Or -- we had no way of knowing -- he'd swept the path
between fallen camellias.

from For, 2000
University of California Press, Berkeley, Calif.

I lay down in the empty street and parked
My feet against the gutter's curb while from
The building above a bunch of gawkers perched
Along its ledges urged me don't, don't jump.

from Laugh at the End of the World: Collected Comic Poems 1969-1999

1 The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
2 He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
3 that he barks every time they leave the house.
4 They must switch him on on their way out.
5 The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
6 I close all the windows in the house
7 and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
8 but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
9 barking, barking, barking,
10 and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
11 his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
12 had included a part for barking dog.
13 When the record finally ends he is still barking,
14 sitting there in the oboe section barking,
15 his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
16 entreating him with his baton
17 while the other musicians listen in respectful
18 silence to the famous barking dog solo,
19 that endless coda that first established
20 Beethoven as an innovative genius.

1 Think of it in Beijing,
2 the swallowtail on its white blossom.

3 Over there a man sleeps
4 beneath a bo tree.

5 A woman walks by a pond of red carp.
6 It is the last of September,

7 and then sky is clear all the way to the mountains.
8 No one sees the butterfly's wings move

9 nor feels the air stir
10 in the afternoon,

11 the small disturbance on the pond.
12 And when the swallowtail flies off

13 it is just a little more of the same,
14 A branch creaking, a ripple

15 over some geography like the light over wheat,
16 except a month later,

17 thousands of miles away,
18 a wind knocks trees over,

19 it snows for days.
20 Children no longer turn somersaults.

21 Women turn away from sifting and measuring,
22 a man watches a deer stagger,

23 starving, across the frozen river.
24 The horizon hardly stirs,

25 and all the pianos are silent.
26 The bright wing of the sky

27 drifts so close you could raise a hand
28 to it, the air delicate

29 and your fingers itching a little,
30 as if something had landed there.

from The Gettysburg Review

I want to be

THE POOL PLAYERS
SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets
/a_f/brooks/werealcool.htm

from Good Poems, Garrison Keillor, ed.

from Good Poems, Garrison Keillor, ed

5 and which
6 you were probably
7 saving
8 for breakfast

9 Forgive me
10 they were delicious
11 so sweet
12 and so cold

2
We laughed at the hollyhocks together
and then I sprayed them with lye.
Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.

3
I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the next ten years.
The man who asked for it was shabby
and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.

4
Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.
Forgive me. I was clumsy and
I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!

by Erica-Lynn Gambino

even though
you never
thought
I would

Forgive me
you were
driving me
insane

1 These are not the lines that came to me
2 while walking in the woods
3 with no pen
4 and nothing to write on anyway.

5 They are gone forever,
6 a handful of coins
7 dropped through the grate of memory,
8 along with the ingenious mnemonic

9 I devised to hold them in place -
10 all gone and forgotten
11 before I had returned to the clearing of lawn
12 in back of our quiet house

13 with its jars jammed with pens,
14 its notebooks and reams of blank paper,
15 its desk and soft lamp,
16 its table and the light from its windows.

17 So this is my elegy for them,
18 those six or eight exhalations,
19 the braided rope of the syntax,
20 the jazz of the timing,

21 and the little insight at the end
22 wagging like the short tail
23 of a perfectly spaniel
24 sitting by the door.

25 This is my envoy to nothing
26 where I say Go, little poem -
27 not out into the world of strangers' eyes,
28 but off to some airy limbo,

29 home to lost epics,
30 unremembered names,
31 and fugitive dreams
32 such as the one I had last night,

33 which, like a fantastic city in pencil,
34 erased it self
35 in the bright morning air
36 just as I was waking up.

from the journal Poetry

1 Just off the Highway to Rochester, Minnesota
2 Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
3 And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
4 Darken with kindness.
5 They have come gladly out of the willows
6 To welcome my friend and me.
7 We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
8 Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
9 They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
10 That we have come.
11 They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
12 There is no loneliness like theirs.
13 At home once more,
14 They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
15 I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
16 For she has walked over to me
17 And nuzzled my left hand.
18 She is black and white,
19 Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
20 And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
21 That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
22 Suddenly I realize
23 That if I stepped out of my body I would break
24 Into blossom.

