Stop war in Iraq by writing this poem.
Cogitate the labonza re: Times Op Ed piece on military strategy stating you can’t wait for war because you can’t put Time on Pause.
Ponder Times Business article on AOL’s announcing a new TV system that allows you to pause live broadcast. While on Pause, an ad (Domino’s Pizza, eg) pops up on screen.
Investigate ethicality and free speech issues of David Wells’ $100,000 fine for venting in his new autobiography.
Hand over manufacturer’s phone numbers to head barista to order new Peace buttons.
Design new button: Tivo the War.
Design poster: Bush as a deer caught in headlights aiming a rifle.
Listen to kora. Remember.
Make love, not war, this morning.
Fire Car Negotiators who guarantee to find the lowest price, who cannot negotiate whether to get new car or keep old one between wife and me.
Imitate grandson., looking over shoulder to make sure the person I am trying to outrace is still chasing.
Open authentic Cincinnati Chili ladle present from brother
First thing I see is daughter wishing me Happy Birthday
Make appointment to record Chuck Close Praise Poems at Village Digital.
Open fortune cookie from wife. Read it to her: “You Will Die.” When she reads it it says, “Success will find you.”
Worry. Feel as bad as ever. Suicide.
_________________________________________________
Awww
shucks Annieopolis!
I follow in your deep and luscious footsteps,
So you know as well
the edge of constancy we
hoarders of possibility
feel as Future caves
constantly
pinning us
for two days
in twinned tower
of paper
thought
I throw love bomb
to you for the perpetration
perpetuale that
would not
be
If it were not for
Why just today a letter
from a poet who cannot find
a single Dial a Poem
in the
US today!
We must ringading!!
See you at Pedro's thing
on Sunday (rumor
has it that Miguel may
drop in
to lead off),
And do you think it wise
to recommend and supply
xerox for Naropa summer
rather than require and risk
Yr curious patient,
Bob
ps -- The platter
w/ flowers,
did it survive
the great party?
In a message dated 12/30/2003 6:22:30 PM Eastern Standard Time, a.waldman@mindspring.com
writes:
HAPPY 2004!!!!
Just want to thank all your folks there for the brilliant OASIS that the
Bowery Poetry Club is - It's really changed the "face" of poetry in this
city &the world - I am so appreciative for the vastness of the vision you
all have -the commitment to a range of poetics poetics & the attentiveness
to the up and coming geniuses - &for keeping it going. Onward! Much Love
Anne Waldman
_________________________________________________
Here warmly framed in gold,
the young Cezanne
Would scratch his pen neath the solemn eyes of Zola
and run his letters together cryptomorphically
So that the Rhone would hush and ever so
Sweetly the Rhone would hush as in Zola's eye
A single tear would work its way out and down,
In the center of town, the muffled drum
And a clear blue memory of a man whose pipe
Would not draw but work a puff of smoke
About and around like friendship
I would, that longest window, sit there
And grapple with morning. With the chair
Appropriately turned on its side, narrow,
Opalescent, triangulated, waiting night's
Fountain and lots of music everywhere
Sometimes I smoke
Sometimes my pants fall down
But it's ok
I wear underpants
I don't smoke in bed
This, woman, is bread
We eat the stuff
That’s how it happens
Not a care in the garden
So I'll stay there, grappling
With no care, caressing the tender
Hair of your whiteness, where color
Once was, and pouring water, and I am red
Touch a moment
That, baby, is so good
And my huge forearm
Big gulps and gulps
and also to turn around
and see you there
Once there was light
We'd sit in it
Maybe a wall
Isn't a bright idea
Let's take a fat shower together
And mix up our hairs
And kiss whatever
And a blind lover
Just make it sweet
Escape from land
Jump in and disappear
This is the life
So cool and long
100 years of a rose
And my beach simplifies the horizon
Please get dressed in a relaxed manner
While I watch and watch and watch
The sun of melody
I mean the sun's melody
Humming wind
All right, I'll lift my arm
Solid and airy, and clumsy Beauty
Put an arm up if you are
Well whatever you are doing you
Can always put your arm up
Or maybe just put your arm up
Maybe with a lot of blue water
You'll lift something and it will be
You, your arm and you, blue too
We'll invite over just scads of people
If it's ok with you and eat
fruit,
all different kinds
Maybe you'll take your clothes off
Maybe Paul will draw you with
that magic brush of his
We could probably stay like that
probably forever
What are you thinking about
I am thinking about screaming
That makes me laugh and your smile
And life's relay scream a song
It sounds funny
To get in bed
Like hand me a knife
I'll cut a hole in the
Puffy feather mattress
And we can crawl in there
Beds, please don't
Sleep on them
They are our friends
This tree is now the sun
And all the bathers are wearing
Glasses. Well, are they
sunglasses?
