The Lake Isle - Ezra Pound

O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves,
Give me in due time, I beseech you, a little tobacco-shop,
With the little bright boxes
piled up neatly upon the shelves
And the loose fragment cavendish
and the shag,
And the bright Virginia
loose under the bright glass cases,
And a pair of scales
not too greasy,
And the votailles dropping in for a word or two in passing,
For a flip word, and to tidy their hair a bit.

O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves,
Lend me a little tobacco-shop,
or install me in any profession
Save this damn'd profession of writing,
where one needs one's brains all the time

-Ezra Pound, The Lake Isle
www.americanpoems.com/poets/ezrapound/16179

Walt Whitman Darest Thou Now, O Soul

1 DAREST thou now, O Soul,
Walk out with me toward the Unknown Region,
Where neither ground is for the feet, nor any path to follow?
2 No map, there, nor guide,
Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand,	5
Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are in that land.
3 I know it not, O Soul;
Nor dost thou—all is a blank before us;
All waits, undream’d of, in that region—that inaccessible land.
4 Till, when the ties loosen,	10
All but the ties eternal, Time and Space,
Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds, bound us.
5 Then we burst forth—we float,
In Time and Space, O Soul—prepared for them;
Equal, equipt at last—(O joy! O fruit of all!) them to fulfil, O Soul. Walt Whitman Darest Thou Now, O Soul http://www.bartleby.com/142/200.html

Mr. Wurster

What could I say? I hadn't
Thought of him that much,
But at the head of the table
He was an ornament
Or an imposing gothic gray
Winged gargoyle.

A real dark knight poet
Surrounded by panhandlers
And betrayers. Judases
And jackals, and where
Did I fit? The Jester?

A sacrament of flesh around
The table from ear to ear.
It was dusty, the room that is,
His eyes were too,
Or maybe it is only the memory,
But either way he was a beast

Among lambs, a real Lucifer,
So kind.  You know the type,
Charming, intelligent, etc. and
Sophisticated in a blazer and comic-
Book T-shirt. He was Pittsburgh classy
Poet laureate of steel bridges,
Molasses!

He was frozen art. A bloated
Tomato ready to burst,
All pink and red. He brought
Us the news of Li Po and Rumi
A man of the world!

It is almost grotesque to think
About you now.
You were so magnificent then.
You could have worn a cape
And enchanted us all,
Turned us to toads.

But instead you sung to us
Quoting, "who am I born in
Dark times to ask a
Kind turn from fate?"

Pjcjr 62812

Diane DiPrima

Revolutionary Letters

12.

the vortex of creation is the vortex of destruction

the vortex of artistic creation is the vortex of self destruction

the vortex of political creation is the vortex of flesh destruction

 flesh is in the fire, it curls and terribly warps

 fat is in the fire, it drips and sizzling sings

 bones are in the fire

  they crack tellingly in

  subtle hierglyphs of oracle

 charcoal singed

 the smell of your burning hair

for every revolutionary must at last will his own destruction

rooted as he is in the past he sets out to destroy

-Diane DiPrima, Revolutionary Letters #12

Tourists

I followed a group of Japanese
school children through the fish market
In the middle of Florence
While watching the writhing eels squirm
and the countless jellyfish give
slimy kisses to their neighbor's gray skin.

At the Uffizi I still smelled
the fish perfume on my skin
and felt the lips of the jelly
fish on my cheek. I was behind two groups
of Japanese students in navy
blue jackets ironed kahkis and plaid skirts.
Red Sketchers with untied shoelaces traced
down the floors like eels piled up in
long lines into narrow bottomless bins.

Then there was the primordal long wavy
hair of Venus. Venus born of the sea.
Venus bursting nude from the palm of her
island shell. The students, divided in groups
of boys and girls, shuffled in silent reverence
past the annointed feet of Venus.

pjcjr61412

Sonnet

"It teases eternally, then suddenly fades and dies."

The old motif. The skull king with the laural crown.
The eternal thrill of supplication and ill.
Braun set out to slay his dragon on top his knoll
Abandoned by his fiddlers,
Assaulted by his butler,
Robbed by his cook and heir.

The hunger fields where the jackal lays listening.
The white horse mounted by cancer
And starvation. The globe rolls,
The violins play on, the actors act,
The good thief has come again.

Braun bows low at old god's alter.
Weighs memories on an ivory scale.

A candle and lavender to end his stolid day.

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John Berryman, poem 175

Old King Cole was a merry old soul and a merry old soul was Henry
He called for his butts & he called for his bowl
& he called for his fiddlers three
in vain. Blank prose took hold of Henry's soul
considering all the deaths & considering.
There is a little life upstairs

playing her nursery rhymes to be considered
also. And there is a tall life in the car
to be considered.
And there is the life of Henry's characters
to be thought on, established from afar.
Henry has much to do.

Take a deep breath then, sigh, relax, continue.
This world is a solemn place, with room for tennis.
Everybody's mouth
is somewhere else, I know, somebody's anus.
I speak a mystery, only to you.
Here's all my blood in pawn.

-John Berryman, poem 175, The Dream Songs