Forest Park Reads

I catch the pattern Of your silence Before you speak I do not need To hear a word. In your silence Every tone I seek Is heard.

And yet one arrives somehow, finds himself loosening the hooks of her dress in a strange bedroom-- feels the autumn dropping its silk and linen leaves about her ankles. The tawdry veined body emerges twisted upon itself like a winter wind . . . !

I've got the children to tend The clothes to mend The floor to mop The food to shop Then the chicken to fry The baby to dry I got company to feed The garden to weed I've got shirts to press The tots to dress The can to be cut I gotta clean up this hut Then see about the sick And the cotton to pick. Shine on me, sunshine Rain on me, rain Fall softly, dewdrops And cool my brow again. Storm, blow me from here With your fiercest wind Let me float across the sky 'Til I can rest again. Fall gently, snowflakes Cover me with white Cold icy kisses and Let me rest tonight. Sun, rain, curving sky Mountain, oceans, leaf and stone Star shine, moon glow You're all that I can call my own.

A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place your sight can knock on, echoing; but here within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze will be absorbed and utterly disappear: just as a raving madman, when nothing else can ease him, charges into his dark night howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels the rage being taken in and pacified. She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen into her, so that, like an audience, she can look them over, menacing and sullen, and curl to sleep with them. But all at once as if awakened, she turns her face to yours; and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny, inside the golden amber of her eyeballs suspended, like a prehistoric fly.

Oh plunge me deep in love -- put out My senses, leave me deaf and blind, Swept by the tempest of your love, A taper in a rushing wind.

you can hear all the money lost earlier in the stock market, even fresh water slipping into salt water.

sleeping tho' the eyes are pale hums in rhythum w/a bonnet on lullaby a broken song the sifting-cloth is bleeding red weeping yarn from algiers lullaby tho' baby's gone the cradle rocks a barren song she's rocking w/her ribbons on she's rocking yarn and needles oh it's long coming from algiers

i kneel down like a collector of jewels before you. i am singing one long necklace of love my mouth a sapphire of grapes.

There was an Old Man with a beard, Who said, "It is just as I feared! Two Owls and a Hen, Four Larks and a Wren, Have all built their nests in my beard!"

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I would like to watch you sleeping, which may not happen. I would like to watch you, sleeping. I would like to sleep with you, to enter your sleep as its smooth dark wave slides over my head and walk with you through that lucent wavering forest of bluegreen leaves with its watery sun & three moons towards the cave where you must descend, towards your worst fear I would like to give you the silver branch, the small white flower, the one word that will protect you from the grief at the center of your dream, from the grief at the center I would like to follow you up the long stairway again & become the boat that would row you back carefully, a flame in two cupped hands to where your body lies beside me, and as you enter it as easily as breathing in I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed & that necessary.

When I cannot look at your face I look at your feet. Your feet of arched bone, your hard little feet. I know that they support you, and that your sweet weight rises upon them. Your waist and your breasts, the doubled purple of your nipples, the sockets of your eyes that have just flown away, your wide fruit mouth, your red tresses, my little tower. But I love your feet only because they walked upon the earth and upon the wind and upon the waters, until they found me.

When they torture your mother plant a tree When they torture your father plant a tree When they torture your brother and your sister plant a tree When they assassinate your leaders and lovers plant a tree Whey they torture you too bad to talk plant a tree. When they begin to torture the trees and cut down the forest they have made start another.

When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain, Before high-piled books, in charactery, Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain; When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance; And when I feel, fair creature of an hour, That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the faery power Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

Each night, this adroit young lady Lies among sheets Shredded fine as snowflakes Until dream takes her body From bed to strict tryouts In tightrope acrobatics. Nightly she balances Cat-clever on perilous wire In a gigantic hall, Footing her delicate dances To whipcrack and roar Which speak her maestro's will. Gilded, coming correct Across that sultry air, She steps, halts, hung In dead center of her act As great weights drop all about her And commence to swing. Lessoned thus, the girl Parries the lunge and menace Of every pendulum; By deft duck and twirl She draws applause; bright harness Bites keen into each brave limb Then, this tough stint done, she curtsies And serenely plummets down To traverse glass floor And get safe home; but, turning with trained eyes, Tiger-tamer and grinning clown Squat, bowling black balls at her. Tall trucks roll in With a thunder like lions; all aims And lumbering moves

Elan that lifts me above the clouds into pure space, timeless, yea eternal Breath transmuted into words Transmuted back to breath in one hundred two hundred years nearly Immortal, Sappho's 26 centuries of cadenced breathing - beyond time, clocks, empires, bodies, cars, chariots, rocket ships skyscrapers, Nation empires brass walls, polished marble, Inca Artwork of the mind - but where's it come from? Inspiration? The muses drawing breath for you? God? Nah, don't believe it, you'll get entangled in Heaven or Hell - Guilt power, that makes the heart beat wake all night flooding mind with space, echoing through future cities, Megalopolis or Cretan village, Zeus' birth cave Lassithi Plains - Otsego County farmhouse, Kansas front porch? Buddha's a help, promises ordinary mind no nirvana - coffee, alcohol, cocaine, mushrooms, marijuana, laughing gas? Nope, too heavy for this lightness lifts the brain into blue sky at May dawn when birds start singing on East 12th street - Where does it come from, where does it go forever?