General

Futureworld

There was something eerie in the air,

An absence I could not identify.
An immense single-pump gas station,
Shimmering like a mirage in the heat,
Took up a good part of the main drag.
I pull in. Step into the heat stunned.
The car is too hot to touch.
I needed gas but didn't want to get it there.
It meant digging up the attendant.
  From  the poem 'PROVO'
    by Mark   Rudman

A Tree in the Clouds

Dirge in Woods

by George Meredith

A wind sways the pines,
         And below
Not a breath of wild air;
Still as the mosses that glow
On the flooring and over the lines
Of the roots here and there.
The pine-tree drops its dead;
They are quiet, as under the sea.
Overhead, overhead
Rushes life in a race,
As the clouds the clouds chase;
         And we go,
And we drop like the fruits of the tree,
         Even we,
         Even so.

Red House

The Unforgiven

by Russell Edson

         After a series of indiscretions a man stumbled homeward, thinking, now that I am going down from my misbehavior I am to be forgiven, because how I acted was not the true self, which I am now returning to. And I am not to be blamed for the past, because I’m to be seen as one redeemed in the present…
         But when he got to the threshold of his house said go away, I am not at home.
         Not at home? A house is always at home; where else can it be? said the man.
         I am not at home to you, said his house.

         And so the man stumbled into another series of indiscretions…

The Owl and the Spirit

Dragonflies Mating by Robert Hass 1. The people who lived here before us also loved these high mountain meadows on summer mornings. They made their way up here in easy stages when heat began to dry the valleys out, following the berry harvest probably and the pine buds: climbing and making camp and gathering, then breaking camp and climbing and making camp and gathering. A few miles a day. They sent out the children to dig up bulbs of the mariposa lilies that they liked to roast at night by the fire where they sat talking about how this year was different from last year. Told stories, knew where they were on earth from the names, owl moon, bear moon, gooseberry moon.

Rescue Me

The Domestic Life of Ghosts

by Tom Clark

Whoso list to haunt could do worse than to
Obtain the license, get the picture.
Spook finders must find spooks to put the face,
Name and space coordinates together.
What is kept in the mind perimeter
Retains a wild autonomy through fate.

I will retreat to the precorporate.
Let fate have what is fate’s and allow
This spirit to slip through time’s difficult
Nets with the devious fingers of
A wild wind, while I run along behind.

Red Angel

Native Woman

by A. F. Moritz

Her hair back from the wide round face
flows, almost a girl’s, so thick,
caught back in combs, racing
and curling through them with blackest
vigor, although it is pure white.
Cracked face, dusk-colored: not red
but with a deep red struggling under
the coming night. The eyes shift quickly,
the subway train jerks and rattles,
green vinyl, light flickering, silver poles.
Eyes driven from ancient calm,
which may fear but is never frantic
and says nothing, such as looks out
from the old Indian portraits—calm is
the one thing missing from the beauty
of her face in the black window.
Those unresting eyes there
talk plainly: there’s no money
at home, men young and old go wrong,
life almost at its end is
still day by day harried and perplexed.

Beware of Darkness

 With Thanks to George Harrison for Title

   Watch out now, take care
Beware of falling swingers
Dropping all around you
The pain that often mingles
In your fingertips
Beware of darkness

Watch out now, take care
Beware of the thoughts that linger
Winding up inside your head
The hopelessness around you
In the dead of night

Beware of sadness
It can hit you
It can hurt you
Make you sore and what is more
That is not what you are here for

Watch out now, take care
Beware of soft shoe shufflers
Dancing down the sidewalks
As each unconscious sufferer
Wanders aimlessly
Beware of Maya

Watch out now, take care
Beware of greedy leaders
They take you where you should not go
While Weeping Atlas Cedars
They just want to grow, grow and grow
Beware of darkness (beware of darkness) 

 

Got Milk?

Eden, Then and Now
by Ruth Stone
In ’29 before the dust storms
sandblasted Indianapolis,
we believed in the milk company.
Milk came in glass bottles.
We spread dye-colored butter,
now connected to cancer.
We worked seven to seven
with no overtime pay;
pledged allegiance every day,
pitied the starving Armenians.
One morning in the midst of plenty,
there were folks out of context,
who were living on nothing.
Some slept in shacks
on the banks of the river.
This phenomenon investors said
would pass away.
My father worked for the daily paper.
He was a union printer;
lead slugs and blue smoke.
He worked with hot lead
at a two-ton machine,
in a low-slung seat;
a green-billed cap
pulled low on his forehead.
He gave my mother a dollar a day.
You could say we were rich.
This was the Jazz Age.

Back Seat

Factory

by Charles Simic

The machines were gone, and so were those who worked them.
A single high-backed chair stood like a throne
In all that empty space.
I was on the floor making myself comfortable
For a long night of little sleep and much thinking.

An empty birdcage hung from a steam pipe.
In it I kept an apple and a small paring knife.
I placed newspapers all around me on the floor
So I could jump at the slightest rustle.
It was like the scratching of a pen,
The silence of the night writing in its diary.

Of rats who came to pay me a visit
I had the highest opinion.
They’d stand on two feet
As if about to make a polite request
On a matter of great importance.

Many other strange things came to pass.
Once a naked woman climbed on the chair
To reach the apple in the cage.
I was on the floor watching her go on tiptoe,
Her hand fluttering in the cage like a bird.

On other days, the sun peeked through dusty windowpanes
To see what time it was. But there was no clock,
Only the knife in the cage, glinting like a mirror,
And the chair in the far corner
Where someone once sat facing the brick wall.