That hour made me busy
questions were easy
not yielding a moment

he was sitting glum
peeping at my diagram
of Michelson Morley experiment!

I could hear his sigh
from the corner of my eye
could gauge he felt bitter

all he had read
had quickly fled
clouding him in ether!

It was all in mist
what those darned physicist
had theorized in vain

no lover’s tryst
but a paper of physics
an agonizing pain!

My worst fear
was remembering the year
when the experiment was done

for once did it Michelson
then with Morley redone
was it ’87 or ’81!

That boy behind me
was thinking bitterly
worrying in fright

soon the time would be spent
without his writing the experiment
on the wavy behavior of light!

Tense was the air
when I heard him whisper
push your paper to the right

in his voice was despair
bothered little to be unfair
quite visible was his plight!

*With all my toil
burning the midnight oil
how this I lost sight

covered all nitty-gritty
of magnetism electricity
missed the chapter on light!

21–40 of 11462 Poems
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Faith
BY MICHAEL *******br>When I cannot believe,
The brown herds still move across green fields
Into the tufty hills, and I was born . . .
Teusaquillo, 1989
BY MAURICE KILWEIN GUEVARA
Flowering sietecueros trees:
How easily we married ourselves
to the idea of that bruised light . . .
Bright Pittsburgh Morning
BY MAURICE KILWEIN GUEVARA
This must happen just after I die: At sunrise
I bend over my grandparents' empty house in Hazelwood
and pull it out of the soft cindered earth by the Mon River. . . .
Hanukkah
BY HILDA MORLEY
This season for us, the Jews—
a season of candles,
                                      one more . . .
Winter Solstice
BY HILDA MORLEY
A cold night crosses
our path
                  The world appears . . .
And I in My Bed Again
BY HILDA MORLEY
Last night
                     tossed in
my bed . . .
alternate names for black boys
BY DANEZ SMITH
1.   smoke above the burning bush
2.   archnemesis of summer night
3.   first son of soil . . .
Listen
Attenuate the Loss and Find
BY ANNE WALDMAN
name appears
everywhere and in dream
body armor removed . . .
From “Citizen”
BY CLAUDIA RANKINE
/ 

You are in the dark, in the car, watching the black-tarred street being swallowed by speed; he tells you his dean is making him hire a person of color when there are so many great writers out there. . . .
Listen
History Will Decide
BY ANNE WALDMAN
All writing around the sides the persons a galaxy all writing resounds a hot history. All writing is in fact cut-ups history will decide games heated and heated economic behavior. To rise up scene all sounds of Tahrir and inside supply side threatened. A long delineation. Longer than I would . . .
ICC Kenya Trials: Witness
BY SHAILJA PATEL
was it so I could
never say
across a courtroom . . .
Mosaic
BY TIM SEIBLES
A carpet of light, the
ocean alive < half a moon
muting the stars. . . .
sideshow
BY DANEZ SMITH
Have I spent too much time worrying about the boys
killing each other to pray for the ones who do it
with their own hands? . . .
The Last Son of China
BY **** PING
.......................    hello hello hello    ...    Weiwei    ...    where have you been?    ...    I see you in dreams    ...    bleeding    ...    in the darkness of the . . .
The Skin of Sleep
BY MYRA SKLAREW
The skin of sleep
is thin. It will not hold.
Its contents stumble out. . . .
What Could Have Happened
BY SHAILJA PATEL
Wa
gal
la . . .
Everybody Has a Heartache: A Blues
BY JOY HARJO
In the United terminal in Chicago at five on a Friday afternoon
The sky is breaking with rain and wind and all the flights
Are delayed forever. We will never get to where we are going . . .
Good Friday
BY MARIA MELENDEZ KELSON
Jesus, I want my sins back.
My prattle, pride, and private prices — 
climbing, clinching, clocking —  . . .
ICE Agents Storm My Porch
BY MARIA MELENDEZ KELSON
The Indiscriminate Citizenry of Earth
are out to arrest my sense of being a misfit.
“Open up!” they bellow,
hands quiet before my door
that’s only wind and juniper needles, anyway.

You can’t do it, I squeak from inside.
You can’t make me feel at home here
in this time of siege for me . . .
Tablets
BY DUNYA MIKHAIL
1


She pressed her ear against the shell: . . .
«1234»

April is in my mistress' face
April is in my mistress' face
April is in my mistress' face
And July in her eyes hath place
And July in her eyes, her eyes hath place
Within her *****, within her *****
Is September
But in her heart, but in her heart, her heart
A cold December
But in her heart, her heart
But in her heart, her heart
A cold December

Dr. Morley was for me.

He helped me right quick
With my fingers quite thick.

He quickly devised and then exercised
A plan of attack, so I wouldn’t be back.

