“Hope” is the thing with feathers
--- EMILY DICKINSON
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -
I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42889/hope-is-the-thing-with-feathers-314
the little Bird
watching at the kitchen window
we saw a spring sleek crow land
on the rotting birdhouse
where sparrows yearly build
their nests
our new cat shivered and
stuttered on the sill
with electricity
as the big black bird
levered a curved bill
into the crack
at the back of the house
to shred the nest
spray it over
the new lawn
the crow cawed and
cracked massive wings
before plunging
again
into the tender bed
silent
we watched an egg
slip down its gullet
then another
while little brown birds
fluttered and chirped
on the wires
in the cedars
along the fence
helpless
I think I said
something like
the circle of life is brutal
before I
turned away
to finish
making lunch
America… just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.
Two Hundred Million Used Car Salesmen
walk into a neighborhood bar. A guy with red hair says,
"Barkeep, what IPAs you got on tap?" And the man
next to him, big bearded guy in a Yankees cap, sucks
down the last of his Miller Lite, pulls a Ruger from his
pants, and blasts the offending ginger in the head.
Brain matter splatters the bartender and etc.
Reporters have to sort out 199,999,999 stories
before the evening news. A source close to the victim
says that though he often extolled the virtues of
Indie microbreweries in a "kind of bray" after midnight,
he was essentially a good guy, never hurt no one,
so how'd he end up with a cap in his ass after
ordering a Sam Adams at Richard Cranium's Bar?
Meanwhile, police say it has nothing to do with
race, because all lives matter (even swill-sucking
hipster liberal lives), and also it is not true that
the shooter was an off-duty cop who managed
to slip away in the confusion, but that in fact
they have no leads at this time and are not taking
any more questions.
NRA lobbyists argue it was not the Ruger that killed
the redhead but the unsub's finger on the plastic
trigger. One bad apple, that is, and not one of the
millions of decent Americans who should be able to
bear arms without submitting to invasive
background checks, mental health records, or
ridiculous waiting periods.
A half dozen local high school students
take to the streets in protest, forgetting homework.
Some of them break a few shop windows.
At least, that's what the armed out-of-town anti-
protesters say is the case when they're stopped
by the burning gas station and etc.
A lot more Americans stay home, weighing in online.
They make a lot of Chuck Norris jokes. A meme
goes viral: "How many Chuck Norrises does it take to
to screw in a lightbulb? / None. Chuck prefers to
kill in the dark."
On Children
--- Kahlil Gibran
And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.
And he said:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that
His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
https://poets.org/poem/children-1
Be for Gladness
Ah, my girl,
my one deep
gladness,
my beautiful
bee --
I haven't said
aloud
(enough)
how much I love
the bending,
or how lucky I am
to be your
bow,
launching you
from dream
to infinity.
May you fly
straight,
and far,
and fast.
Sad Boy's Sad Boy
-- CHARLES BERNSTEIN
I ruin my hats and all the mat slides glad
I hop my girls and all is skip again
I jump I run you up inside my truck
The car goes looping out in dark and light
And yellow hat slides in
I run my mats and all the girl slides glad
I hoped you skipped me into luck
And jump me black, ruin me glad
I jump I run you up inside my truck
I jump my slopes and all the dopes slide glad
I glide my luck and all is slip again
I jump my hopes and all the rope glides sad
I skip you jump the way you said
But I run old and sigh your name
I ruin my mats and all the girl slides glad
At least when luck hops it skips back again
A rune my mats and all the girls slide glad
I jump I run you up inside my truck
After "Mad Girl's Love Song" by Sylvia Plath
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/49514/sad-boys-sad-boy
Sad Not Sad Song for Missing Amy
God, I miss you, honey, and your little red car,
the bumper sticker I'd Rather Be Reading Bernstein --
& your joyful laugh. We don't know where you are.
Remember how we'd meet for poetry & coffee
in that ill-fated place across from Linda's?
God, I miss you, Amy darling, and your little red car.
Life fucked you & you fucked it back, baby, hard.
Made 2 kids, & poetry & bird baths & children's books
& your joyful laugh. Now we don't know where you are
because you're "dead" but I know in my bones
you're just transformed, your energy into sun & wind
& wildflowers & God. I miss you, woman, your red cars,
those mornings of poetry & dirt dishing & friendship,
evenings with wine & poetry & above all else your giggle, your
joyful laughter. We may not know where you are now
exactly, except everywhere & inside us &
& in poetry, & memory, & stories, your family &
God, & red convertibles, & all this missing you, lovely,
& your joyful laugh -- don't know where you are, dear,
but you ARE. You go on. & that's all that matters.
Hip-Hop Ghazal
--- Patricia Smith
Gotta love us brown girls, munching on fat, swinging blue hips,
decked out in shells and splashes, Lawdie, bringing them woo hips.
As the jukebox teases, watch my sistas throat the heartbreak,
inhaling bassline, cracking backbone and singing thru hips.
Like something boneless, we glide silent, seeping 'tween floorboards,
wrapping around the hims, and ooh wee, clinging like glue hips.
Engines grinding, rotating, smokin', gotta pull back some.
