Luke Davey
BANG!
POET OF THE WEEK
POET OF THE WEEK
Clarity
Life is precise. It cuts you with its acuteness. No gimmick, it can’t be tricked nor charmed. There’s no exit - Just go into it and be enhanced. Feel its edges, its points. Open your eyes. Drink from the knife-edge of the light and look for the significance in things; The world and watcher twinned like parallel lines, mirrored and mimed as one singular pressure. Every day, every hour, every second, everything is changing. So - don’t be scared. It is only natural; things can be real, things can be dreams. Same thing. How wonderful. |
Orange tree
Walk with me to the middle of a sun-lit field. There, is an orange tree with both flowers and oranges among its branches. It’s hot, so we can sit in the shade together. I really like being with you. You calm me down - and when I’m calm I laugh more, smile more. I give more. Everything is better. Sitting under this tree, the blossoms smell amazing and the oranges are ripe, but we leave them where they are, shimmering. You and I seem to have a lot to say. I like that. It’s nice. We can say things all day if you like. When you speak, I admire everything - How you pause and begin again, the way you gather your thoughts with a sudden smile. Also, the way you rest your hands on your knees When you’ve finished, not expecting or waiting for a reply, But just happy as you are. |
Perfume
24 carat gold moon bone-white apple blooms floating hot simmering stars sepia dunes lifting twisting like starlings oil-black shimmering sky the wet canvas of your eyes the skeleton-key of my lips to kiss the lock of your cheeks smoke signal signs skin-soft un-defined edges sticky buds & tongues to touch pure desire technicolor words to hot-wire the mind to fly the kite higher to swim through blood-rushing orange crush claret sun cuts wild wounded sky rose blush lemons limes pine resin lather of sap shadows & light mirror ball a hall of mirrors peacocks balloons pea-green mottled blue melancholic sea cartoons & and afternoon tea sea-breeze seagull salted cry horizon mouths the word ‘goodbye’ |
Take the joyful path
What I would like to give to you is all the things that came before these words; the music in my skin and nerves, the morning song of these spring time birds. And if I could, I’d give you what you gave to me just by being there; You. in the golden seat of who you are. The way your body blends with the earth - its language of tones, holding, changing. Seeing how you are alone and then not alone, shimmering – skin, bone stone, flower, rain. one and the same. you’re there and then you’re gone. And now I’m leaving too. But what’s more true than that is this nearly-April day that belongs to us both, broad and sweet and bright, a semblance of parts spinning with light and voltage; a song – gathering and unfurling itself with all the things you’ve already heard – showing me where I’m strong and holding me where I’m hurt. |
Nathan Russell Williams
Urn’ ments
a-top fireplace/Santa’s grotty mail shoot/
thirty years ago/now;
Crowds of nuns huddle wary
yet to come to terms with the
dust gathering pace
The living room has been
|| Like || this || || since ||
the only cure for your ills was dying
Three boys
– not a foot tall –
C E N T R E P I E C E
I never met my brother or knew y-
our pain he never felt
My only brother now is my best friend
My BROTHER now is my only friend
Only my brother is now
My only brother now is my best friend
My BROTHER now is my only friend
Only my brother is now
The Admirals hat
is cracked|The Bakers
baguette – snapped –
lost forever (was
hollow)
all along
One Toby Jug ( J U G )
watches The Nightingale\
both cast
in eternity to be Ms-
understood
by dirty ears
(YA’VE GAT POTATOES GROWIN’ IN DEM EARS ! )
Two of the boys are chipped worn n’ beat
they have been
like this since
the only cure
for your ills
was dying/
one day\
will dust n’ shine all o’ these
Urn’ments make ‘em look
bran’ new
a-top fireplace/Santa’s grotty mail shoot/
thirty years ago/now;
Crowds of nuns huddle wary
yet to come to terms with the
dust gathering pace
The living room has been
|| Like || this || || since ||
the only cure for your ills was dying
Three boys
– not a foot tall –
C E N T R E P I E C E
I never met my brother or knew y-
our pain he never felt
My only brother now is my best friend
My BROTHER now is my only friend
Only my brother is now
My only brother now is my best friend
My BROTHER now is my only friend
Only my brother is now
The Admirals hat
is cracked|The Bakers
baguette – snapped –
lost forever (was
hollow)
all along
One Toby Jug ( J U G )
watches The Nightingale\
both cast
in eternity to be Ms-
understood
by dirty ears
(YA’VE GAT POTATOES GROWIN’ IN DEM EARS ! )
Two of the boys are chipped worn n’ beat
they have been
like this since
the only cure
for your ills
was dying/
one day\
will dust n’ shine all o’ these
Urn’ments make ‘em look
bran’ new
Human Conditioning
Concocting remedies for such a condition is no easy feat
There are shelves in the kitchen and in the bedroom too in the medicine cupboard always with a mirror
They are filled with essentials each assembled to provide specific relevant purpose
I eat in the bath and bathe in bed amongst sheets of pontification to avoid arguments
Only in the kitchen do I go hungry to serve as a reminder of the cause and do not charge the mice any rent
Why certain manufacturers feel the need to put mirrors in such places is beyond me
It is a condition familiar to each and sundry but explicit in its contrasts
For starters –how many lines on your hand can you claim to have always belonged to you
What day really is it –how long since you slept through
Some add water to dilute the stomach cramps but will not budge on the points at hand
Their pillows too were passed down –starched and then dreamt upon though some may disagree with such philosophies
Some choose the comforts of darkness and loss of certified illusion in favour for speculated vision
Some sleep with the |light on| to save face
Who can blame anyone? Better worse suggest it is a fallacy
Perhaps it is ?
But it wasn’t always
Wear sun cream wherever possible –that’s an easy one
Stay out of the bathroom –in fact locking any room with a mirror is advisable
Those dreams will be the making of you –too bad they’re not yours
Maintain an appetite/hunger
Do not be afraid to sweat –there is nothing to hide but your need to feel you must offer an explanation
If offered directions ask the person advising the purpose of their visit then run –fast –in the opposite direction
Keep the shelves clean at all times –always expect strangers
Understand the frivolousness of objecting
Create as if time was is up
Source your hallucinogens locally
There is nothing organic about it
It bears ills like no other condition
It is glass –in it you stand –of course there will be cracks
Sleep will administer redemption
It becomes less
The more You
Concocting remedies for such a condition is no easy feat
There are shelves in the kitchen and in the bedroom too in the medicine cupboard always with a mirror
They are filled with essentials each assembled to provide specific relevant purpose
I eat in the bath and bathe in bed amongst sheets of pontification to avoid arguments
Only in the kitchen do I go hungry to serve as a reminder of the cause and do not charge the mice any rent
Why certain manufacturers feel the need to put mirrors in such places is beyond me
It is a condition familiar to each and sundry but explicit in its contrasts
For starters –how many lines on your hand can you claim to have always belonged to you
What day really is it –how long since you slept through
Some add water to dilute the stomach cramps but will not budge on the points at hand
Their pillows too were passed down –starched and then dreamt upon though some may disagree with such philosophies
Some choose the comforts of darkness and loss of certified illusion in favour for speculated vision
Some sleep with the |light on| to save face
Who can blame anyone? Better worse suggest it is a fallacy
Perhaps it is ?
But it wasn’t always
Wear sun cream wherever possible –that’s an easy one
Stay out of the bathroom –in fact locking any room with a mirror is advisable
Those dreams will be the making of you –too bad they’re not yours
Maintain an appetite/hunger
Do not be afraid to sweat –there is nothing to hide but your need to feel you must offer an explanation
If offered directions ask the person advising the purpose of their visit then run –fast –in the opposite direction
Keep the shelves clean at all times –always expect strangers
Understand the frivolousness of objecting
Create as if time was is up
Source your hallucinogens locally
There is nothing organic about it
It bears ills like no other condition
It is glass –in it you stand –of course there will be cracks
Sleep will administer redemption
It becomes less
The more You
It never ends
There was nothing at all.
They rebuilt The Wall brick
By brick in the museum of
C o n t I n u I t y & e v o l u t I o n
People came and paid a
Donation with coins in one
Of those spiral wishing well
Machines but nobody could
think of a wish. We browsed the
Walls and podiums of time.
It was a long afternoon.
When we left it was dark
Somebody asked what
The plans were.
Checking my watch I wasn’t surprised
it had stopped.
“Lets Drink,” I replied. “Good idea,”
somebody said.
We cursed ourselves and that
Wishing well when we checked
Our pockets
Aimlessly traipsing
Somewhere or home instead.
There was nothing at all.
They rebuilt The Wall brick
By brick in the museum of
C o n t I n u I t y & e v o l u t I o n
People came and paid a
Donation with coins in one
Of those spiral wishing well
Machines but nobody could
think of a wish. We browsed the
Walls and podiums of time.
It was a long afternoon.
When we left it was dark
Somebody asked what
The plans were.
Checking my watch I wasn’t surprised
it had stopped.
“Lets Drink,” I replied. “Good idea,”
somebody said.
We cursed ourselves and that
Wishing well when we checked
Our pockets
Aimlessly traipsing
Somewhere or home instead.
Poem
Every bone is squirming.
Every day one should read
for at least an hour yet my
eyes are squirming and my
brain is squirming too It’s
been a decade to forget but
everything reminds me that
my memory is working for now
Crossed a bridge over a viaduct
Mechanical tides squirmed over
head clay pigeons made chalky
cries watching for Perch
NOT O N E
We watched melancholy kindred waves borne of earth
When it was time to leave my heart
squirmed and every inch of what is
left of me ached when you never
washed up
Clay pigeons hovered and cracked
under the sun
Every bone is squirming.
Every day one should read
for at least an hour yet my
eyes are squirming and my
brain is squirming too It’s
been a decade to forget but
everything reminds me that
my memory is working for now
Crossed a bridge over a viaduct
Mechanical tides squirmed over
head clay pigeons made chalky
cries watching for Perch
NOT O N E
We watched melancholy kindred waves borne of earth
When it was time to leave my heart
squirmed and every inch of what is
left of me ached when you never
washed up
Clay pigeons hovered and cracked
under the sun
Poet Biography: Nathan Russell Williams
Nathan is Salford University graduate and MA student, first inspired, and still, by the Beat Generation. After spending most of his twenties wandering around Manchester’s open mic poetry scene, he decided to quit life as he knew it, and educate himself on his passion. With aspirations of being the next Allen Ginsberg dashed, due to his unharmonious Salford accent (amongst other things...); he decided to review his approach to writing, thinking, and observing, poetry. Enjoying a spell (as poetry often seems to bear its fruits in spells) of experimentation within his works; Nathan has been published by StreetCake Magazine and was longlisted in their experimental poetry competition 2020. As he is stuck with his Salford heritage, he attempts to pay tribute to northern sentiments, people, language and poetry. Combining that lot, with influences from Richard Brautigan to The Beats; whilst trying to address the inner-entanglement of a world which saw minds like B.S Johnson make no sense of its chaos, keeps him writing.
Nathan is Salford University graduate and MA student, first inspired, and still, by the Beat Generation. After spending most of his twenties wandering around Manchester’s open mic poetry scene, he decided to quit life as he knew it, and educate himself on his passion. With aspirations of being the next Allen Ginsberg dashed, due to his unharmonious Salford accent (amongst other things...); he decided to review his approach to writing, thinking, and observing, poetry. Enjoying a spell (as poetry often seems to bear its fruits in spells) of experimentation within his works; Nathan has been published by StreetCake Magazine and was longlisted in their experimental poetry competition 2020. As he is stuck with his Salford heritage, he attempts to pay tribute to northern sentiments, people, language and poetry. Combining that lot, with influences from Richard Brautigan to The Beats; whilst trying to address the inner-entanglement of a world which saw minds like B.S Johnson make no sense of its chaos, keeps him writing.
Michael Wilson
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Do Something Beautiful When You Can
If we only had minutes left, who would plant flowers? If we were terminal, and we are all terminal, maybe we could, should do something to make this world more beautiful. I’ve seen Banksy’s finest, I’ve seen flowers filling waste bins like vases, I’ve seen empty and abandoned umbrellas, Covered in poetry. I’ve seen graffiti on a side street in Glasgow that simply read You Are Beautiful in large letters on a blue background, So, maybe it’s not really about beauty itself than someone suddenly seeing it where it barely belongs. It is in Ginsberg’s soot blackened sunflower, growing despite it all in the shadow of locomotives Christ Buddha and Vishnu, all said, in their own way, that the strength of life is love and true love never fails to be anything but beautiful. Do something beautiful while you can, even if no one sees it, even if no one hears it in the beat of your voice, before its whipped away by winds and storms. Is beauty really enough, in the face of coups fires and floods? The charcoal of life turned by art into something beautiful, I don’t know how, it just does. And if all was beautiful then all would be equally plain, equally thugish, beauty is rare but it’s tough. It is not simply in the orchid petal, but that petal attached to a flower growing somewhere barely inhabitable, and the stronger it is the more beautiful it can be. It is the rarity of a perfect emotion. It is the scarcity of being able to truly convert. dust into diamonds. So, please, while we can, beautify your place in this world you never know whose soul is helped along the way you might help find a path where beauty itself goes |
My Time With Magic
Walking through pages set in magic a secret smile held in a broken smile the weight of the world is the head of a pin choice and chance took me to the wind and snow of pretty picturebox Amsterdam clean as a page and mad as a felt cap believing and non believing followed and following finding spirituality in silence and the depth of the soul in the fathomless incremental divisions in small coffee cups walking through thoughts of kings and ghosts and spirits and people like you and me last known surroundings, home I walked right out of my own skin found solice with magic and for a week or so it walked with me showed me things took both my hands danced And as the night boat rolled from Hoek to England's side I felt like a small child being carried along From a creaking metal bunk I knew the world would never be the same And though I had to find my ground legs again And unpick the numbers and letters from my mind It never was Amsterdam showed me We are the lives we've always wanted We are the wait for completion we've always had |
Angel:
Your little weird little ways Are nothing to the nonsense going on in Heaven You wouldn't know how to label them if you knew In the sterile little marked bottles you like to put them all in At night, I watch the stars, to get a sense of way back then There are some of them, I know them all That were in their cradles when it all happened The light that hits is a time track back to a simpler time I feel like a mother Watched you all develop into noise The world cluttering almost imperceptably around I've lived through kings and queens and their board games Countries and empires And the dark globe of unknown lives That come and pass like breath, never noticed, but vital to life The rich, the stately draw the maps, the rest of you build the bridges, and the tracks Silent outside your corners, remembered by your own, for a life or two And to this day, for me, Heaven barred, Hell still open I can't take the decision to drink in oblivion Take the leap, and hack these wings away That drag across dancefloors, scrape city sidewalks, Comfort short stay lovers, and hang useless the rest of the time Cause I can't leave a people, mired in shame, holy with doubt Who still will harbour their own sorrow away In order to make another soul smile Who light candles for those they don't know half a world away Who feel hurt for another more than themselves Who can have the restless, futile thought, that one day the world will shine Greater than the sun For these things, and these things alone Life is an imperfect drama, tinged with comedy, from which I can't walk away Besides, I'd like to see how this all turns out |
Break Poem:
When, I was someone else; lost in my own skin; held in my own mind; by a part of myself I didn't recognise; I was evil. And all evilness came, not from what I did, (there were always two choices), but the inability to move beyond the clumsy shadow of starting. It wasn't just me who would suffer, my family and closest friends, would be with me in pain. What hurt most was knowing my cowardice, in failing to break the world on a twig, would bring a judgement on others for all i did by doing little but fret. Now, there is nothing to fear. None put to the fire. None peeled alive, by my illness. Just months of me being spliced together, from fragments of sanity, that grew longer, a richer sound, from the initial crackle, silence spaced with desolate voices, all of them mine, But, mine's is simply scale. William Burroughs learnt his cut up technique, from a man, who spent 15 years in silence convinced. convinced, all evil emanated from his ghostly body, a shut in, to save the world. But to be alive: such despair and sorrow, at scenes of the world, he imagined across the flesh of the hotel room door. The shadow on the wall hurts most, when there's nothing there, but the detail cast upon it, and the grin of its grim smile. Since, I'm glad I'm alive, and nothing has made me search that one option out. But living can be sharper, when you believe these things, and do not act. But I guess one way to see this, is to say, I saved my family and friends the flat broke love of not being able to care for anything but a memory when it came to having a friend, a brother, a son. Just know, you do well to get out alive, though those who can't, I truly empathize. But if these words can reach you, in your recollection, when even yourself can't: Stay. Stay here, the warmth of their embrace comes very soon, and the seeds of recovery that, ironically, are found in psychosis, are the beginning of knowing this world, your life, yourself. |
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Poet Biography: Michael Wilson is a multi-slam winning published poet. He cut his teeth in Manchester and began organising events and touring the UK and Ireland and last year central and eastern Canada. He has won slams at regional and national level. He uses BSL often in his performances. His first full book Bedlam's Best and Finest has been published by Eyewear. He is currently working on the next one. Bisexual, Bipolar, Bilingual By Accident, buy his book!
A link to his next full reading of the book (Accidental Theatre) https://accidentaltheatre.co.uk/whats-on |
Michael Grover
Father’s Day
I’ve got something inside of me Something that I have carried to this point Something that it is my mission To carry to the grave We have almost arrived & what a ride it has been Something passed from my father He could not help that It was passed to him from his father And the beat echoes into the past There is no one after this This is the end Something that infests me like cancer Something there is no cure for Something that feeds me Poetry Something that hurts in the pit of my stomach Something like the fact That I have not spoken with my father for years Some kind of ego game he plays Last time I blinked & called him he hung up That was the last time |
Poetry & Protests
I know I’ve been quiet lately Livin’ with this cancer I know I’ve always spoke out It never really changed anything Despite my white privilege I am still a poor white man Tossed into a barrel of crabs Where image means more than what is real Every smile was a hungry smile The way the wolf smiles I feel a burden like the police states knee on my throat Surely this bad script must play out But it just keeps going Quarantine indefinitely From a virus that could kill me So I watch the World through a two way screen & try not to think about who’s looking back at me And I know I’ve been quiet lately Last journal entry a month ago Even then I didn’t say a lot Just let the words flow I used to say silence equals death I remember I used to try To get Thome Selby to come out and march with me He used to tell me to let him know when there was something worth fighting for I wish I could get out there right now Because the World is worth fighting for But if there is one thing I’ve learned over the years Poetry & protests never changed anything But it’s worth the effort |
Eve Of The Fourth Of July
They pepper sprayed the Sioux protesters That were blocking the road Nothing stops freedom Now right-wing propaganda fills the room Revising history Telling us how to think All to justify the pearly white american dream If you can afford it, freedom isn’t free We have to erase the injustice of history Give the people the freedom to buy anything Waiting for the president to speak It’s hate speech that makes us great Orwell rolls in his grave |
Daily Lies
Are piling up Agenda of corporations Serving to left/right Reality tv drama Playing out on the big screen Catering to your beliefs Mind numbing commercials between To dumb it all down Wouldn’t want it to get too serious Smother it all with flag & troops god & country What is left to do but sit back Die of government neglect Don’t delve into conspiracies They’re probably not far off |
Poet Biography: Michael D. Grover is a Florida born Poet. Michael has been publishing and performing Poetry for over twenty years and has been published all over the World. Michael published many of the best underground Poets in the country while he ran Covert Press. He has published over a dozen chapbooks over the years. His latest chapbook Fuck Cancer Poems is available on Blood Pudding Press. His new collection of Poems will soon be available from Cocklebur Press. Michael is the head editor at museumofpoetry.org. His newest novel Heavy Metal is now available on Alien Buddha Press.