Ask for yourself. They
Will answer, and that will
Be it for you you you
This is not paradise, it is
Marvelous, about 5 km outside
Paradise. I was born and raised
In this tent and yesterday it fell
Down. I don't care. Let it rain.
I'll eat your hair without a
Care and press my trousers but
Where did I leave my trousers?
Paul, hurry! The Bathers are dancing
They're balling the hillside and a
Barking shadow warns them if you're
Not careful. They are practicing
Safe sex and look like they'll graduate
With honors. That's the story, but
Where is the painting? Paul, come back,
You have forgotten the easel, the paints,
The pants, the....
I'll just sit down here and rest
While you do the rest
For goodness sake
Don't you think
You've carried that water jug
Far enough
To the moon and back
And to the moon
Which way
This way
Or that way
Always
That says it
That says it all
Except no fair
Saying it
A jungle of white towels
On brightest July mid-morning
I'm running into irony
But you keep pulling me back
Little by little
Caught in the polka of the soul
I was a brat with a mission
Listen to me, for I'll say it but once
And now, having forgot what it was,
Come back, genuine idea of it,
I cannot run anymore
Maybe it's time we got wet
Only our reflections
The rest is sex and sun
And somebody explaining it to you
with a tongue
Hey you
Yeah
You look great
You too
Totally great in front of me
What were we saying
I forget but maybe
We can conjure up a telephone
Then the telephone would remember
That is what they are for
Who moved that bridge to there
No, they built it
And it was always there
Go back to sleep
The only thing
You can wear
Is your tattoo
What are we doing now
What were we ever doing
We are being flowers, tulips
And we are looking at you
With that "join us" look as
We join too, everything, that
Is what we are doing, or
Did, joining up and in and becoming
Everything, everything is what we are
I'm not sure, or,
No longer am I sure
But yes it seems a boat
So after that
After that I don't
Maybe the Sun
Again, maybe not
Or who is over there
I'm surprised it's you
You used to but it's ok
You did, I remember the
Time, but then time joined up
Sweet and swift, this silence
_________________________________________________
----For Billy Bang
Some stories can’t wait to be told
Some stories just don’t want to be told
Let me tell you one of those
Dark silhouette cuts like a rusty cat food can
Deep into the still bop of night
Takes a bloody finger to write a story like this
Let me lay upon you the tale of a hermit, a Black Hermit name of Black Herman
Black Herman walks the earth backwards cause your time and his time see,
they don’t go in the same direction. Small man, dresses dapper,
a gold-tipped multifunctional cane
In the Land of Jazz he’s a well-known stream of consciousness,
a cat to stay away from except when he’s right there with you you can’t seem to get away
And when the forces catch up with him, he’s always somewhere else
Talkin Black Herman Can you hear him walkin
How tight can you be held before the air cage locks your heart away? Black Herman
How many fingers to hold you off the balcony on the 39th floor at Pedro’s, don’t worry. Black Herman.
How many little incidents petty thefts crazy drug deals goin bad right now lost saxophones forgotten appointments a siren in the distance the originating crackling cackle of the back of the neck of Black Herman. Where’d he go?
So the story goes something like this.
Round midnight, Night of the Time Change, Spring forward fall back, final set of the Billy Bang Quartet. A laugh disrupts the mood of blue, Billy feels a sweat bead slowly go the eye corner neck routine Oh man tomorrow’s the other day, Maine so close he can taste the salt wave…
That’s the way it is it is and it almost isn’t so sly only one eye to see and be seen with, the limping entrance of the downish lowish digmeister, the King of Quick Exit, the rattler – Black Herman, dark silhouette.
Billy’s breathing heavy now, there’s no beat left, the band’s gone & disappeared on him! It’s like the music makes the world, swirl world limbo twirl crossroads of scritch and scratch
Not me baby no – where’d the Love go, Billy? That’s what he says ….
