From wrath-red dawn to wrath-red dawn, The guns have brayed without abate; And now the sick sun looks upon The bleared, blood-boltered fields of hate As if it loathed to rise again. How strange the hush! Yet sudden, hark! From yon down-trodden gold of grain,...
How still is the world at night after most have fallen asleep I sit here with a book in hand and write while you sleep in the next room unaware of the moonlight on your lips the silence is not silence no, not tonight perhaps...
Good night, sleep tight, Don’t let the bedbugs bite, Wake up bright In the morning light To do what’s right With all your might.
Saw the magnet grow electric and the fixed points become a field in rural Denmark as the needle moved through various materials all the while remaining parallel: the usual: silver, zinc, lead, etc. and then tried needles of glass needles of shellac with all the...
One, two, three, four, five ? Once I caught a fish alive. Six, seven, eight, nine, ten ? Then I let it go again. Why did I let it go? Because it bit my finger so. Which finger did it bite? The little finger on...
I was so happy in the gem room. The sun was president, I was just dug up, all hell had shrunk to a sulphur crystal. Something danced on the point; it must have been me. I had a hundred faces, and one of them served...
The poor are many and so— impossible to forget. No doubt, as day breaks, they see the buildings where they wish they could live with their children. They can steady the coffin of a constellation on their shoulders. They can wreck the air like furious...
Baa, baa, black sheep, Have you any wool? Yes sir, yes sir, Three bags full; One for the master, And one for the dame, And one for the little boy Who lives down the lane
Rainy days are for: smelling sidewalks, swirly windshields, flowers doing whatever the opposite of yawning is, grass canoe races, vanishing ants, strobe light thunder discos, driveways made of mirrors, a godly carwash, the latex mailman, anxious parking lots, ancient arguments between grey and purple, bird...
my naked mind becomes a gray solitude cell tasting my thoughts waiting for you to hold me through the darkness of my crime lilac lace panties hangs on a rusty nail damp from my own unique moisture the scent of lavender musk fills the humid...
Steel suns set to rise to bronze the clouds that cape the superman mountains of autumn. Leaves dye to illuminate that mystic river valley of broken dreams. Dust scarves the trees that stretch to hold the morning light as the red oaks and yellow maples ...
When the prime mover of my many sighs Heaven took through death from out her earthly place, Nature, that never made so fair a face, Remained ashamed, and tears were in all eyes. O fate, unheeding my impassioned cries! O hopes fallacious! O thou spirit...
Rose, when I remember you, Little lady, scarcely two, I am suddenly aware Of the angels in the air. All your softly gracious ways Make an island in my days Where my thoughts fly back to be Sheltered from too strong a sea. All your...
The rich may pay for orchids rare, but, Oh the apple tree Flings out its blossoms to the world for every eye to see, And all who sigh for loveliness may walk beneath the sky And claim a richer beauty than man’s gold can ever...
Close your eyes. Picture your self high in the sky. Above the rest of the world. Soaring high. High as a eagle. Diving through white fluffy clouds. With the sun sparkling down. Like little crystals of light. You are so happy. You ware such a...
Where we’d recently lain, exchanging a kiss, stork consorted with crane, limpkin with ibis. Was this as much wedding as there would ever be, the fowls’ foot-webbing, the identificatory ring around a throat? Exchange of earth and air: not a vow but a vote of...
It is a tragedy, yes, but a confusing one. What happened to the wrestlers and where have they gone? Loulou the Pomeranian would love to know. Outdoors the hills are buried in snow, but inside a rose, a rose full-blown, a roomful of rose. The...
America – The Firebombers We are America. We are the coffin fillers. We are the grocers of death. We pack them in crates like cauliflowers. The bomb opens like a shoebox. And the child? The child is certainly not yawning. And the woman? The woman...
She stares at his players who turn him into aging wood, make him sexless as his little finger. When he tries to talk to her, his sentences dissolve, the nouns and verbs all floating mute into the sky’s blue ear. He knows why his players...
We drove onwards and into the trees of fire alight with flames of orange, red and gold. the yellow ash of tomorrows carpet falling. fluttering like butterflies from heat to cold The wind lifts them. Confetti scattered to heaven! Unseen hands throw them to hedgerows...
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do...