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George Wallace
COOLING IT WITH YOU IN THE HIGHER ELEVATIONS
what love for the people is, two yanquis in a jeep, crossing the urubamba like wannabe che and the ghost of simon bolivar, me in my terrible excess of residual proletariat pride, raised on grandmother's onion soup & potatoes a pretty pair of petit-revolutionaries are we, norte-americanos crisscrossing the andes with a gun-running aussie in aviator glasses, cooling it in the higher elevations, testing the elasticity of politics against capitalist market realities (easier to love the people when they are exotic, you said, not from our own sad lacklustre town -- especially when you can turn a huge damn profit) our devotion to the internationale is cold and durable as cold worked steel, quarreling in the marketplace over he price of freedom and fish you with your sun hat and machete tongue, slashing big holes in the local language, me with my halting spanish and general awkwardness of conversation among strangers (inherited from laconic peasants who made it across the atlantic without saying a single damn word so why start now) and carrying worn-out european manifestos and traveled west until the west ran out (their big silent eyes and narrow ambitions) so this is love! we're chasing long gone dreams, hauling weapons to someone else's Revolution our love for the people is cartridges, semi-automatics and grenade launchers packed in crates of coca cola |
LORCA DOESN'T DRINK HERE ANY MORE
if only i could remember your words (horses mountains gypsies in gypsy bars) love pain lost faith & socialism commingling in the august heat - we drank together here we made love there (a man with a blue guitar proud disdainful laments all the sensuality of old spain) (at a corner table an old man w/ silver eyes empties mountain passes, recites poetry) in fact all andalucia was singing & federico garcia lorca you were singing rural songs (sung darkly, i cannot remember the words) motionless as a lizard on a hypnotist rock your eyes brown as mountains (we drank it in deep the shimmering duende) 'i remember us in better times' you sd & fingered your wineglass coyly, as a girl. as a child, 'we wandered hand in hand in the olive trees, you loved me better then' (even in the awful silence of spain's simmering heat your voice was fresh as fountain water, seduced me) -- fuentes vaqueros was never far from your lips federico -- i was never like you you were cool & handsome i was wild & innocent, perhaps you secretly admired the peasant in me (you offered me figs i took them from your hands) you filled my mouth with poetry -- i was poor witless & distracted in spain & what you desired is what you received -- the adoration of a simple man no better than a goatherd you picked up in snow-capped mountains) -- this is a memory i do not share w/ just anyone -- how i was seduced by you garcia lorca, feral, animated, native to andalucian heat -- & your hands, two small delicate mortal creatures (& the sacred hot thrum of your voice, how like cicadas singing in the mute lost heat of summer) |
DAKOTA
Leaning SSW into the colossal darkness that comes before dawn, listening for the holy drone of civilizations, short-lived, transient, and the voices of gods that drove them across this land, America, I am driven too, i drove the golden spike, I tapped the underground spring, I unleashed iron and oil, diamonds & coal, I fired the miner and hired the cook, I am nobody put up to no good, raise no statue to me; and yet I am somebody, with my painterly eyes and my ribs like ambition, my reason quick as ponies, my intuition native to every land that calls me home, attuned to natural rhythms, I am all ears like drums, I am all sweat lodge, reverent; i am no regret and tall tales told by the campfire, you will find me soon enough if you dig deep enough and are patient, I am clumsy as bear scat and also the turtle's egg; I am the wild orphan child, an Irish coracle abandoned to the reeds, returned to silkie; I tie rattles around my ankles when I dance like bones; and when I sweat I sweat ginger root, and when I am curious, then I am my mother's child again, innocent in her arms; and I am of the sweet-grass, yes you can smoke me if you want to, and the stone pipe, that's me too and there's plenty more of me where that came from, O I am mad, mad as Blake, Ginsberg taught me how to chant this song and so did my good gray Uncle Walt; O read my eyes America I am talking to you, like Kansas leafhoppers spoke to Kerouac; I am a cradle left out in a squall, I am rocking; the summer rain which cools you cools me too, and the lightning which spooks