Mr Black Herman, Mr Black Herman’s back and backing back, what you care about that, Bang is just fiddling around, going frontwards backwards
Don’t need you to make a sound, Black Herman’s around, that big breath you hear,
It’s just your own, that figure disappear
_________________________________________________
( )
Go ahead
Open the door
Hello white water
Hello there bridge
Hello figure
On the other
Side of the bridge
Saying hello
Just myself
Who Knows
Who cares
Why bother
How come
What possible difference
Could it make
The Garage
I fix the spot
Every time
I put my foot down
When I lift it
I leave it
I return
To fix it
Thank you
Very much
Me
(after Po Chu-I)
Ho! Don't shave Santa!
Happy wind in the beard, moving sidewalk, whoops!
100 years just went past --
Well, if that's vague, it's because my head's
Turned and I am a monk in a bunk, dying thin.
Just some old guy singing and walking around.
Who Are You?
Empty -- just my feet
but then voices
and no feet
who am I hiding from
they will see me
I will find out
right now it's moss and leaves forever
soon steel and concrete
this is modern time
very free in my blind
the sun reaches into the woods
this is the sun pocket
I am falling asleep
they will see my feet
but hunched I can't see them
only a bird, that leaf and now
a squirrel -- who am I?
I am a squirrel
Sad Song
You can cry now
This is a sad song
Out the window
Over the miles
Look, it's your hometown!
This look is your return
Even though nobody's home.
Some return. Some river
With no boat.
Don't tell me about it.
Don't tell anyone.
Sailing Back Capital
(after Chan Fang-sheng)
You've got a million feet
Why do you stand on your head?
Your pockets still fall down
My salary plunks to the ground.
Why is my head white sand?
New poems all of a sudden.
The Return
I am standing in the doorway.
I have put my suitcase down.
You are staring at me strangely
Because I am a high school manikin
And you are my steady dresser.
Help
Here -- you drink, I'll write.
The sun's going down. We won't be
needing it anymore,
So let's tape these blossoms back on this tree.
The branches waving their naked arms, "Help! Help!"
Hey!
Hold the ladder steady, you!
"Help! Help!"
After Ch'in Kuan
Look at that!
Too bad.
I love strong grass up here
And the trees down there.
I cannot bear the churring of the night-jar.
Throw your gum away.
Rain has struck the pear blossom!
Out of work?
Lock the door.
So Far Away
It is dawn and the bouffant is dragging.
Paint, paint that eye. It is history
That makes you paint them so far away.
So sad. So natural to feel that sadness.
The little smile in the little frown.
Previously Saving
You no think me
You no love me
This old custom
Break heart
Folk custom
Way-things-used-to-be
Previously saving each other
We think go ho ho
So difficult, loyalty
Like white heads
Disappearing in white water
He Refuses to Enter the Marketplace Even to Buy Prestige
Putt putt little cafique
She puts her hands on your shoulders
And pushes herself up to dive from them
Pushing you down where you see
The clearest you ever saw
Dreaming
All day to watch this petal fall
Two to one it doesn't
It doesn't
Secretly the evening steals
Spring and the cow
I thought the curtains would answer
I thought I'd get the money
And buy the whole garden
Singing in the garden
As the petal deliriously falls
And settles on your breast
Where your breast would be
I will not wake up
No matter what
To see how it ends
Rain
for Danny O'Neil
How I love
To stand
In the driving rain
Blowing my horn
At the entrance
To the Holland Tunnel
Saying Goodbye
Now you're giving wine to the horse!
Why did I ever ask you for directions?
You ask me why I asked you?
Who's the guide around here anyway?
Surely we're not lost.
Are we lost?
We're lost.
Let us never go back
May we never be found.
Is
What is is time
What the arrow points to
The hole in the arrow
To fill the belly time
The fork to the mouth
It is dinner time
It is time to eat
It is time to eat time
Here's an Example
We could sail away
We could fall through
The ventilator slats in the floor
Every word is important
You are a poet
Talking to a painting, learning all
Over again how a white street
Can lead night around the side
Where love is the horizon
Where the cup has two handles
What It Is
More than you know me there is
Something in my eye. Is it
A volcano? I mean window. I mean,
Excuse me, are you talking to me?
I brought you something, but you
Came through it so at least everything
Will be different, starting immediately.
Difficulty is your daughter, too, she adds.
Vast apples! How sorry the sorry image,
Romanticism cubed. That is the question:
Forget it! Now, slowly remove propeller
From tuba, gently stretching umbilical
Accordion to full spectrum Ä that's it.
Your move. Your witness. Yours truly.
