KURT VONNEGUT ~

 

R E A D      M E

MURIEL RUKEYSER ~

 

Poem

I lived in the first century of world wars.

Most mornings I would be more or less insane,

The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,

The news would pour out of various devices

Interrupted by attempts to see products to the unseen.

I could call my friends on their devices;

They would be more or less made for similar reasons.

Slowly I would get to pen and paper,

Make my poems for others unseen and unborn.

In the day I would be reminded of those men and women

Brave, setting up signals across vast distances,

Considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values.

As the lights darkened, as the lights of night brightened,

We would try to imagine them, try to find each other.

To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile

Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each other,

Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by any means

To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves,

To let go the means, to wake.

I lived in the first century of these wars.

_______________

Muriel Rukeyser

The Essential Muriel Rukeyser

Ecco 2021

BRIAN DOYLE ~

 

Joey

A while ago I got sick.

It was a thorough and major sick.

Lost use of the old hands and feet,

Which was, as you can imagine, weird.

My kids called the sickness The Thing.

The Thing went on for months and months.

I could tell you lots of stories about The Thing,

But there's only one story that I want to tell you:

Every morning my son got up early to help me

Put my socks on. I would sit on the back stairs

In the dark and he would wrestle my socks on

And neither of us would say any words and I

Still can't think of anything cooler than that.

I have racked my brains and considered

All the possibilities of love and I still

Return to that boy and those socks.

No matter what happens to me,

That happened to me.

______________

Brian Doyle

One Long River of Song

Little, Brown, 2019

photo: Brian Doyle & his family, 2017

WORK DAY ~

 

Hull Oakes Lumber Co.

A FAREWELL TO GABO AND MERCEDES ~

 

R E A D     M E

PAUL SIEBEL ~

 

Paul Siebel

1937 ~ 2022

O B I T U A R Y

WHOLE EARTH ~

 

Whole Earth

The Many Lives of

Stewart Brand

John Markoff

Penguin, 2022

WOODY GUTHRIE, SONGS & ART . . . ~

 

R E A D     M E

CLIVE FAUST ~

 

"Light flickers on and off ruffled layers of leaves."

_________________

TODAY

WE REMEMBER

THE PASSING OF OUR FRIEND

CLIVE FAUST

PLEASE READ MORE ABOUT THIS FINE

POET

E.B. WHITE ~

 

ALICE PAALEN RAHON ~

 

Varda Poem

                                     for Yanko

You who taught numbers to know the rainbow

Who opened every door in the celestial city

Who always made more when there was less

Who enchanted birds

Who loved all things except the mean

Should you be seen

Dancing in your golden ashes

About half a league off our port beam

As we go out the Gate

While the sun sets clear

Will you tell us one more time

How hard it is to be human

When it's so easy to be divine

_______________________

Shapeshifter

Alice Paalen Rahon

New York Review of Books

Translated by Mary Ann Caws

2021

IN A CLAY PIG'S EYE ~

 

screeching like baby birds

in a crowded nest ~

dumplings frying

on the fourth day

I named the fly

howard

my senile father

eats the fortune cookie

and the fortune

our beautiful old love

on such thin ice

we can't even shiver

a splinter

pulled from my thumb

spit into the fire

because of my old father

my old mother has learned

to make baby food

after the storm

an apology

of soft rain

going out the door

i pass a grape that had

rolled away from breakfast

a fence between

the cemetery and the road

leans toward the road

mountains disappear in fog

and i want to go right along

with them

_____________________________

selected from ~

Ronald Baatz

In A Clay Pig's Eye

Seastone Editions, 2005

NIKOLAI ASTRUP ~

R E A D     M E 

The Clark

Yale

2021

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR ~

 

R E A D      M E

TADEUSZ BOROWSKI ~

 

R E A D    M E

Yale University Press

CHRISTOPHER STEELE ( RUSSIA ) ~

 

YOU DON'T KNOW US NEGROES ~

 

R E A D     M E

Harper Collins, 2022

PETER HANDKE ~

 

P E T E R      H A N D K E

M O R E

FROM THE MOUNTAIN ~

 

photograph, Bob Arnold 

GENEVIEVE TAGGARD ~

 

Remembering Vaughan in New England

I saw reality the other night,

By New England moon-light.

