For the Anniversary of My Death

W. S. Merwin

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day  
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveler
Like the beam of a lightless star

Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what




              




           

                                Soukora- Ali Farka Toure & Ry Cooder

A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island

Frank O'Hara

The Sun woke me this morning loud
and clear, saying “Hey! I've been
trying to wake you up for fifteen
minutes. Don’t be so rude, you are
only the second poet I’ve ever chosen
to speak to personally
                                  so why
aren’t you more attentive? If I could
burn you through the window I would
to wake you up. I can't hang around
here all day.”
                      “Sorry, Sun, I stayed
up late last night talking to Hal.”

“When I woke up Mayakovsky he was
a lot more prompt” the Sun said
petulantly. “Most people are up
already waiting to see if I’m going
to put in an appearance.”
                                       I tried
to apologize “I missed you yesterday.”
“That’s better” he said. “I didn’t
know you’d come out.” “You may be
wondering why I’ve come so close?”
“Yes” I said beginning to feel hot
wondering if maybe he wasn’t burning me
anyway.
            “Frankly I wanted to tell you
I like your poetry. I see a lot
on my rounds and you’re okay. You may
not be the greatest thing on earth, but
you’re different. Now, I’ve heard some
say you’re crazy, they being excessively
calm themselves to my mind, and other
crazy poets think that you’re a boring
reactionary. Not me.
                               Just keep on
like I do and pay no attention. You’ll
find that people always will complain
about the atmosphere, either too hot
or too cold too bright or too dark, days
too short or too long.
                                  If you don’t appear
at all one　　　　　 day they think you’re lazy
or dead. Just keep right on, I like it.

And don’t worry about your lineage
poetic or natural. The Sun shines on
the jungle, you know, on the tundra
the sea, the ghetto. Wherever you were
I knew it and saw you moving. I was waiting
for you to get to work.

                                    And now that you
are making your own days, so to speak,
even if no one　　　　　 reads you but me
you won’t be depressed. Not
everyone can look up, even at me. It
hurts their eyes.”
                            “Oh Sun, I’m so grateful to you!”

“Thanks and remember I’m watching. It’s
easier for me to speak to you out
here. I don’t have to slide down
between buildings to get your ear.
I know you love Manhattan, but
you ought to look up more often.
                                                 And
always embrace things, people earth
sky stars, as I do, freely and with
the appropriate sense of space. That
is your inclination, known in the heavens
and you should follow it to hell, if
necessary, which I doubt.
                                       Maybe we’ll
speak again in Africa, of which I too
am specially fond. Go back to sleep now
Frank, and I may leave a tiny poem
in that brain of yours as my farewell.”

“Sun, don’t go!” I was awake
at last. “No, go I must, they’re calling
me.”
       “Who are they?”
                               Rising he said “Some
day you’ll know. They’re calling to you
too.” Darkly he rose, and then I slept.





                





           

                                Sweet Disposition - The Temper Trap


           

                                          Sun Drums and Soil - Four Tet


           

                                            Orange sky - Alexi Murdoch

Don’t Let That Horse...

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Don’t let that horse
                              eat that violin

    cried Chagall’s mother

                                     But he
                      kept right on
                                     painting

And became famous

And kept on painting
                              The Horse With Violin In Mouth

And when he finally finished it
he jumped up upon the horse
                                        and rode away
          waving the violin

And then with a low bow gave it
to the first naked nude he ran across

And there were no strings
                                     attached




                         




          

                                               untitled - interpol

On The Grasshopper And Cricket

John Keats

The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead:
That is the grasshopper's -- he takes the lead
In summer luxury, -- he has never done
With his delights, for when tired out with fun,
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one　　　　　　　 in drowsiness half lost,
The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.