Long Hoe, Long Hoe with Your Raw Wooden Handle
All the way to the groundline
And then up comes the shoot
Except now with yam eyes in my pocket
And the snow around you, Long Hoe
I must sit and think of my family hunger
And will return either emptyhanded
Or offering the seeds that would harvest fill
And this is the second time I have sung this
Up All Night
And it's still night
But there's a bird
Flying into it
Taking its share
All I do is sit here
And write poems
Do City Morning
Awake watermelon my eyes
Door to door. The sun is investigating.
We don't mind, we are coffee.
Wires spread, pinching blue so blue.
Clocks growl, radios sputter.
Do people wearing no faces yet
Sigh magic n a crease n a jog
Footwork my life as an individual
By King of the Bees a narrative
Enclosing this city sea of air
God's dirigibles' war cries & sensitives
These headlines across morning's table
To the dead giveaway of your hands.
_________________________________________________
Wait until 12:01am on April 1,
then start reading this poem.
Read it over
& over & over & over
until the month
is over.
_________________________________________________
You are alive.
And should hear the Truth
About yourself - I am a liar
Named the Sun - I am King of the Sun
And you are safe with me.
Life is complicated but sacred.
Nothing is Natural - just say
Goodby to the beautiful sky.
Look behind it and use the Bones.
For toothpicks. Inevitable
Errors lose all meaning.
Just to walk through the goats
To the gates! Mountains. Crickets.
Blue copper. A horse between
The pink mountains and...
Hold it! Behold the great
Rocks where the land howls!
There is nothing but green. Tunnels
Pierce the stones' hearts, small villages
Penetrate your desire. The wind
Makes your kind of scream. Listen.
This place will suit.
It has no foundation.
The Earth has a voice:
You can listen to cracked mud,
Still holding a flag. Surprise.
The world is bigger than your opinion.
Rome, a kiss on the brown horizon.
O poor desperate people, Love me!
For the walls of Rome have fallen,
The faces have been filled in, all Africa
Has been sacked to reveal pinnacles of fear
In your piazzas. Send gentle reports to the tombs.
Look at what the hillside reveals.
Gone are the quests, lawns and laws.
Now we will scream forever. St. Ivo's screws
Up a new sky. God's errors melt. What suspicion
Causes me to banish you? Only my
Daughters shall speak. Standing before
The gate late at night -
Dear Muse, bring me a party.
It is late, I am human, I am
Crying like children for their future.
What proverbs will succor now? Bring
Me more news, wicked and noisy. Cross
Black hopes with green sorrow.
I am Gold. Still the Sun's turning.
I'm a Boat. Take me.
Out of focus, a slender tear,
The final robe. Quick legs
To dust death. Come.
It is time for sleep.
_________________________________________________
In the back room of the Poets Club
The poets are crying for fear
Their good works shall go unnoticed
It’s a kind of a poem, this life
Filled with windows but always indoors
I’d give anything to have everything the one
Poet remarks, Kleenex affixed to the broadside
I’d give it back on account of everything
Is everything responds the chorus, blasting
The dust from the intake vent (or “nose”)
Of the tin greenroom and catapulting
The whole scene (or “everything”) into Heaven
Where you sit in a movie
The one where it’s the mountaintops and snow and wisps wind
Round the crags and buttresses saying wined not
Wind because it is more poetical: and over there
Looking the other way is my mother. I try
To get her attention but cannot so busily staring into the nonhorizon
Is she, which I do not due to the therapy and all the pills I take
As meaning she is ignoring me. Her son. While meanwhile sprites
And devils are pouring Bosch out of the blue hole that
Leads from the VIP Room to Heaven. I can pour you a pint of gold
In the cold cold cold. The sadness that is always and is everything.
_________________________________________________
-- as sung by Papa Susso to Bob Holman
Kaira is a word
It is the word for Peace
Kaira means Peace I think you can hear that
Kaira Oh how Papa Susso loves that word Kaira
Papa Susso, the Internet griot with a BA degree
It is such pleasure to sing Kaira up and down kora strings
Listen to Kaira, that pleases Peace, Please Peace Now
Slavery is over, that’s what peace means
1945, West Africa, you know the World War
Was happening – Kaira – but in West Africa,
In Senegambia, 1945 was the year slavery was abolished
No more slaves means peace – Kaira!