It was the summer of Chandra Levy, disappearing from Washington D.C., her lover a Congressman, evasive and blow-dried from Modesto, the TV wondering in every room in America to an image of her tight jeans and piles of curls frozen in a studio pose. It...
Invisible fish swim this ghost ocean now described by waves of sand, by water-worn rock. Soon the fish will learn to walk. Then humans will come ashore and paint dreams on the dying stone. Then later, much later, the ocean floor will be punctuated by...
Author:- A. K. Ramanujan Yet like grandfather I bathe before the village crow the dry chlorine water my only Ganges the naked Chicago bulb a cousin of the Vedic sun slap soap on my back like father and think in proverbs like me I wipe...
If we must die, let it not be like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, Making their mock at our accursèd lot. If we must die, O let us nobly...
It must come as leaves to a tree or not at all yet it comes sometimes as the black hen with the red round eye on the embroidery stitch by stitch dropped and found again and when it’s all there the black hen stares with...
Perfect life does not exist, and will never exist. We have precious moments, with our family, friends, special people in our lives … it doesn’t last too much but remains in our minds and heart forever. Those little moments, full of joy, happiness and illusion...
In their proverbs, the Sumerians quoted Fox as saying — on having pissed into the sea — All the ocean is now my urine! Now, hang on there girl. I want to get a handle on your homeopathic incontinent ways, because I think you may be onto something. Firstly, what...
I lied when Pops asked, but I’ll admit it now. I did touch the blue egg to see if, somehow, it felt as much like the sky as it looked. The egg: speckled in its twiggy nest, eye level to 8-year-olds, perfect & off-limits like...
You keep me waiting in a truck with its one good wheel stuck in the ditch, while you piss against the south side of a tree. Hurry. I’ve got nothing on under my skirt tonight. That still excites you, but this pickup has no windows...
Little soul, you and I will become the memory of a memory of a memory. A horse released of the traces forgets the weight of the wagon.
Author- A. K. Ramanujan Composed as I am, like others, of elements on certain well-known lists, father’s seed and mother’s egg gathering earth, air, fire, mostly water, into a mulberry mass, moulding calcium, carbon, even gold, magnesium and such, into a chattering self tangled in...
Any lifetime that is spent without seeing the master Is either death in disguise or a deep sleep. The water that pollutes you is poison; The poison that purifies you is water.
Chicago Zen A. K. Ramanujan I Now tidy your house, dust especially your living room and do not forget to name all your children. II Watch your step. Sight may strike you blind in unexpected places. The traffic light turns orange on 57th and Dorchester,...
Copper and ginger, the plentiful mass of it bound, half loosed, and bound again in lavish disregard as though such heaping up were a thing indifferent, surfeit from the table of the gods, who do not give a thought to fairness, no, who throw their...
Mexican food on one side Steam broccoli on the other Fresh peppers Extremely hot Flour tortilla Not corn Tortillas are fried Peanut oil Before they are divvied Into homemade enchiladas Green onion on the side Sauce in the middle Hot as well But well worth...
Sky-man in a manhole with astronomy for dream, astrology for nightmare; fat man full of proverbs, the language of lean years, living in square after almanac square prefiguring the day of windfall and landslide through a calculus of good hours, clutching at the tear in...
We danced to rancorous tunes on spiked ground and our knees sang with each puncture, so that several agouti colonies, melanic in our russet strengths, learned as wild rats to scurry or guard ourselves from skin-spite. Immune from nocturnal drowsiness we strong-bellied creatures assembled, campaigned;...
Lightning hits the roof, shoves the knife, darkness, deep in the walls. They bleed light all over us and your face, the fan, folds up, so I won’t see how afraid to be with me you are. We don’t mix, even in bed, where we...
“Sit in my hand.” I’m ten. I can’t see him, but I hear him breathing in the dark. It’s after dinner playtime. We’re outside, hidden by trees and shrubbery. He calls it hide-and-seek, but only my little sister seeks us as we hide and she...
Overhead, the match burns out, but the chunk of ice in the back seat keeps melting from imagined heat, while the old Hudson tiptoes up the slope. My voile blouse, so wet it is transparent, like one frightened hand, clutches my chest. The bag of...
When the rooster jumps up on the windowsill and spreads his red-gold wings, I wake, thinking it is the sun and call Juanita, hearing her answer, but only in my mind. I know she is already outside, breaking the cane off at ground level, using...
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