All of my life, living has been

One or another kind of dream.

Now, nothing festooned itself between

Me, and the substance of moon-beam.

The land is honest, small and swept

Bare as a barn-yard floor

In winter. And no third thing crept

As it had, times before.

No feeling, its mist to intervene,

No inner thought to warp . . .

I stood: and behold, the trees were lean,

And lo ! the hills were sharp.

Moon's no ephemeral faint stuff

First seen, painted upon

Windows and walls . . . it is yellow as dawn,

After dream, it is marvelous rough,

Coarse as hoar-frost . . . texture no dream

Can invent.

                     Cut my vague dream away !

Moon in New England, O pure moon-beam,

Let it be day.

___________________________

Genevieve Taggard

Remembering Vaughn in New England

Arrow Editions, 1933

MUSICAL GARRETT HONGO ~

 

JERZY FICOWSKI ~

Village Landscape

There is silence in the meadows

of former battlefields

the bank of the bug river arranges

shells and bones

at times a wasp's ricochet

shoots from the burdocks

someone was buried here

or somewhere else

and there is no hole in heaven

as there is on earth

.     .     .

I was unable to save

a single life

I couldn't sleep

a single bullet

so I circle cemeteries

that aren't there

I search for words

that aren't there

I run

to the aid uncalled for

to the rescue delayed

I want to get there on time

even if it's already over

Kazakhstan, USSR

they let us out of the wagons

right here

And nothing anywhere

not a river

to drown in

or a tree

to hang oneself

____________________________

Jerzy Ficowski

Everything I Don't Know

Selected Poems

translated from the Polish by

Jennifer Grotz & Piotr Sommer

World Poetry Books, 2021

DIANE DI PRIMA ~ REVOLUTIONARY LETTERS ~

 

DIANE  DI  PRIMA

City Lights Books 2021

April Fool Birthday Poem for Grandpa

Today is your

birthday and I have tried

writing these things before,

but now

in the gathering madness, I want to

thank you

for telling me what to expect

for pulling

no punches, back there in that scrubbed Bronx parlor

thank you

for honestly weeping in time to

innumerable heartbreaking

italian operas for

pulling my hair when I

pulled the leaves off the trees so I'd

know how it feels, we are

involved in it now, revolution, up to our

knees and the tide is rising, I embrace

strangers on the street, filled with their love and

mine, the love you told us had to come or we

die, told them all in that Bronx park, me listening in

spring Bronx dusk, breathing stars, so glorious

to me your white hair, your height your fierce

blue eyes, rare among Italians, I stood

a ways off, looking up at you, my grandpa

people listened to, I stand

a ways off listening as I pour out soup

young men with light in their faces

at my table, talking love, talking revolution

which is love, spelled backwards, how

you would love us all, would thunder your anarchist wisdom

at us, would thunder Dante, and Giordano Bruno, orderly men

bent to your ends, well I want you to know

we do it for you, and your ilk, for Carlo Tresca,

for Sacco and Vanzetti, without knowing

it, or thinking about it, as we do it for Aubrey Beardsley

Oscar Wilde (all street lights

shall be purple), do it

for Trotsky and Shelley and big/dumb

Kropotkin

Eisenstein's Strike people, Jean Cocteau's ennui, we do it for

the stars over the Bronx

that they may look on earth

and not be ashamed.

_____________________

Diane Di Prima

Revolutionary Letters

50th Anniversary Edition

Pocket Poets No. 27

City Lights, 2021

BEN E KING ~

 

NEW! ANDREW SCHELLING FROM LONGHOUSE ~

 

Andrew Schelling

FOREST, TEMPLES, GLACIAL RIVERS

Longhouse

2022

many-colored

& limited

$10

postpaid

$15

   SIGNED

We accept Paypal

Please use our email address of 

longhousepoetry@gmail.com

Payable by check ~

Longhouse 

PO Box 2454

West Brattleboro, Vermont 05303

ZZ TOP ~

 

HENRY TOWNSEND ~