http://www.democraticunderground.com http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sun, 22 Nov 2009 07:04:47 Sun, 22 Nov 2009 07:04:47 "Wood's Edge"

Infinity lifted:
a gasp of emeralds.

I thought I felt
the tall night trees
between them,

no exactitude,
a wait not even
known yet.

I held my violet up;
no smell.
It made a signal squeak
inside, bats,

lisps of pride;

ah, their little things,
thei... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/BlueIris/709 Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:50:17 "The People's Temple"

--[i]For Richard Tropp (English Department, 1972-1978) dead in Guyana 1978[/i]

They worked and sought and stared
and thought they saw, at last, the Sun.
It was the spy-hole of a furnace
they looked through.

Better that fiery glimpse
than no vision at all,
than ... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/BlueIris/708 Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:39:39 [pre]"Glose"

[i]Blood's risks, its hollows, its flames
Exchanged for the pull of that song
Bone-colored road, bone-colored sky
Through the white days of the storm.[/i]
—Claire Malroux, "Storm"
translated by M. H.

Once out of the ... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/BlueIris/707 Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:04:24 --from "The Star Market"

The people Jesus loved were shopping at the Star Market yesterday.
An old lead-colored man standing next to me at the checkout
breathed so heavily I had to step back a few steps.

Even after his bags were packed he still stood, breathing hard and
hawking into his ha... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/BlueIris/706 Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:36:23 "Sunday Night in the City"

Hand in hand, we lie on the bed,
our long legs crossed like folded
wings, our long feet touching the
footboard in shadow, curved like a headstone
with grapes. Your hair is ruffled, dark
as black walnut, curled like the tendril of
vines. Your right hand is in my ri... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/BlueIris/705 Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:30:25 "Friday the 13th"

Oooh! Aaaah!
Stay home
Little frightened ones!
Today is Friday the 13th!
You know what that means!
Ooooh!
Bad luck
Because you feel guilty
For all the things
You've done to hurt people
For which you've
Yet to be caught.

--Adele Swift... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/BlueIris/704 Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:25:14 "Underground"

Under water grottos, caverns
Filled with apes
That eat figs.
Stepping on the figs
That the apes
Eat, they crunch.
The apes howl, bare
Their fangs, dance,
Tumble in the
Rushing water,
Musty, wet pelts
Glistening in the blue.

--Barack Obama... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/BlueIris/703 Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:47:16 "Chastity Belt"

Invisible catches & secret hooks, bone
Within bone & trick locks.
If a man needs this to hold
Love in place, the master of keys
Will always bite his nails
To the quick. Tooled leather,
Laced mail & jeweled bronze.
Before his departure over a body
Of tremulant water, he tur... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/BlueIris/702 Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:07:22 "Backdrop Addresses Cowboy"


Starspangled cowboy
sauntering out of the almost-
silly West, on your face
a porcelain grin,
tugging a papier-mache cactus
on wheels behind you with a string,


you are innocent as a bathtub
full of bullets.


Your righteous eyes, your laconic
trig... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/BlueIris/701 Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:14:25 "Oh, the Water"

You are the hero of this poem,
the one who leans into the night
and shoulders the stars, smoking
a cigarette you've sworn is your last
before reeling the children into bed.

Or you're the last worker on the line,
lifting labeled crates onto the dock,
brown arms bare to th... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/BlueIris/700 Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:55:04 "Hurry"

We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store
and the gas station and the green market and
Hurry up honey, I say, hurry,
as she runs along two or three steps behind me
her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down.

Where do I want her to hurry to? To her gr... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/BlueIris/699 Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:20:12 "For the Twentieth Century"

Bound, hungry to pluck again from the thousand
technologies of ecstasy

boundlessness, the world that at a drop of water
rises without boundaries,

I push the PLAY button:--

. . .[i]Callas, Laurel & Hardy, Szigeti

you are alive again,[/i]--

the slow mo... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/BlueIris/698 Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:42:14 "Poem for Maya"

Dipping our bread in oil tins
we talked of morning peeling
open our rooms to a moment
of almonds, olives and wind
when we did not yet know what we were.
The days in Mallorca were alike:
footprints down goat-paths
from the beds we had left,
at night the stars locked to dark... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/BlueIris/697 Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:10:13 "Men at Thirty"

Thirty today, I saw
The trees flare briefly like
The candles upon a cake
As the sun went down the sky,
A momentary flash
Yet there was time to wish

Before the break light could die
If I had known what to wish
As once I must have known
Bending above the clean candlelit... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/BlueIris/696 Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:06:03 "Like This...So This"

Teaching mathematics on the blackboard
deepens the curse of prophecy:
everything willed will happen

The room is filled with motes
hard as gold that must
happen
willful light that cannot not
happen

So my eyes must narrow
at the sight
of you

So improbably beas... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/BlueIris/695 Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:00:06 "Elms"

All day I tried to distinguish
need from desire. Now, in the dark,
I feel only bitter sadness for us,
the builders, the planers of wood,
because I have been looking
steadily at these elms
and seen the process that creates
the writhing, stationary tree
is torment, and have understoo... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/BlueIris/694 Fri, 30 Oct 2009 07:55:17 "Yes Anastasia"

I know what you want the magpies have come
If you know me so well then tell me which hand I use
Make them go make it go
Saw her there in a restaurant
Poppy don't go
I know your mother is a good one
But Poppy don't go
I'll take you home
Show me the things I've been missin
... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/BlueIris/693 Thu, 29 Oct 2009 03:09:16 [pre]"Year's End"

[i]The fingers lie in the lap,
separate, lonely, as in the field
the separate blades of grass
shrivel or grow tall.[/i]

We sat together in the little room,
the walls blotched with steam,
holding the baby as if the two of us
could breathe for him and were not helpless.
... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/BlueIris/692 Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:09:05 "If See No End In This"

What none knows is when, not if.
Now that your life nears its end
when you turn back what you see
is ruin. You think, It is a prison. No,
it is a vast resonating chamber in
which each thing you say or do is

new, but the same. [i]What none knows is
how to change... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/BlueIris/691 Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:17:13 "Flu Song in Spanish"

God of the bees, god of gold keys, god of all in-
famous noses, I folded our total
in two today--I drove alone
and I walked away (as if each mile up your hill
were a letter in a word I'm inventing).
So I stuck my head in a hole and stood.
So far so. So far
good. Now... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/BlueIris/690 Sun, 25 Oct 2009 08:43:51 "Boats and Birds"

If you'll be my star, I'll be your sky
You can hide underneath me and come out at night
When I turn jet black and you show off your light

I live to let you shine
I live to let you shine

You can sky rocket away from me
And never come back if you find another galaxy
Far... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/BlueIris/689 Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:33:50 "Lamentation: School Bus in Morning"

They say this is normal, the calm
he had about leaving for kindergarten,
his desire to take the bus.
She saw his foot against the backdrop of the door,
and then only a vapor trail.

If the toilets hadn't run,
hadn't made gurgling sounds,
pressing agai... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/BlueIris/688 Mon, 12 Oct 2009 12:28:18 "God the Broken Lock"

I've died enough by now I trust
just what's imperfect or ruined. I mean God,
God who is in the stop sign
asking to be shotgunned, the ocean that evaporates even
as we float. God the bent nail & broken lock,
and God the hangnail. The hangnail.
And a million others mi... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/BlueIris/687 Sat, 10 Oct 2009 05:31:12 "Insomniac"

There are some nights when
sleep plays coy,
aloof and disdainful.
And all the wiles
that I employ to win
its service to my side
are useless as wounded pride,
and much more painful.

--Maya Angelou ... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/BlueIris/686 Tue, 06 Oct 2009 08:50:51 "Men"

There are also men in the world. Sometimes we forget, and think there are only women--endless hills and plains of unresisting women. We make little jokes and comfort each other and our lives pass quickly. But every now and then, it is true, a man rises unexpectedly in our midst like... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/BlueIris/685 Fri, 02 Oct 2009 13:37:44