William Ferlinghetti

and I am waiting
for the final withering away
of all governments
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder
...
and I am waiting
for the meek to be blessed
and inherit the earth
without taxes
and I am waiting
for forests and animals
to reclaim the earth as theirs
and I am waiting
for a way to be devised
to destroy all nationalisms
without killing anybody
and I am waiting
for linnets and planets to fall like rain
and I am waiting for lovers and weepers
to lie down together again
in a new rebirth of wonder
...

I am waiting for Tom Swift to grow up
and I am waiting
for the American Boy
to take off Beauty's clothes
and get on top of her
and I am waiting
for Alice in Wonderland
to retransmit to me
her total dream of innocence
and I am waiting
for Childe Roland to come
to the final darkest tower
and I am waiting
for Aphrodite
to grow live arms
at a final disarmament conference
in a new rebirth of wonder
......

I am waiting
to get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
youth's dumb green fields come back again
and I am waiting
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waiting
for the last long careless rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other up at last
and embrace
and I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder

Good Parts

Take it all back.
Life is boring, except
for flowers, sunshine,
your perfect legs.
A glass of cold water
when you are really thirsty.
The way bodies fit together.
Fresh and young and sweet.
Coffee in the morning.
These are just moments.
I struggle with the in-betweens.
I just want to never stop loving
like there is nothing else to do,
because what else is there to do?

Ways In

“There are ways in, journeys to the center of life, through time; through air, matter, dream and thought. The ways are not always mapped or charted, but sometimes being lost, if there is such a thing, is the sweetest place to be. And always, in this search, a person might find that she is already there, at the center of the world. It may be a broken world, but it is glorious nonetheless.”

— The Woman Who Watches Over the World: A Native Memoir, Linda Hogan

Eyes Closed

We Can See It with Our Eyes Closed, Joy Harjo

You ask me what I am thinking when we make love
and our eyes are closed and the sun is climbing halfway
to the roof and the neighborhood dogs are all in love
with the spirit dog who makes the rounds and tortures them
with dreams of hills and running with the smell of heat
and then the train adds to the song of progress
making a web from city to city,

backdoor to backdoor and I know it is possible to
fly without the complications of metal and engineering
and all the payoffs, paybacks and terrible holes
in the earth and here we are in the territory of the wind,
surrounded by devils and thieves, forgotten by a trickster god
who has a wicked sense of humor
yet there is something quite compelling
about this skin we’re in, a solid planet of gases and water
doesn’t tell the whole story. I am intrigued by cloud
language and see you approaching as a red flower in a meadow

of yellow, or you are an apparition of rain just before or after
a famine of butterflies. We make an electrical reaction
like carbon dioxide, and did I remember to blow out
the candles lit for those who are dying and are leaving
or will leave this place? Grief is a land of wet tenderness. We are all
dying and will leave a trail like the plane jetting east in the direction
that becomes all directions, becomes all the millions of souls here together
looking for god or a little something to eat,
all of us blown away by the mystery of nothingness
as we shop in the streets for trinkets or bread.
We’ve been here before, thinking in skin and our pleasure
and pain feed the plants, make clouds. I see it with my eyes
closed. It’s so beautiful.

Posessed by Light

Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake
and dress them in warm clothes again.
How it was late, and no one could sleep,the horses running
until they forget they are horses.
It's not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere,
it's more like a song on a policeman's radio,
how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days
were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple
to slice into pieces.
Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it's noon, that means
we're inconsolable.
Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies possessed by light.
Tell me we'll never get used to it.

Fish Woman

Her words pour out as if her throat were a broken
artery and her mind were cut-glass, carelessly handled.
You imagine her in a huge velvet hat with great
dangling black feathers,
but she shaves her head instead
and goes for three-day midnight walks.
Sometimes she goes down to the dock and dances
off the end of it, simply to prove her belief
that people who cannot walk on water
are phonies, or dead.
When she is cruel, she is very, very
cool and when she is kind she is lavish.
Fisherman think perhaps she’s a fish, but they’re all
fools. She figured out that the only way
to keep from being frozen was to
stay in motion, and long ago converted
most of her flesh into liquid. Now when she
smells danger, she spills herself all over,
like gasoline, and lights it.
She leaves the taste of salt and iron
under your tongue, but you dont mind
The common woman is as common
as the reddest wine.

-Judy Grahn

Ghost Stories

Cold Mornings
Morning cold crisp air shiny sleeping bag dew tent beanie on 2 sweatshrts and a puffyjacket girlfriends sleeping next to you socks coming off unzip the door tall redwood trees cold cold hard dirt ground grownups awake by a small fire pit smoke rising breakfast cooking bacon oatmeal hot pour you hot chocolate white speckled blue tin mug drinking powder hot chocolate river near by going quickly dog running around the site cold lips changing out of your leggings brushing teeth in the outdoor bathroom sink with your friends hair in a pony tail it's your groups night to cook you are making burritos ghost stories truth or dare with a flashlight letting him kiss you on the lips hiding under the trees.

ala Whitefox

Pablo Neruda

Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window.

The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish.

Here all the winds let go sooner or later, all of them.



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