Natural minds are lost at the mere sight of ringing true hips.
Gotta love us girls, just struttin' down Manhattan streets
killing the menfolk with a dose of that stinging view. Hips.
Crying 'bout getting old—Patricia, you need to get up off
what God gave you. Say a prayer and start slinging. Cue hips.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/49642/hip-hop-ghazal
Early 80s Guera Dance Ghazal
Coming of age in Mexico City clubs, guera girl gang, we danced
the one-two step-n-hop back and forth disco dance.
En el club, bailábamos como chicas fresas, swinging
arms in the air, singing along to Lipps, Inc, virgin dance.
Donna Summer, KC & The Sunshine Band, Leo Sayer, the
Bee Gees, Prince, Kool & The Gang. Dance! Dance! Dance!
Swaying in glitter ball fog, on the edge of 18, we lingered
loose in untested bodies, smiled, invited the mating dance.
Cerveza, tequila, cuba libre -- torched our blood -- "Baby
you can ring my bell..." we sang to each other, swirled, danced.
Jordache jeans skintight; sweatshirts cut off our shoulders; big hair;
Candy spike heels breaking our balls; we bit the pain, grinned, danced.
Glowing faces in the crowd ... cherry petals in blacklight air. "I just want
your extra time and your kiss," we yelled back and forth as we danced.
"We are family," we shouted to the smoky ceilings. Then drove
the City like pinballs through a machine, the metropolitan dance.
Oh, yeah, we were wild and free and rich. We were young and dumb.
We wore our privilege like our American skins. Andale! We danced.
Most of us had no moves. (Laurie, you had zero moves.) Our futures
waited in the States. We broke curfew, laughed like maniacs, danced.
Suggested soundtrack: club music from your high school years.
Pantoum of the Great Depression
--- Donald Justice
Our lives avoided tragedy
Simply by going on and on,
Without end and with little apparent meaning.
Oh, there were storms and small catastrophes.
Simply by going on and on
We managed. No need for the heroic.
Oh, there were storms and small catastrophes.
I don't remember all the particulars.
We managed. No need for the heroic.
There were the usual celebrations, the usual sorrows.
I don't remember all the particulars.
Across the fence, the neighbors were our chorus.
There were the usual celebrations, the usual sorrows.
Thank god no one said anything in verse.
The neighbors were our only chorus,
And if we suffered we kept quiet about it.
At no time did anyone say anything in verse.
It was the ordinary pities and fears consumed us,
And if we suffered we kept quiet about it.
No audience would ever know our story.
It was the ordinary pities and fears consumed us.
We gathered on porches; the moon rose; we were poor.
What audience would ever know our story?
Beyond our windows shone the actual world.
We gathered on porches; the moon rose; we were poor.
And time went by, drawn by slow horses.
Somewhere beyond our windows shone the world.
The Great Depression had entered our souls like fog.
And time went by, drawn by slow horses.
We did not ourselves know what the end was.
The Great Depression had entered our souls like fog.
We had our flaws, perhaps a few private virtues.
But we did not ourselves know what the end was.
People like us simply go on.
We have our flaws, perhaps a few private virtues,
But it is by blind chance only that we escape tragedy.
And there is no plot in that; it is devoid of poetry.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58080/pantoum-of-the-great-depression
No Plot. Devoid of Poetry.
That can be said of most everything,
which is why we like to tell stories,
pretending that everything makes sense
and connects, point to point.
Which is why we like to tell stories,
sitting around after dinner with booze,
connecting, point to point,
politics and feelings and natural disasters,
sitting around after dinner with whiskey,
getting a bit risky, a little frisky, theorizing
politics and dark feelings and natural disasters
with our over-educated imaginations.
Getting a little risky, a bit frisky, theorizing
conservative conspiracies, apocalypse, retirement,
indulging over-educated imaginations
and aging livers, blurring the edges
of global conspiracies, job loss, impending apocalypse,
flabby bodies, hormone drop out, hair loss, inflation,
aging livers, drinking to blur the edges
of soulless occupations, disconnection, death,
stress fat, mental fog, baldness, inflation,
anti-intellectual patriotism, social injustice,
boring jobs, disconnection, the death of higher ed,
a general failure to connect the dots,
celebratory ignorance, institutional racism,
the grind of acting like anything makes sense,
when a universal failure to connect the dots
can be said of most everything. It's a joke.
And our striving for poetry? Makes us the punchline.
Someone said yesterday that he loves Lizzo. So I started to listen and my soundtrack is, ironically, Lizzo radio. Check it out!
Money
--- Pink Floyd
Money
Get away
You get a good job with more pay and you're okay
Money
It's a gas
Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash
New car, caviar, four star, daydream
Think I'll buy me a football team
Money
Get back
I'm alright, Jack, keep your hands off of my stack
Money
It's a hit
Don't give me that do goody good bullshit
I'm in the high-fidelity first-class traveling set
And I think I need a Lear jet
Money
It's a crime
Share it fairly, but don't take a slice of my pie
Money
So they say
Is the root of all evil today
But if you ask for a rise
It's no surprise that they're giving none away
Away, away, away
Away, away, away
I was in the right
Yes, absolutely in the right
I certainly was in the right
Yeah, I was definitely in the right, that geezer was cruisin' for a bruisin'
Yeah!