            




           

                                 Young Men Dead  - The Black Angels 


           

                                      Son Saves The Rest - Yppah

Chicago’s Congo

Frank Marshall Davis

(Sonata for an Orchestra)

Chicago is an overgrown woman
      wearing her skyscrapers
      like a necklace ...
Chicago’s blood is kaleidoscopic
Chicago’s heart has a hundred auricles

*       *       *

                                  From the Congo
                                  to Chicago
                                  is a long trek
                                  --as the crow flies

Sing to me of a red warrior moon victorious in a Congo sky ... show me a round dollar moon in the ragged blue purse of Chicago’s heavens ... tell me of a hundred spoil laden blacks tramping home from the raid ... point me out a hundred brown men riding the elevated home on payday ... pick me the winners ... in Chicago? ... in the Congo?

Skyscraper pinnacles rip great holes in the rubber balloon bag of the sky ... do spears kill quicker than printed words? ... midnight lies and cobra fangs ... ask me if civilization produces new forms of biting and tearing and killing ... see three million whites and two hundred thousand blacks civilized in Chicago

                                  From the Congo
                                  to Chicago
                                  is a long trek
                                  --as the crow flies

*       *       *

I’m a grownup man today Chicago
My bones are thick and stout
      (when I moved to new districts bombings
      couldn’t break them)
My flesh is smooth and firm
      (look--the wounds you give me heal quickly)
See how the muscles ripple under my night-black skin
My strength comes not from resting
You should be proud of me Chicago
I’ve got a lion’s heart and a six-shooter
I’ve got a fighter’s fist and five newspapers
I’ve got an eye for beauty and another for cash
Nothing you’ve got I can’t have

A song dashes its rhythms in, my face like April rain
My song is a song of steel and bamboo, of brick flats and reed huts, of steamboats and slim canoes, of murder trials and jackal packs, of con men and pythons
My tune I get from automobiles and lions roaring, from the rustle of banknotes in a teller’s window and the rustle of leaves in Transvaal trees
I ask you to find a better song, a louder song, a sweeter song--
Here’s something Wagner couldn’t do

State Street is a wide gray band across Chicago’s forehead
At night a white faced mother moon clothes Skyscrapers in gray silk
At night when clocks yawn and hours get lazy
At night when the jungle’s a symphony in grays ...
Oh mother moon, mother of earth, bringer of silver gifts
Bring a veil of stardust to wrap this Congo in
Bring a shawl of moonmist to clothe Chicago’s body

*       *       *

Between the covers of books lie the bones of yesterdays
Today is a new dollar
And
My city is money mad

*       *       *

Across the street from the Ebenezer Baptist Church,
      women with cast-iron faces peddle love
In the flat above William’s Funeral Home
      six couples sway to the St. Louis Blues
Two doors away from the South Side Bank
      three penny-brown men scorch their guts with four bit whiskey
Dr. Jackson buys a Lincoln
His neighbor buys second hand, shoes
      --the artist who paints this town must
      use a checkered canvas ...

Tired looking houses of brown stone
Ramshackle flats with sightless eyes
A surface car throws a handful of white sparks at cracked red bricks
An L train roars oaths at backyard clotheslines
Mornings on South Parkway flats sit like silent cats watching the little green mice of buses running up and down the boulevard
And onl　　　　y grass has heard the secrets of vacant lots

*       *       *

This song has no tune. You cannot hum it.
This song has no words. You cannot sing it.
This song everybody knows, nobody knows.
It is in a pattern of brown faces at the Wabash Y.M.C.A., a 35th Street gambling place, a Parkway theatre--you get it or you don’t
It is a melody of everything and nothing

I saw twelve stars sitting along the edge of a four story flat
I saw a moon held by leafless tree fingers
I heard a shot tear huge holes in the blanket of silence
Later--just a little later--the moon got away and the stars stepped back into the sky

There will always be new wordless songs, new humless tunes
Chicago sings these songs each day
Chicago who wears her skyscrapers like a necklace ...

           

                                           Skyscraper - Julian Plenti


           

                                              Blood - The Middle East