of scarcely a word ad libitum according to my desire
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in need of air she unhinged everywindow revolving ones downstairs upstairs skylights mid-floor french doors swept into the house the salt-brine the cricket chirp the osprey whistle the sea-current sound of the sound but had not noticed the basementbedroom window shielded by blinds screen-less later that night when theyreturned home lights illuminatingthe downstairs hall insects inhabitedthe ground floor rooms she carried handfulsof creatures across a river styx the katydids perched on lampshades beach tiger beetles shuttling acrossfloorboards nursery web spiders splotchingthe ceiling trying to put backthe wild fury she had released
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just this when they were my sonsi would pull the covers uparound their earsand tuck them in smooth their hair kiss their salty eyelids now gingko leavesmake golden blanketsaround the tombstoneof a boy from iowaand another i can't read and another anotheranother another anotheras far as i can seescattered across the hillsidethis autumn and everyautumn beyond counting
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one nightwhen there was a clear moon i sat downto write a poemabout maple trees but the dazzle of moonlightin the inkblinded me and i could only writewhat i remembered therefore on the wrapping of my poemi have inscribed your name
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a trio of instruments you love the notesindissectible amp extending small rockets of delightforce to love be loved love acceleratinglove momentum the love to travelwe will never agree the world containsso much phenomena we'll put on glassesabstract it give it structure make a frameinversely proportional to the square oftwo distances apartmake us a family of celestial bodies that webe one we ellipse about a warming sunlove that sundual nature of electrons heal us o heal usi would come back not hide be in motioni would attach myself to home againi would be sister mother lover brotheri would be father i would be infant animal awesomei would suffer amp become extinct againi would relight the earth with lovei would be still i would be silent amp quakei would be afraid but not for love forthe many manifestations glowing faceslove the notes as they pour like waterlove the water under your feet amp whenyou look look with eyes of loveall the layers the ground underyour feet amp under the groundthe imagined creatures amp above your feet the grasses thewatercress so fine to eat amp see the roots amp bottom of pleasureof moss look into pleasure the colordisappearing or changing the lightlove the light amp see the sky the scaffolds the planetsthe length the width the distancethe congruity the parallels the fracturelove the body keep it elastickeep it dancing rallying on its ownkeep it safe from harm from red tape amp to those next to you be kind be quietbe exalted be a charm a fusion be a batterybe insistent be an empire be a symphony amp in a moment's gentle passing amp in a moment's violent passing completelybe her be him be them see the face beneaththe face amp see with eyes of love gaze straightinto eyes of love with eyes of love on occasion of a valentine's day reading the poetry project at st mark's church in-the-bowery nyc
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i took the lastdusty piece of chinaout of the barrel it was your gravy boat with a hard browndrop of gravy stillon the porcelain lip i grieved for you thenas i never had before
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'twas my custom to stroll by a clear winding stream with my boots full of dew from the lush meadow green near a neck of the woods where the mountain holds sway without danger or fear at the dawn of the day the sight of lough graney would dazzle my eyes as the countryside sparkled beneath the blue skies uplifting to see how the mountains were stacked each head peeping over a neighbouring back it would lighten the heart be it listless with age enfeebled by folly or cardiac rage your wherewithal racked by financial disease to perceive through a gap in the wood full of treesa squadron of ducks in a shimmering bay escorting the swan on her elegant way the trout on the rise with its mouth to the light while the perch swims below like a speckledy sprite and the billows of blue become foam as they breakwith a thunderous crash on the shores of the lake and the birds in the trees whistle bird-songs galore the deer gallop lightly through woods dark as yore where trumpeting huntsmen and hounds of the huntchase the shadow of reynard who leads from the front
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so i always know where i can place himwhen i want him at one with himself at ease:there in the mortgaged half-light there where pinches of vagrant sawdustcan collect in his cuffs and every doorframewelcomes his sidelong blue shadow anywhere his dimming form can drift at willfrom room to room while dinner's going cold a perfect stranger an auditioning ghost
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we shouldn't worship suffering: the world'sa spinning rack where suffering indicatesall goes well we're alive and not curledup in the black hushhush death dictatesas its first condition: no screaming there we crown ourselves with thorns of pasttransgressions sharp spears of deed spareno rib of pain: around the cross crashedcommon lightning usual blood who earnsour reverence should break both cross and crutchin the face of suffering: while the rack turns and tightens they'll smile at the sense of touchsuffering's too common to be worthanything joy too rare to be pricedthe saints we search for will embrace the earth:what wild-eyed murderer suffers less than christ