Why does anyone do anything?
I don't know, I was really drunk at the time
Just telling him it was in, he could get it in number two
He was asking why it wasn't coming up on freight eleven
And after, I was yelling and screaming and telling him why
It wasn't coming up on freight eleven
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=rwPM01cbQBc&feature=share
Why does anyone do anything?
In that country where men broke stones
for pennies each day, building mansions
over gleaming streets, Pink Floyd's "Money,"
echoed against the bathroom's flesh tiles,
inch squares marching from floor to walls to
ceiling, the box room entirely open, no
curtains, no stalls, as water from the big roof tank
splashed over her naked body, over
everything,
late afternoon rainbow sheets
draining soot and dust and sweat,
soap and fret and unrequited desires,
fear and fairytales and Herbal Essence --
all the ingredients of 70s
teenage angst --
into a hole in the floor and
out to the dry world.
"Money," she sang, "get away," as if
her family didn't have any, as if
she wasn't a white princess
up in her glittering, wet tower,
flushing precious water
to the hungry streets,
letting it roll over her untouched body
like a thousand peso coins, like
invented grief.
Suggested soundtrack: Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.
The Snow Man
-- Wallace Stevens
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45235/the-snow-man-56d224a6d4e90
The Neighborhood Watch
We must put on a mind of spring
to behold the damp bark and the still
arms of tulip-trees iced with cold rain;
and have been waiting through raw April days
anticipating maples stippled with bloody buds,
cedars greening in soggy-bottomed yards
under weak sun; and not imagine any
bitter snicker in the rush of freezing breeze,
the rattle of gutters and rotten leaves,
which is the muted scream of lowering clouds
still pregnant with winter's dry heaves,
retching up the last hailstone coughs over
the battered neighborhood -- which waits inside
its thawing houses, and, nodding, imagines
everything underground, everything about to
explode --
Suggested soundtrack: Freezing rain on parked cars.
Mock Orange
-- LOUISE GLÜCK
It is not the moon, I tell you.
It is these flowers
lighting the yard.
I hate them.
I hate them as I hate sex,
the man’s mouth
sealing my mouth, the man’s
paralyzing body—
and the cry that always escapes,
the low, humiliating
premise of union—
In my mind tonight
I hear the question and pursuing answer
fused in one sound
that mounts and mounts and then
is split into the old selves,
the tired antagonisms. Do you see?
We were made fools of.
And the scent of mock orange
drifts through the window.
How can I rest?
How can I be content
when there is still
that odor in the world?
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49601/mock-orange
Oh Louise
I agree. How can we
rest?
How can we be
happy when
always that
question and
answer, that
one terrible sound
mounts and
mounts (but
never actually
arrives, at least
into words)
in us,
before fading
into an un-
bearable
breaking, our
tired old selves
returned to us
again,
stupid,
singular,
washed up
in the sheets
of that
ridiculous
dream, that
fatal
desire for
connection?
How can we
ever be
still, or even
breathe
when that
salty promise lingers
in the air
like
smog?
Suggested soundtrack: Meatloaf, “Paradise by the Dashboard Light”
Bored in the USA
-- Father John Misty
How many people rise and say
"My brain's so awfully glad to be here
For yet another mindless day"?
I've got all morning to obsessively accrue
A small nation of meaningful objects
And they've got to represent me too
By this afternoon, I'll live in debt
By tomorrow, be replaced by children
How many people rise and think
"Oh good, the stranger's body's still here
Our arrangement hasn't changed?"
Now I've got a lifetime to consider all the ways
I've grown more disappointing to you
As my beauty warps and fades
I suspect you feel the same
When I was young, I dreamt of a passionate obligation to a roommate
Is this the part where I get all I ever wanted?
Who said that?
Can I get my money back?
Just a little bored in the USA
Oh, just a little bored in the USA
Save me, white Jesus
Bored in the USA
Oh, they gave me a useless education
And a subprime loan
On a craftsman home
Keep my prescriptions filled
And now I can't get off
But I can kind of deal
Oh, with being bored in the USA
Oh, just a little bored in the USA
Save me, President Jesus
I'm bored in the USA
How did it happen?
Bored in the USA
https://youtu.be/JODshFyKHuA
Dear Father John,
You got me through the pandemic.
Locked in my burning attic,
breathing years of dust, treading water
on Zoom, feeling black squares
leak their silence into me like squid
ink into a freeze-dried bloodstream,
I prayed for someone, anyone, to break
into a primal scream, pull their hair out,
dissolve into a rant or at the very least
a disquisition on the nature of contagion,
human contamination, the fucking nation
exploding under the Unreal Country's
unbelievable "leaders," bands of savages
spewing viral hate into the ether and
calling it "fact" ... Oh, your songs, your
dark god and words, your bitter pills and
dreamy soundtrack,
did it for me : gave form to
that inner wildfire : poured gasoline
over despair.
Go listen to Father John Misty. “Bored in the USA” is on I Love You, Honeybear.
