Banging the coffee-pot into the sink

she hears the angels chiding, and looks out

past the raked gardens to the sloppy sky.

Only a week since They said: Have no patience.

Next time it was: Be insatiable.

Then: Save yourself; others you cannot save.

Sometimes she's let the tapstream scald her arm,

a match burn to her thumbnail,

or held her hand above the kettle's snout

right in the woolly steam. They are probably angels,

since nothing hurts her anymore, except

each morning's grit blowing into her eyes.

Adrienne Rich

there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average

human being to supply any given army on any given day

and the best at murder are those who preach against it

and the best at hate are those who preach love

and the best at war finally are those who preach peace

those who preach god, need god

those who preach peace do not have peace

those who preach peace do not have love

beware the preachers

beware the knowers

beware those who are always reading books

beware those who either detest poverty

or are proud of it

beware those quick to praise

for they need praise in return

beware those who are quick to censor

they are afraid of what they do not know

beware those who seek constant crowds for

they are nothing alone

beware the average man the average woman

beware their love, their love is average

seeks average

but there is genius in their hatred

there is enough genius in their hatred to kill you

to kill anybody

not wanting solitude

not understanding solitude

they will attempt to destroy anything

that differs from their own

not being able to create art

they will not understand art

they will consider their failure as creators

only as a failure of the world

not being able to love fully

they will believe your love incomplete

and then they will hate you

and their hatred will be perfect

like a shining diamond

like a knife

like a mountain

like a tiger

like hemlock

their finest art

the world's

not wanton

only wild and wavering

I wanted to choose words even you would have to be changed by

take the word

of my pulse, loving and ordinary

send out your signals, hoist

your dark scribbled flags

but take

my hand

all wars are useless to the dead

my hands are knotted in the rope

and I cannot sound the bell

my hands are frozen to the switch

and I cannot throw it

my foot is in the wheel

when it's finished we're lying

in a stubble of blistered flowers

eyes gaping, mouths staring

dusted with crushed arterial blues

I'll have done nothing

even for you?

Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain

On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me

Remembering again that I shall die

And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks

For washing me cleaner than I have been

Since I was born into solitude.

Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:

But here I pray that none whom once I loved

Is dying tonight or lying still awake

Solitary, listening to the rain,

Either in pain or thus in sympathy

Helpless among the living and the dead,

Like a cold water among broken reeds,

Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff,

Like me who have no love which this wild rain

Has not dissolved except the love of death,

If love it be towards what is perfect and

Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint.

I WENT into a public 'ouse to get a pint o'beer,

The publican 'e up an' sez, ``We serve no red-coats here.''

The girls be'ind the bar they laughed an' giggled fit to die,

I outs into the street again an' to myself sez I:

O it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' ``Tommy, go away'';

But it's ``Thank you, Mister Atkins,'' when the band begins to play,

The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,

O it's ``Thank you, Mr. Atkins,'' when the band begins to play.

I went into a theatre as sober as could be,

They gave a drunk civilian room, but 'adn't none for me;

They sent me to the gallery or round the music 'alls,

But when it comes to fightin', Lord! they'll shove me in the stalls!

For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' ``Tommy, wait outside'';

But it's ``Special train for Atkins'' when the trooper's on the tide,

The troopship's on the tide, my boys, the troopship's on the tide,

O it's ``Special train for Atkins'' when the trooper's on the tide.

Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep

Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap;

An' hustlin' drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit

Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit.

Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' ``Tommy how's yer soul?''

But it's ``Thin red line of 'eroes'' when the drums begin to roll,

The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,

O it's ``Thin red line of 'eroes'' when the drums begin to roll.

We aren't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too,

But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;

An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints:

Why, single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints;

While it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an ``Tommy, fall be'ind,''

But it's ``Please to walk in front, sir,'' when there's trouble in the wind,

There's trouble in the wind, my boys, there's trouble in the wind,

O it's ``Please to walk in front, sir,'' when there's trouble in the wind.

You talk o' better food for us, an'schools, an' fires an' all:

We'll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.

Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face

The Widow's Uniform is not the soldier-man's disgrace.

For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' ``Chuck him out, the brute!''

But it's ``Saviour of 'is country,'' when the guns begin to shoot;

Yes it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;

But Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool--you bet that Tommy hears.

By Rudyard Kipling. My all time favourite poem.

Man on the Dump

Day creeps down. The moon is creeping up.

The sun is a corbeil of flowers the moon Blanche

Places there, a bouquet. Ho-ho…The dump is full

Of images. Days pass like papers from a press.

The bouquets come here in the papers. So the sun,

And so the moon, both come, and the janitor’s poems

Of every day, the wrapper on the can of pears,

The cat in the paper-bag, the corset, the box

From Esthonia: the tiger chest, for tea.

The freshness of night has been fresh a long time.

The freshness of morning, the blowing of day, one says

That it puffs as Cornelius Nepos reads, it puffs

More than, less than or it puffs like this or that.

The green smacks in the eye, the dew in the green

Smacks like fresh water in a can, like the sea

On a cocoanut—how many men have copied dew

For buttons, how many women have covered themselves

With dew, dew dresses, stones and chains of dew, heads

Of the floweriest flowers dewed with the dewiest dew.

One grows to hate these things except on the dump.

Now in the time of spring (azaleas, trilliums,

Myrtle, viburnums, daffodils, blue phlox),

Between that disgust and this, between the things

That are on the dump (azaleas and so on)

And those that will be (azaleas and so on),

One feels the purifying change. One rejects

The trash.

That’s the moment when the moon creeps up

To the bubbling of bassoons. That’s the time

One looks at the elephant-colorings of tires.

Everything is shed; and the moon comes up as the moon

(All its images are in the dump) and you see

As a man (not like an image of a man),

You see the moon rise in the empty sky.

One sits and beats an old tin can, lard pail.

One beats and beats for that which one believes.

That’s what one wants to get near. Could it after all

Be merely oneself, as superior as the ear

To a crow’s voice? Did the nightingale torture the ear,

Pack the heart and scratch the mind? And does the ear

Solace itself in peevish birds? Is it peace,

Is it a philosopher’s honeymoon, one finds

On the dump? Is it to sit among mattresses of the dead,

Bottles, pots, shoes, and grass and murmur aptest eve:

Is it to hear the blatter of grackles and say

Invisible priest; is it to eject, to pull

The day to pieces and cry stanza my stone?

Where was it one first heard of the truth? The the.

— Wallace Stevens

Her voice is a roundness. On full moon days, she talks about

renouncing meat but the butcher has his routine. And blood.

M’s wisdom. Still reliable.

There are sounds we cannot hear but understand in motion.

Slicing of air with hips. Crushing grass, saying these are my feet.

I want my feet in my shadow. Suffice to meet desires halfway.

Quiet. We say her chakras are in place.

When the thermos shatters, she knows the direction of its spill.

She knows how to lead and follow. Know her from this.

Sounds we cannot hear. The wind blows and we say it is cool.

Night slips under the door. We are tucked into bed and kissed

a fleeting one. Through the curtains, her voice loosens like thread

from an old blanket, row upon row. We watch her teeth in the

dark and read her words. She speaks in perfect order, facing where

the breeze can tug it towards canals stretching for sound.

Her faith abides by the cycle of the moon. See how perfect she is.

Love After Love

The time will come

when, with elation

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror

and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with eager feet,

Until it joins some larger way

Where many paths and errands meet.

And whither then? I cannot say - J. R.R Tolkien