Now it so happened that a few years later
There was a rich man in Guinea
Name of Kaira-ba Toure, his name
Was Peace and he loved Peace so it was all together
And there was a great great great balafon player, I’m talking
Teneng Sory Diabate, who saw this and rededicated Kaira
To this patron of the arts and this patron of Peace, Kaira, Kaira-ba
Slavery abolished but people still fight for power, Kaira
The jeli sing Kaira and people who come from the slave families,
Well, they still call themselves slaves, they walk around
Only now they follow no one. They are looking for work like everyone else.
And the power struggles you could say they go on to this day
This New Year Day let’s know this word Kaira
It’s a word for Peace, it pleases peace, Please Peace Now
With slaves in Mauritania and Sudan -- Kaira
With political prisoners in US and Eritrea -- Kaira
With people dying in Iraq even though the war is not a war -- Kaira
The kora plays the contradictions and plays for Kaira, for Peace
That is Kaira, the word for Peace
Please Peace Now
Kaira is the word for Peace
_________________________________________________
Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door with Sparrow
I gonna scratch noncommercial tattoo
Gonna eat my way to pain
Stir the flour in the roux
Listen to the lowdown from the coxswain
Knock knock knockin hear me snore
Knock knock knockin linoleum floor
Knock knock knockin precious ore
Knock knock knockin can I have some more
Dick Cheney needs to take a bath
The Remarkable Ambersons are quite plain
Dagummit, now you’ve gone & provoked my poisonous wrath
Bake the president in a quiche lorraine
Knock knock knockin who’s there Trojan War
Knock knock knockin Trojan War what no underwear
Knock knock knockin follow the dinosaur
Knock knock knockin we don’t live here anymore
Just last night at the Bowery Poetry Club we hatched a plan
Bout how we should open a Poetry Club where poetry could have a home
Then we had an orgy just to release the tension of being a man
And we woke up in a strange place smelled like Stockholm (and you know that ain’t pretty)
Knock knock knockin will you please come in
Knock knock knockin there’s no room in the Inn
Knock knock knockin but I’m the real Slim Shady Eminem
Knock knock knockin we were expecting Huckleberry Finn
I predict that the world will go to the store
And buy lots of stuff and get buttons reading “Carnivore”
C’mon all together let’s battering ram on Heaven’s door
Trying to stop the Iraqui War
Knock knock knockin in the dresser drawer
Knock knock knockin on a sophomore
Knock knock knockin in the cuspidor
Heretofore the metaphor to die for quoth the matador nevermore
Playing the blues on my old sitar
It just don’t matter anymore
Sometomes I wonder where you are
Knock knock knockin on heaven’s door
_________________________________________________
Listening to Monk Chun’s Lute (after Li Po)
Hold up the tablecloth over your face
– peekaboo& goodbye -- Chun plays
Approximately 10,000 valleys worth
On his ridiculously famous lute! Strum
Strum pine strums define time finally
Bells in Feng Mountains – nine bells
Ring when first frost comes. It’s still
The lute! How many
Echoes?
Starting over.
Washing the water.
_________________________________________________
I saw so many things
I wanted all of it mine
I busted the glass
_________________________________________________
Gray streets glower shine skate fire
Both hands nag gnaw ache desire
_________________________________________________
"Make
more things," snored Bobbyboy in his wet and thunderous bed.
The I-girl was watching because there was enough light to hear by.
And coffee with Splenda, mad cow disease in their pot, an old
rhubarb stalk for pie
chummy bananas and the howling art. It was dear I-girl's favorite
part, to translate
synecdoche to the full body: an arm pit? my venal cavity!
(I smell; I love)
Powerful as a fluffed! the river rerouted (thanks to a cooperative
zoning dominatrix)
to bring
their rafts into conspiratical disoonance
until they had
to go to work to make more things
The cogs at the work sang the same old song, this time in unison:
More things. Dratty old things; begin again it rings: Make things.
_________________________________________________
You may think I’forgot the cloud
But I want to tell your sweet cheatin’heart there’s nothing left between me and that cloud, useta be you sunshine ha I’ll be the sun don’t lie to me
_________________________________________________
Toss me overboard, I won’t float, the bag
Of fat and wine will, but I won’t. Eyes sag
under the waves, but my smile detonates. But
Whenever Hafiz breaks wind there’s no but but
But! Here are the gills and scales, not what
The first violinist flirts with, melody grunts
Pleasure breast and up above you holy bipeds
Gotta keep dividing unity into tiny parcels
Which are sent overnight to the Future! Gay folk
Are their own children, it’s evolution rose, the pink
Downs Syndrome, autism, schizophrenia – these
Are the beloved, and I don’t mind saying Nappy