The Ascended Black
for Condoleezza Rice

And it’s hard to feel sorry for her because she’s so public: stoic preceding the even kick: fingering the pimply ball, selecting a handful of shiny words from his stinking mouth. Like an executive out for a run, this ascended black tours the wishes of water-fallen niggers with feigned disinterest. Good luck. Now move along, senators!  she prods, chuckling. A phantom bladder represses her urge to kick again. The lone park bench and scratch-off cards are real. As is the vitamin rich urine trickling down her leg.

The secretarial penis is like a camera: it touches everything and its single eye weeps excitement.

Up from. Unshuttered to quell the boisterous rising. She is diligent, persistent, a burning bush. She labors.  Her belly rippling musculature. Her hands, a sphincter releasing tension into the air.

Duriel E. Harris

Politics

`In our time the destiny of man presents its meanings in
political terms’ - Thomas Mann

How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics?
Yet here’s a travelled man that knows
What he talks about,
And there’s a politician
That has read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war’s alarms,
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms!

W.B. Yeats

74th Chorus

Marchesa Casati

Is a living doll

Pinned on my Frisco

Skid row hall

   Her eyes are vast

Her skin is shiny

   Blue veins

   And wild red hair

   Shoulders sweet & tiny

Love her 

Love her

        Sings the sea

       Bluely

     Moaning

In the Augustus John

          de John 

          back ground. 

Reusing Words

thelifeguardlibrarian:

Don’t think you know everything,
Father said, just because you’re good
with words. They aren’t everything.
I try to say the smallest amount possible.
Instead of using them indiscriminately
I try to conserve them. I’m the only one
in this household who recycles them. I 
say the same thing over & over again,
like “Who forgot to turn out the lights?
Who forgot to clean up after themselves
in the bathroom?” Since you don’t listen
I never have to think of other things to say. 

-Hal Sirowitz

(Source: writersalmanac.publicradio.org)

Better in the Bronx

May 27, 1931

Dearest Marie: 

Your letter to Beverly Hills, dated May 24th, was forwarded to Berkeley. I found Berkeley a pleasant suburb—nothing wonderful, and San Francisco much pleasanter than Los Angeles. Still, I do not think I ought to spend more time here and I am going on. Riverdale is much better for us in every way. 

It costs very little more to go up to the Far North and this is the way I expect to go home. 

Thurs. Eve - Eureka, Calif. 

Fri Eve - Grand Pass, Ore. 

Sat. Eve - Portland, Ore. 

Sunday - Seattle and back to Portland. 

Mon. Eve - Pendleton, Ore. 

Tues. Eve - Boise, Ida. 

Thurs. Eve - Denver, Colo. 

Fri Eve - North Platte, Neb. 

Sat Eve - Omaha, Neb. 

Sun Eve. St. Paul, Minn. 

Mon Eve. Waupaca, Wis. 

Tues. Eve. - South Bend, Ind. 

Wed. Eve - Toledo, Ohio. 

Thurs. Eve. Pittsburgh, Pa. 

Fri. Eve (midnight)-Philadelphia.

Sat. - New York

Of course, this is tentative and may be changed. 

—

Charles Reznikoff

Comments on the World As Will

Oh to shy away from days of oppulence
Of fakings and false starts
Open up the chests of all our best men
We don’t demand villainry
We demand a new dawn

Girls are foxes
Boys are boxers
His and hers troubled ambassadors
Whose times have yet to come
There are no locks
There are no keys
Only executors and executees

What will our cut come to
With minds so new with mouths so clean? 

Dan Bejar

1472

To see the Summer Sky

Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie - 

True Poems flee - 

Emily Dickinson (1879)

On Hospital Gowns

My bare

(darrie) derrière

is out the air

when I’m not aware

aware

several

Handel Concertos

Vivaldi Concertos

Benny Goodman

My (pair) 

Marilyn Monroe

Vegan for your Love

No chicken or chops,
No burgers with chow mein with pork,

No milkshakes thick as wet cement,
No buttered bread for my favorite beef jerky.

“I’m hardly hungry at all,” I say,
And smooth the blanket where we lay in nature,

Ants with their antennae up and feeling
for handouts. I’ve lost four pounds

In two weeks, and by the end of the month,
I’m going to be like that red ant-

Waist so thin, I’m a vegan begging
For sprouts and, oh please, a single blade of grass.

Gary Soto, from Partly Cloudy: Poems of Love and Longing

Rome

O thou new comer who seek’st Rome in Rome

And find’st in Rome no thing though canst call Roman; 

Arches worn old and palaces made common, 

Rome’s name alone within these walls keeps home. 

Ezra Pound, from ‘Rome’: from Canzoni (1911) - New Selected Poems and Translations

A Pact

I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman —

I have detested you long enough. 

I come to you as a grown child

Who has had a pig-headed father; 

I am old enough not to make friends. 

It was you that broke the new wood, 

Now is a time for carving. 

We have one sap and one root —

Let there be commerce between us. 

Ezra Pound, from Lustra (1916) - New Selected Poems and Translations