You are a friend then, as I make it out, Of our man Shakespeare, who alone of us Will put an ass's head in Fairyland As he would add a shilling to more shillings, All most harmonious, — and out of his Miraculous inviolable increase Fills Ilion, Rome, or any town you like Of olden time with timeless Englishmen; And I must wonder what you think of him — All you down there where your small Avon flows By Stratford, and where you're an Alderman. Some, for a guess, would have him riding back To be a farrier there, or say a dyer; Or maybe one of your adept surveyors; Or like enough the wizard of all tanners.
PART I 'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock, And the owls have awakened the crowing cock; Tu—whit! Tu—whoo! And hark, again! the crowing cock, How drowsily it crew. Sir Leoline, the Baron rich, Hath a toothless mastiff bitch; From her kennel beneath the rock She maketh answer to the clock, Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour; Ever and aye, by shine and shower, Sixteen short howls, not over loud; Some say, she sees my lady's shroud.
Ne Rubeam, Pingui donatus Munere (Horace, Epistles II.i.267) While you, great patron of mankind, sustain The balanc'd world, and open all the main; Your country, chief, in arms abroad defend, At home, with morals, arts, and laws amend;
MARIA NEFELE: I walk in thorns in the dark of what’s to happen and what has with my only weapon my only defense my nails purple like cyclamens.
ANTIPHONIST: I saw her everywhere. Holding a glass and staring in space. Lying down listening to records. Walking the streets in wide trousers and an old
1. i'm crazy bout that chile but she gotta go. she don't pay me no mind no mo. guess her mama was right to put her out cuz she couldn't do nothin wid her. but she been mine so long. she been my heart so long now she breakin it wid her bad habits. always runnin like a machine out of control;
'There it is!– You play beside a death-bed like a child, Yet measure to yourself a prophet's place To teach the living. None of all these things, Can women understand. You generalise, Oh, nothing!–not even grief! Your quick-breathed hearts, So sympathetic to the personal pang,
How a Ship having passed the Line was driven by storms to the cold Country towards the South Pole; and how from thence she made her course to the tropical Latitude of the Great Pacific Ocean; and of the strange things that befell; and in what manner the Ancyent Marinere came back to his own Country. PART I It is an ancient Mariner, And he stoppeth one of three. 'By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
1 I am sitting in a cell with a view of evil parallels, Waiting thunder to splinter me into a thousand me's. It is not enough to be in one cage with one self; I want to sit opposite every prisoner in every hole. Doors roll and bang, every slam a finality, bang! The junkie disappeared into a red noise, stoning out his hell. The odored wino congratulates himself on not smoking,
I was waiting to try out one of my inventions from the flattop garage roof — parachutes this time — when I tasted a black cherry from the next yard, wondering even at that age who had prior rights and what was constitutional so instead of jumping I wrote a brief brief called Yaakov vs. the Tree Trunk where everyone laughed herself crazy at Marlboro vs. Madison
Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand and asshole holy! Everything is holy! everybody’s holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman’s an angel! The bum’s as holy as the seraphim! the madman is holy as you my soul are holy! The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is holy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy! Holy Peter holy Allen holy Solomon holy Lucien holy Kerouac holy Huncke holy Burroughs holy Cassady holy the unknown buggered and suffering beggars holy the hideous human angels! Holy my mother in the insane asylum! Holy the cocks of the grandfathers of Kansas! Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bop apocalypse! Holy the jazzbands marijuana hipsters peace peyote pipes & drums!
“Dead people don’t like olives,” I told my partners in eighth grade dancing class, who never listened as we fox-trotted, one-two, one-two.
The dead people I often consulted nodded their skulls in unison while I flung my black velvet cape over my shoulders and glowered from deep-set, burning eyes, walking the city streets, alone at fifteen, crazy for cheerleaders and poems.
At Hamden High football games, girls in short pleated skirts
The dramatis personae include a fly-specked Monday evening, A cigar store with stagnant windows, Two crooked streets, Six policemen and Louie Glatz. Bass drums mumble and mutter an ominous portent As Louie Glatz holds up the cigar store and backs out with $14.92. Officer Dolan noticed something suspicious, it is supposed,
I am thinking of an early summer. I am thinking of wet hills in the rain Pouring water. Shedding it Down empty acres of oak and manzanita Down to the old green brush tangled in the sun, Greasewood, sage, and spring mustard. Or the hot wind coming down from Santa Ana
Tonight Hazard’s father and stepmother are having jazz for McGovern. In the old game-room the old liberals listen as the quintet builds crazy houses out of skin and brass, crumbling the house of decorum, everybody likes that.
For decades they have paid for the refurbishing of America and they have not got their money’s worth. Now they listen, hopeful,
I tried one or two but they were stale and broke like sticks or crumbled when I rolled them and lighting a match was useless nor could I put them back in the refrigerator— it was too late for that—even licking them filled my mouth with ground-up outer leaf, product of Lancaster or eastern Virginia, so schooled I am with cigars, it comes in the blood,
The sidewalks were long where I grew up. They were as veined as the backs Of my Grandma’s hands. We knew every inch of pavement; We jumped the cracks Chanting rhymes that broke evil spirits, Played tag at sunset
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