I Am the President of Regulation

I

Jerome Rothenberg

Jerome Rothenberg

I am the Giant Goliath,

I digest goat cheese.

I am a mammoth's calf. (H. Ball)

I know your pinnacles by name.

My fingers close around

your fingers. I grow pale.

I become your executioner.

I come forth fat & bloody.

I propose a toast to peace.

I am the president of regulation.

None are savvier than I.

I forge a pact with murderers.

I claw my way to freedom.

Mark my words. I have no time

to be your humble servant.

I make a rope from women's hair.

I bite into the mighty pippin.

I turn & then return by turning.

I turn a vessel over with my hands.

I turn a pretty penny.

I am called the lord of dimes.

I turn my thoughts to daily deeds.

I turn my eyes to heaven.

I turn a screw no one has turned

before me. I predicate

& postposition freely.

In me the numbers come to naught.

I find a secret world in mirrors.

My fingernails are pale,

my steps are perpendicular.

I parachute & strut.

I seek acceleration day by day.

I am a man who swims among the drifters.

Istanbul is not my home.

I turn a page & listen.

I am as hard as nails.

My body swells from all the sounds inside it.

I show myself in dreams.

65

Rating:

Comment form:

Similar Poems:

A Terre by Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen

(Being the philosophy of many Soldiers.) Sit on the bed; I'm blind, and three parts shell.
Be careful; can't shake hands now; never shall.

103

Rating:

Kumina by Kamau Brathwaite

Kamau Brathwaite

for DreamChad on the death of her sun Mark - mark this word mark this place + tyme - at Papine Kingston Jamaica - age 29
midnight 28/29 April 2001-1002-0210-0120-0020-0000
rev 29 feb 04

71

Rating:

Kaddish by Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg

For Naomi Ginsberg, 1894—1956 I
Strange now to think of you, gone without corsets & eyes, while I walk on the sunny pavement of Greenwich Village.

73

Rating:

Letters to Walt Whitman by Ronald Johnson

Ronald Johnson

I

I hear you are whispering there O stars of heaven,
O suns—O grass of graves. . .
If you do not say anything how can I say anything?

Let us tunnel

the air
(as a mole’s green galleries)
toward the ultimate

46

Rating:

The Book of Thel by William Blake

William Blake

THEL'S MOTTO
Does the Eagle know what is in the pit?
Or wilt thou go ask the Mole:
Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod?
Or Love in a golden bowl? I
The daughters of Mne Seraphim led round their sunny flocks.
All but the youngest; she in paleness sought the secret air.
To fade away like morning beauty from her mortal day:

72

Rating:

Eleven Addresses to the Lord by John Berryman

John Berryman

1

Master of beauty, craftsman of the snowflake,
inimitable contriver,
endower of Earth so gorgeous & different from the boring Moon,
thank you for such as it is my gift.

I have made up a morning prayer to you
containing with precision everything that most matters.
‘According to Thy will’ the thing begins.

69

Rating:

My mother’s body by Marge Piercy

Marge Piercy

1.

The dark socket of the year
the pit, the cave where the sun lies down
and threatens never to rise,
when despair descends softly as the snow
covering all paths and choking roads:

then hawkfaced pain seized you
threw you so you fell with a sharp

70

Rating:

Andrea del Sarto by Robert Browning

Robert Browning

But do not let us quarrel any more,
No, my Lucrezia; bear with me for once:
Sit down and all shall happen as you wish.
You turn your face, but does it bring your heart?
I'll work then for your friend's friend, never fear,
Treat his own subject after his own way,
Fix his own time, accept too his own price,
And shut the money into this small hand
When next it takes mine. Will it? tenderly?
Oh, I'll content him,—but to-morrow, Love!
I often am much wearier than you think,
This evening more than usual, and it seems
As if—forgive now—should you let me sit
Here by the window with your hand in mine
And look a half-hour forth on Fiesole,

111

Rating:

Badman of the Guest Professor by Ishmael Reed

Ishmael Reed

for Joe Overstreet, David Henderson, Albert Ayler & d mysterious ‘H’ who cut up d Rembrandts i

u worry me whoever u are

65

Rating: