[Daycare Nation]

Poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Frost at Midnight

The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud---and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
`Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought.

But O! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang
>From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come!
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the stranger's face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!

Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the interspersed vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shall learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

[qprogeny79]

not like the brazen giant of greek fame,
with conquering limbs astride from land to land,
here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
a mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
mother of exiles. from her beacon hand
glows worldwide welcome; her mild eyes command
the air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
with silent lips. "give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
i lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

--emma lazarus, "the new colossus"

(i transcribed that from memory)

[atari 2600]

This one finds T.S. Eliot in religious mode.



Choruses from The Rock (1934)

• The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,
  The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.

• O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
  The endless cycle of idea and action,
  Endless invention, endless experiment,
  Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
  Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
  Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
  All our knowledge brings us nearer to death,
  But nearness to death no nearer to God.
  Where is the Life we have lost in living?
  Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
  Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
  The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
  Brings us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.

• The lot of man is ceaseless labor,
  Or ceaseless idleness, which is still harder,
  Or irregular labour, which is not pleasant.
  I have trodden the winepress alone, and I know
  That it is hard to be really useful, resigning
  The things that men count for happiness, seeking
  The good deeds that lead to obscurity, accepting
  With equal face those that bring ignominy,
  The applause of all or the love of none.
  All men are ready to invest their money
  But most expect dividends.
  I say to you: Make perfect your will.
  I say: take no thought of the harvest,
  But only of proper sowing.

• The world turns and the world changes,
  But one thing does not change.
  In all of my years, one thing does not change,
  However you disguise it, this thing does not change:
  The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil.

• You neglect and belittle the desert.
  The desert is not remote in southern tropics
  The desert is not only around the corner,
  The desert is squeezed in the tube-train next to you,
  The desert is in the heart of your brother.

• Let me show you the work of the humble. Listen.

• In the vacant places
  We will build with new bricks

• Where the bricks are fallen
  We will build with new stone
  Where the beams are rotten
  We will build with new timbers
  Where the word is unspoken
  We will build with new speech
  There is work together
  A Church for all
  And a job for each
  Every man to his work.

• What life have you, if you have not life together?
  There is not life that is not in community,
  And no community not lived in praise of GOD.

• And now you live dispersed on ribbon roads,
  And no man knows or cares who is his neighbor
  Unless his neighbor makes too much disturbance,
  But all dash to and fro in motor cars,
  Familiar with the roads and settled nowhere.

• Much to cast down, much to build, much to restore

• I have given you the power of choice, and you only alternate
  Between futile speculation and unconsidered action.

• And the wind shall say: "Here were decent godless people:
  Their only monument the asphalt road
  And a thousand lost golf balls."

• When the Stranger says: "What is the meaning of this city ?
  Do you huddle close together because you love each other?"
  What will you answer? "We all dwell together
  To make money from each other"? or "This is a community"?

• Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger.
  Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.

• There is one who remembers the way to your door:
  Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.
  You shall not deny the Stranger.

• They constantly try to escape
  From the darkness outside and within
  By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.
  But the man that is shall shadow
  The man that pretends to be.

• Then it seemed as if men must proceed from light to light, in the light of the Word,
  Through the Passion and Sacrifice saved in spite of their negative being;
  Bestial as always before, carnal, self seeking as always before, selfish and purblind as ever before,
  Yet always struggling, always reaffirming,always resuming their march on the way that was lit by the light;
  Often halting, loitering, straying, delaying, returning, yet following no other way.

• But it seems that something has happened that has never happened before: though we know not just when, or why, or how, or where.
  Men have left GOD not for other gods, they say, but for no God; and this has never happened before
  That men both deny gods and worship gods, professing first Reason,
  And then Money, and Power, and what they call Life, or Race, or Dialectic.

• What have we to do but stand with empty hands and palms turned upwards in an age which advances progressively backwards?

• There came one who spoke of the shame of Jerusalem
  And the holy places defiled;
  Peter the Hermit, scourging with words.
  And among his hearers were a few good men,
  Many who were evil,
  And most who were neither,
  Like all men in all places.

• In spite of all the dishonour,
  the broken standards, the broken lives,
  The broken faith in one place or another,
  There was something left that was more than the tales
  Of old men on winter evenings.

• Our age is an age of moderate virtue
  And moderate vice

• The soul of Man must quicken to creation.

• Out of the meaningless practical shapes of all that is living or lifeless
  Joined with the artist's eye, new life, new form, new colour.
  Out of the sea of sound the life of music,
  Out of the slimy mud of words, out of the sleet and hail of verbal imprecisions,
  Approximate thoughts and feelings, words that have taken the place of thoughts and feelings,
  There spring the perfect order of speech, and the beauty of incantation.

• The work of creation is never without trevail

• Light
  Light
  The visible reminder of Invisible Light.

• O Light Invisible, we praise Thee!
  Too bright for mortal vision.

• We see the light but see not whence it comes.
  O Light Invisible, we glorify Thee!

[atari 2600]

T.S. Eliot once quipped that Edgar Allan Poe "had the mind of a gifted adolescent...before puberty."

So, to be fair, I'm posting a Poe poem. The fact is that Eliot knew that Poe was one of the most important American Poets & that he was both modern & scholarly & did it all before Modern Poetry & so Eliot took a cheap shot since some of Poe's writings are pulpy & sensationalistic to an extent because he felt threatened by Poe's genius.

A Dream Within a Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong,
who deem That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?

[atari 2600]

BEAUTY
by: Charles Baudelaire

• • 
    
    
    
    
     
    AM as lovely as a dream in stone,
  • And this my heart where each finds death in turn,
  • Inspires the poet with a love as lone
  • As clay eternal and as taciturn.
  • Swan-white of heart, a sphinx no mortal knows,
  • My throne is in the heaven's azure deep;
  • I hate all movements that disturb my pose,
  • I smile not ever, neither do I weep.
  • Before my monumental attitudes,
  • That breathe a soul into the plastic arts,
  • My poets pray in austere studious moods,
  • For I, to fold enchantment round their hearts,
  • Have pools of light where beauty flames and dies,
  • The placid mirrors of my luminous eyes.

Talk about yr dark nights of the soul
to contrast the T.S. Eliot, here we go:


The Litanies of Satan
Oh you, the wisest and the most beautiful of Angels,
God betrayed by fate and deprived of praises,

Oh Satan, take pity on my long misery!

Oh Prince of exile, you who were wronged
And who, defeated, always return stronger,

Oh Satan, take pity on my long misery!

You who know all, great king of subterranean things,
Familiar healer of human anguish,

Oh Satan, take pity on my long misery!

You who, even to the lepers, to the cursed pariahs,
Teach through love the taste of Paradise,

Oh Satan, take pity on my long misery!

Oh you who from Death, your old, strong lover,
Engendered Hope, -- a charming madwoman!

Oh Satan, take pity on my long misery!

You who lend the condemned man that calm and haughty gaze
That condemns an entire people around the gallows.

Oh Satan, take pity on my long misery!

You who know in what corners of envious lands
The jealous God hid precious gems,

Oh Satan, take pity on my long misery!

You whose clear eye knows the deep arsenals
In which sleep buried the multitude of metals,

Oh Satan, take pity on my long misery!

You whose large hand hides precipices
From the sleepwalker wandering on the edge of buildings,

Oh Satan, take pity on my long misery!

You who, magically, make supple the old bones
Of the drunkard run late and trampled by horses,

Oh Satan, take pity on my long misery!

You who, to console the frail man in pain,
Taught us to mix saltpeter and sulphur,

Oh Satan, take pity on my long misery!

You who place your mark, oh subtle accomplice,
On the brow of pitiless and vile Croesus,

Oh Satan, take pity on my long misery!

You who set in the eyes and in the hearts of girls
The cult of the wound and the love of rags,

Oh Satan, take pity on my long misery!

Staff of the exiles, lamp of inventors,
Confessor of the hanged and of conspirators,

Oh Satan, take pity on my long misery!

Adoptive father of those who, in his black anger,
God the Father chased from the earthly paradise,

Oh Satan, take pity on my long misery!

Prayer

Glory and praise to you, Satan, in the heights
Of Heaven, where you reigned, and in the depths
Of Hell, where, defeated, you dream in silence!
Make it so that my soul may one day, under the Tree of Knowledge,
Rest near to you, at that hour when upon your brow
Like a new Temple, its branches spread!

[atari 2600]

The Sick Rose

O rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

William Blake

 

[youthoftomorrow]

Prune juice acid and toxic chalk
my esophogus is burning, I cannot talk
I'm gettting rammed in the abdomen by Satan's goat
and there's some kind of porcupine crawling down my throat

i got bored and wrote that in class yesterday.

[saoq]

THE STARRY PHOTOGENIC


The man who rushed into most remote grief
without one single rose
with those eyes that kept their ochre so coarse,
pushing into the half-uncovered deserted chapel
the large crippled silence in the wheelchair of speech,
always aware of the inexhaustible situation: that we are
blood-stained amateurs of the Real
with a mystery which desecrates the intellect dividing
before the skin of the sea, raises Hades that much
higher.
The massive torrential storm smashes the eyeglasses and
great
fear seizes coming events,
forming abscesses in memory.
Flat on the ground of the unquenched silence, a mobile
worm memento.
The life that grows shorter: the great truth.
Whomever the hoe digs in becomes part of hoeing,
whomever drinks the water becomes part of drinking.
Spring comes ever-virginal offering fragrances,
holding by the thinnest of jet-black threads
in the open air of night
the spot where the small owl is, unknown beyond . . .


(NIKOS KAROUZOS)

[atari 2600]

i can't find any fucking Sir Kingsley Amis to copy & paste on the entire internet! That means I have to transcribe it.

[atari 2600]

since feeling is first
by e.e. cummings

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear
by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for eachother: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

[jennthebenn]

modified to amend grievous error of even posting it to begin with.

[krastian]

After Work

The shack and a few trees
float in the blowing fog

I pull out your blouse,
warm my cold hands
on your breasts.
you laugh and shudder
peeling garlic by the
hot iron stove.
bring in the axe, the rake,
the wood

we'll lean on the wall
against each other
stew simmering on the fire
as it grows dark
drinking wine

-Gary Snyder

[atari 2600]

wow, Gary Snyder...some taste;
oh, it's krastian...makes sense
i'm not familiar with that poem though. I only have Earth House hold & not rip rap i think it is...i googled (because i sensed that might be wrong) it's riprap not rip rap....

the fact that i can remember that the poem is from riprap, a book i do not even own but checked out from a library like 15 years ago, should demonstrate to all that I have some memory. Respect! i shouldn't go into it, but i substance abuse beyond belief. Take away the Respect! i have to because the memory is a curse really, but i still cannot shake it...fucking crazy...beddy bye

[krastian]

Ha....thanks man. Check out this book if you interested...it is fucking amazing. I love it. It has poems, essays, journal writings etc. I love T.S. Eliot....what a voice from such a fucked up era.

 

I love that picture of him.

[silverfreepress (sdasher)]

AMERICA
Allen Ginsburg

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for
murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over
from Russia.

I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie
producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and
twentyfivethousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in
my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.

America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his
automobiles more so they're all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they
sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the
workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party
was in 1935 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother
Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have
been a spy.
America you don're really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

[Daycare Nation]

I love Blake and Snyder!

I had not read that Snyder poem either. Here is my favorite:


Four Poems for Robin

Siwashing It Out Once in Suislaw Forest

I slept under rhododendron

All night blossoms fell
Shivering on a sheet of cardboard
Feet stuck in my pack
Hands deep in my pockets
Barely able to sleep.
I remembered when we were in school
Sleeping together in a big warm bed
We were the youngest lovers
When we broke up we were still nineteen
Now our friends are married
You teach school back east
I dont mind living this way
Green hills the long blue beach
But sometimes sleeping in the open
I think back when I had you.

A Spring Night in Shokoku-ji

Eight years ago this May
We walked under cherry blossoms
At night in an orchard in Oregon.
All that I wanted then
Is forgotten now, but you.
Here in the night
In a garden of the old capital
I feel the trembling ghost of Yugao
I remember your cool body
Naked under a summer cotton dress.

An Autumn Morning in Shokoku-ji

Last night watching the Pleiades,
Breath smoking in the moonlight,
Bitter memory like vomit
Choked my throat.
I unrolled a sleeping bag
On mats on the porch
Under thick autumn stars.
In dream you appeared
(Three times in nine years)
Wild, cold, and accusing.
I woke shamed and angry:
The pointless wars of the heart.
Almost dawn. Venus and Jupiter.
The first time I have
Ever seen them close.

December at Yase

You said, that October,
In the tall dry grass by the orchard
When you chose to be free,
"Again someday, maybe ten years."

After college I saw you
One time. You were strange.
And I was obsessed with a plan.

Now ten years and more have
Gone by: I've always known
where you were--
I might have gone to you
Hoping to win your love back.
You still are single.

I didn't.
I thought I must make it alone. I
Have done that.

Only in dream, like this dawn,
Does the grave, awed intensity
Of our young love
Return to my mind, to my flesh.

We had what the others
All crave and seek for;
We left it behind at nineteen.

I feel ancient, as though I had
Lived many lives.
And may never now know
If I am a fool
Or have done what my
karma demands.

Gary Snyder

[porkmarras]

PUNK ROCK REVIVAL
By John Cooper Clarke
the rip-off riff's authentic ring
a singer who can't really sing
can only mean one fucking thing
punk rock revival
affect the look of a man obsessed
predisposed to the predistressed
now you know you're properly dressed
punk rock revival
wear your hair the wrong way round
spike it up in a vaseline crown
button up your button down
punk rock revival
PVC and nylon fur
and D-rings are de rigeur
the way we are is the way we were
punk rock revival

[Daycare Nation]

Last Night's Dream
Denise Levertov

I sing tree, making green
school after school of leaf-fish
flicker between the shade and sunlight
in nets of branch,
urging the students to see, to see—

and one says: I like
the brown tree. So I look:
she has conjured
one of those scrawny northern cedars,
arbor vitae, dead or alive, one can't tell,
earth-brown, sprouting
bits of dry fern-frond from random twigs,
disregarded;

and this tree, behold,
glows from within;
haloed in visible
invisible gold.

[porkmarras]

Wanna Be YoursJohn Cooper Clarke

let me be your vacuum cleaner
breathing in your dust
let me be your ford cortina
i will never rust
if you like your coffee hot
let me be your coffee pot
you call the shots
i wanna be yours
let me be your raincoat
for those frequent rainy days
let me be your dreamboat
when you wanna sail away
let me be your teddy bear
take me with you anywhere
i don’t care
i wanna be yours
let me be your electric meter
i will not run out
let me be the electric heater
you get cold without
let me be your setting lotion
hold your hair with deep devotion
deep as the deep atlantic ocean
that’s how deep is my emotion
deep deep deep deep de deep deep
i don’t wanna be hers
i wanna be yours

[Daycare Nation]

High Windows
Philip Larkin

When I see a couple of kids
And guess he's fucking her and she's
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,
I know this is paradise

Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives--
Bonds and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide

To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if
Anyone looked at me, forty years back,
And thought, That'll be the life;
No God any more, or sweating in the dark

About hell and that, or having to hide
What you think of the priest. He
And his lot will all go down the long slide
Like free bloody birds. And immediately

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.