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i miss the tilt and racket of your face the collapsing factories of your anger the shoreline wearing your boas of foam the steel mirror of your silence your glass contingencies in the night's hold i miss the morning's coverlet of cloud one gull flying east over the moving distanceswhile closer inthe same boulder is kissed again and again as the blacksmith plunges the bruised steel into the tub erasing the heat of his industry i have cooled my browwith the ice of your disdain i have held your cold hand in the rain
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gloomy and bare the organ-loft bent-backed and blind the organist from rafters looming shadowy from the pipes' tuneful company drifted together drowsily innumerable formless dim the ghosts of long-dead melodies of anthems stately thunderous of kyries shrill and tremulous:in melancholy drowsy-sweetthey huddled there in harmony like bats at noontide rafter-hung
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she said i love you he said nothing in the history of languagethe first obscenity was silence
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cold comes from every corner it's snowing and from the train europe looks likea brittle romantic poemin which the lakes closetheir black moon-lost eyes and tricklingroses can be lying on the groundaround a perfectly ordinary housecontaining a perfectly ordinary familyand then suddenly seep outlike blood througha snow-white bandage
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he writes it down heaven steadiesand concentrates near the lavender he's already there
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i know it will be quiet when you come:no wind the water breathing steadily a light like ghost of silver on the sea and the surf dreamily fingering his drum twilight will drift in large and leave me numbwith nearness to the last tranquility and then the slow and languorous tyrannyof orange moon pale night and cricket hum and suddenly there will be twist of tide a rustling as of thin silk on the sand the tremor of a presence at my side the tremble of a hand upon my hand:and pulses sharp with pain and fires fanned and words that stumble into stars and hide
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to think that i should hear that mad thing slidingalong a smoking opal ladder hear that inevitable deluge of music ridinginto the sun richer now fainter now madder to think that i should hear and knowthe song that shelley heard and shakespeare long ago
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what loin-cloth what rag of wrongunpriced what turn of body what of lustundiced so we've worshipped you a littlemore than christ
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reed slashed and tornbut doubly rich such great heads as yoursdrift upon temple-steps but you are shatteredin the wind myrtle-barkis flecked from you scales are dashedfrom your stem sand cuts your petal furrows it with hard edge like flinton a bright stone yet though the whole windslash at your bark you are lifted up aye though it hissto cover you with froth
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suddenly i saw the cold and rook-delighting heaventhat seemed as though ice burned and was but the more ice and thereupon imagination and heart were drivenso wild that every casual thought of that and thisvanished and left but memories that should be out of seasonwith the hot blood of youth of love crossed long ago and i took all the blame out of all sense and reason until i cried and trembled and rocked to and fro riddled with light ah when the ghost begins to quicken confusion of the death-bed over is it sentout naked on the roads as the books say and strickenby the injustice of the skies for punishment
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your troubles shrink not though i feel them lesshere far away than when i tarried near i even smile old smiles with listlessness yet smiles they are not ghastly mockeries mere a thought too strange to house within my brainhaunting its outer precincts i discern: that i will not show zeal again to learnyour griefs and sharing them renew my pain it goes like murky bird or buccaneerthat shapes its lawless figure on the main and each new impulse tends to make outfleethe unseemly instinct that had lodgment here yet comrade old can bitterer knowledge bethan that though banned such instinct was in me
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it's a journey and i want to go
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substituting one day for the next remaining attempt to emerge from the next gesture skip deity made entirely of language to the next instant justification graveyard like content like everything else like a given epic like another battle dream beach distance another metaphor without preemptive assumptions we are through and the matter is time is material substance is too many free radicals a consequence for contemporary rethinking but what account accounts indexes rational skips to the next gesture stale regime i want to believe in conclusion forest in an ascendant transmission but the pain remains the places visited remain a reverse placebo reverses reason that never was because incessant dread snaps cool captures remains doing the same
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this strange thing must have creptright out of hell it resembles a bird's footworn around the cannibal's neck as you hold it in your hand as you stab with it into a piece of meat it is possible to imagine the rest of the bird:its head which like your fistis large bald beakless and blind
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when hidden away in a damp hollow under moldyleaves i come upon a clump of heart-shapesonce red now spiderspit-gray intact but empty still attached to their dead stems families smothered as at pompeii i riseand stretch i eat one more big ripe loppedhead red-handed i leave the field
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