--From Above the River
©Farrar, Straus, Giroux, and The University Press of New England

1 Dylan is about the Individual against the whole creation
2 Beethoven is about one man's fist in the lightning clouds
3 The Pope is about abortion & the spirits of the dead...
4 Television is about people sitting in their living room looking at their things
5 America is about being a big Country full of Cowboys Indians Jews Negroes & Americans
6 Orientals Chicanos Factories skyscrapers Niagara Falls Steel Mills radios homeless Conservatives, don't forget
7 Russia is about Czars Stalin Poetry Secret Police Communism barefoot in the snow
8 But that's not really Russia it's a concept
9 A concept is about how to look at the earth from the moon without ever getting there. The moon is about love & Werewolves,
10 also Poe
11 Poe is about looking at the moon from the sun
12 or else the graveyard
13 Everything is about something if you're a thin movie producer chain-smoking muggles
14 The world is about overpopulation, Imperial invasions, Biocide Genocide, Fratricidal Wars, Starvation, Holocaust, mass injury & murder, high technology
15 Super science, atom Nuclear Neutron Hydrogen detritus, Radiation Compassion Buddha, Alchemy
16 Communication is about monopoly telivision radio movie newspaper spin on Earth, i.e. planetary censorship.
17 Universe is about Universe.
18 Allen Ginsberg is about confused mind writing down newspaper headlines from Mars--
19 The audience is about salvation, the listeners are about sex, Spiritual gymnastics, nostalgia for the Steam Engine & Pony Express
20 Hitler Stalin Roosevelt & Churchill are about arithmetic & Quadrilateral equations, above all chemistry physics & chaos theory--
21 Who cares what it's all about?
22 I do! Edgar Allen Poe cares! Shelly cares! Beethoven & Dylan care.
23 Do you care? What are you about
24 or are you a human being with 10 fingers and two eyes?

1 there are delicacies in you
2 like the hearts of watches
3 there are wheels that turn
4 on the tips of rubies
5 & tiny intricate locks

6 i need your help
7 to contrive keys
8 there is so little time
9 even for the finest
10 of watches

1 One day the Nouns were clustered in the street.
2 An Adjective walked by, with her dark beauty.
3 The Nouns were struck, moved, changed.
4 The next day a Verb drove up, and created the Sentence.

5 Each Sentence says one thing ­­ for example, "Although it was a dark rainy day when the
6 Adjective walked by, I shall remember the pure and sweet expression on her face until the day I
7 perish from the green, effective earth."
8 Or, "Will you please close the window, Andrew?"
9 Or, for example, "Thank you, the pink pot of flowers on the window sill has changed color recently
10 to a light yellow, due to the heat from the boiler factory which exists nearby."

11 In the springtime the Sentences and the Nouns lay silently on the grass.
12 A lonely Conjunction here and there would call, "And! But!"
13 But the Adjective did not emerge.

14 As the Adjective is lost in the sentence,
15 So I am lost in your eyes, ears, nose, and throat­­
16 You have enchanted me with a single kiss
17 Which can never be undone
18 Until the destruction of language.

1 No matter what we are and who,
2 Some duties everyone must do:

3 A Poet puts aside his wreath
4 To wash his face and brush his teeth,

5 And even Earls
6 Must comb their curls,

7 And even Kings
8 Have underthings.

1 It was deja vu all over again.
2 I know this town like the back of my head.
3 People who live in glass houses are worth two in the bush.
4 One hand scratches the other.
5 A friend in need is worth two in the bush.
6 A bird in the hand makes waste.
7 Life isn't all it's crapped up to be.
8 It's like finding a needle in the eye of the beholder.
9 It's like killing one bird with two stones.
10 My motto in life has always been: Get It Over With.
11 Two heads are better then none.
12 A rolling stone deserves another.
13 All things wait for those who come.
14 A friend in need deserves another.
15 I'd trust him as long as I could throw him.
16 He smokes like a fish.
17 He's just a chip off the old tooth.
18 I'll have him eating out of my lap.
19 A friend in need opens a can of worms.
20 Too many cooks spoil the child.
21 An ill wind keeps the doctor away.
22 The wolf at the door keeps the doctor away.
23 People who live in glass houses keep the doctor away.
24 A friend in need washes the other.
25 A friend in need keeps the doctor away.
26 A stitch in time is only skin deep.
27 A verbal agreement isn't worth the paper it's written on.
28 A cat may look like a king.
29 Know which side of the bed your butter is on.
30 Nothing is cut and dried in stone.
31 You can eat more flies with honey than with vinegar.
32 Don't let the cat out of the barn.
33 let's burn that bridge when we get to it.
34 When you come to a fork in the road, take it.
35 Don't cross your chickens before they hatch.
36 DO NOT READ THIS SIGN.
37 Throw discretion to the wolves.
38 After the barn door is locked, you can come in out of the rain.
39 A friend in need locks the barn door.
40 There's no fool like a friend in need.
41 We've passed a lot of water since then.
42 At least we got home in two pieces.
43 All's well that ends.
44 It ain't over till it's over.
45 There's always one step further down you can go.
46 It's a milestone hanging around my neck.
47 Include me out.
48 It was deja vu all over again.