horses spooks me; and yes, I am an offering, I am full of tobacco, disoriented, buzzing like flowers, aromatic; a pouch passed hand to hand, w/ shavings of red cedar, that's me; toss me aside for empty when you are done with me, the less of me that is left the more I become; I am smoke, disappearing, returning, like the curvature of the sea that once swept this horizon, so I too remain calm, all surface, a full moon gliding across my face is something like peace (my guts swimming w/ eels) and I am erasing my own footprints as I cross sand; (what is this thing called sand, I am wind I am rock I am sand) and I am like tombstones and monuments, I keep myself busy (as if this poem were eternal! as if you, reading this poem, were eternal!) No more presidents no more wars; no more statues no more flags. No more governments! only this: lakes, rivers, holy, original; prairies, introverted and shy; foxes, laughing and goofing along as they go; To be stuck here, one more day, irreverent! With you, an old man not quite monk, painted on a scroll, one foot in heaven and the other in the shitter, with a jug of wine in your arms & a shack of wind for shelter Leaning out through the enormous window to take a piss before the cold weather comes. |
I LOOK TO MY HANDS, AND DO NOT COMPLAIN
I am like you, Walt Whitman, a vessel to the one soul, imperfect singer in which soul takes passage, mechanical! that which is called a man but a shell of the same; immortal contained in an imperiled vessel, guardian to the god-force contained within, and yet harmonious to the same; Mantra of the brass singing bowl, of glacier and of mountain in spring, the same; Mantra of the unbent trunk at the top of a windy crest, a Douglas Fir in winter, the same; Mantra of the day-lily in the field, subject to the most delicate summer breezes, with bowed head; I do not sing for the lark, or answer for the slaughter of sheep where the wolf pack pass; neither do I answer for my fellow man, or their concerns; nor attempt to justify what I see or hear; why one is understood and not the other, why one is condemned and the other raised up; why one society will rise while another will crumble; I can justify neither my own accomplishments and failures nor those of other women or men; equal to all, no more and no less under the equal sun, to any; a man of my hands, simple, not of contradictory mind; the curiosity of my hands wiser than my brain, and without ambiguity, their own poem; wondering at the mechanics of the fish that swim, and the birds that fly; wondering at the strength of the uppermost branches and the well-modulated bend of earth's horizon; Prying, questioning, nosy, inquisitive -- hands, meddlesome and the chiefest agents of my own sinew and flesh -- the knots in my calves, the aching desire in my shoulders and hips, the surety in my bones; Compared to all that the plasticity of my hands; How they grasp a pen and guide a plow; how they tend a wound, or comfort a child; and worry and play; how they repair a tool, and probe the dark flesh of hidden places; Temples of anger and love, grief and adoration; temples of curiosity and piety and disgust; These two hands, like yours, Walt Whitman, like your poets to come (ie me, ie you); extraordinary, typical, astonishing creatures of the earth in articulation; independent of and therefore amicable to inheritance; built as we are of the fundamental stuff of stars and as humble, and as enduring; And you ask it of me, Walt Whitman, and I give it back of you, reciprocal as love -- 'Leaving it to you to provide and define it, explaining the main things from you...' -- I look to my hands, and do not complain as I look to the creatures of the earth, and the stars, and to onrushing death; how gracefully they lie, like your hands, Walt Whitman, only superficially at rest; reservoir to the implacable, inquisitive as the one eternal soul, and as curious -- Curious as a newborn baby, beholding its mother's face for the first time; Curious as a prophetess, gazing into a fire so long she sees the face of god; Curious as a poet, waking from his sleep, rises with a poem fully formed on his tongue. |
Poet Biography:
George Wallace is writer in residence at the Walt Whitman Birthplace, first laureate of the National Beat Poetry Festival, winner of the Orpheus Prize (Plovdiv, Bulgaria), and author of 37 chapbooks of poetry. Editor of Poetrybay.com and co-editor of Great Weather for Media, he is a prominent figure on the NYC poetry scene and travels internationally to share his work. Smashing rock and straight as razors (Blue Light Press, SF CA 2017) https://www.amazon.com/Smashing-Rock-Straight-as-Razors/dp/1421837765 |