May he forever be successfully clever,
Able to think on his feet and achieve greater feats.

reinventing the resurrection of the Roman Empire with
a pseudo-Christ in tow will prove fatal -
or simply propelled to an established
norm for all the wrong reasons
other than a quasi-Narcissism fully embracing
fetishes beyond the standardised
practises of human evolutionary concerns -
see how Darwinism is incubator
of fatalist vocabulary? too much arrogance -
they're nothing more than Spanish
Inquisition leeches - because when was
atheism intended as a fashion statement
with mismatched socks and matching
loafers? probably never.
we already sought to put atheistic economics
on the guillotine tablature -
the temple named: all men are born equal
was always Samson's prize for demolition's
just escapade, in or anywhere outside of
a Glasgow housing estate -
a Scot making a joke about Scots:
how was copper wire invented?
two Scots arguing over a 2 pence coin...
a stretch Armstrong moment i'd like to see.
all we need is Hillary for the unholy alliance
to materialise - the birth of horse racing
and womanised politics -
and are you the baby tarantula on the back
of mama tarantula? no? oh... don't
expect much from mama tarantula
if you're not part of her family and genetic vector.
the resurrection of the Roman empire as cited
by Divine John has a major fault...
the original intention prior to the authority of
Augustus was based on republicanism -
not democracy - the autocracy evolved from
republicanism, not democracy -
and if this be the McDonald model of work
ethic and success, it will be hard finding a few wise
old men to quench a rise in despotism -
the naive-expectation will over-power them -
we could see America as our safety laboratory once -
where the fates of Greek democracy and Roman
republicanism were played out -
rule of the many v. rule of the informed worthy few -
if elections came about the former would
have a lot of numbers anonymously signed X -
while the latter a few numbers but identified with
articulate signatures - democracy is basically
a stab in the dark, that precipitates to a vote of
no confidence - and an immediate imitation of
Pontius Pilate's quest for conscience and washing his
hands in pseudo-Dostoyevsky's the machinist,
with bleach - ****** courtroom -
when older poets recite their republicanism knowing how,
the newer ones recite their democracy knowing neither
how or why - thus the resurrection of Rome built
around democracy and not republicanism -
the washing of the hands and loss of conscience -
this prophesied resurrection of Rome was not based
on republicanism but on democracy, for the simple
fact that democracy had its martyr - a republican member
should another be fixed to compete with him -
no Platonic notation of the idea behind the republic
was ever established - but indeed a lot was noted
concerning democracy - which in practice wasn't
a practice in dialectics, but in dichotomy -
the polarisation of opinions in the simplest terms:
man v. woman, old v. young...
the republicans only had one dialectics ruining them:
the dichotomy between one man and the many -
is man to be as automated as insect or Satanically
rebellious and in his own sway "himself"?
there need not be a conjuring of biblical myths with
this concern - man was not temped for insight
into the disparity of good and evil and subsequent
confusion of attributing each its invested share
of expression in the world of choice -
but man was made an ontological alliance with
the famous villain (i too, akin to Milton's sympathy
a pledged allegiance do make an oath to consummate
a rival marriage, kindred of celibacy shared
by truth or perception, royal, named Elizabeth I) -
for if not by rebellion Satanic not make elemental conquests
or at least improve on them?
Francis Bacon died attempting to conjure up
a refrigerator with a dead chicken - dying from
hypothermia, or a really bad cold; never mind that,
if the resurrection of a united pseudo-Rome is to be
established it cannot take root in democracy -
but it already has, and is doomed to fail
given one of its former provinces risked all to exit -
it has to be rooted in the origin, in republicanism -
but it can't take root there, given the lost vitality of ancient
old age and modern old age leaving behind
only disparity - audacity of youth in every sphere
of life - and the blatantly over-stretched comforts of
old age - the American experiment of having
democracy v. republicanism staged failed -
that was the intention - to see which one was more the success
story of the revival - i appears neither or precisely both -
in that democracy has fuelled the city-states once again:
globalisation and the city-states: London, Paris, Germany...
they exist as separate entities in a web segregating
themselves from national politics and associating themselves
in global politics with only their counterparts -
the Greek city states have been revived by such dynamic;
so if democracy fuelled that, then surely republicanism
has fuelled what happened in the British exit from the union?
coup d'état in Turkey (on the waiting list, joining in
2020 along with Serbia and Albania etc.) - if you can't see
xenophobia and a choice of politically correct vocabulary
you don't see the naivety of Polish pensioners and English
pensioners - Turks at home in Germany - but let's revitalise
the memory the Iraqis share with Mongols and the sacking
of Baghdad and the Siege of Vienna between Turks and Poles -
i've assimilated into British society i don't identify with
such ethnic historicity - i was taught history including Roman
conquests; do i think the Scots will break from the Union?
i think they'll break for ethnic moral - that's
the other member of the unholy alliance, a real cat fight,
2nd Ms. Thatcher in Downing Street? the youth voted
in - the old voted out - when they were concentrating
on the gender gap a milieu gap was convening -
outside of London the impression of the family environment
suggested the youth didn't vote, in the urban environment
youth mingled with youth, to later hear their parents
or grandparents were dying ****-stained in care-homes...
strange: you always seem to wish to be part of a Mongolian
horde in such times for the oddest but the most blatant
reasons... oh yeah, and i read 5 books today...
well, i told you, once you read enough books of your
own choice you end up reading poems and reviews to
give yourself some slack...
- les parisiennes by Anne Sebba (review by Daisy Goodwin)
  (always women reading books by women,
   and men reading books by men... what sexism
   in this post-sexist culture of FEMININE EQUAL)
- Paper: passing through history by Mark Kurlansky
    (review by John Sutherland) p.s. best citations
    from this review... maybe some other time...
-  The Age of Bowie: how david bowie made a world of
     difference by Paul Morley (review by Will Hodgkinson)
-  the Girl who Beat Isis: my story by Farida K(h)alaf with
    Andrea C. Hoffman trans. by Jamie Bulloch (review by
    Catherine Philp)
-  Pinpoint: how GPS is changing our World by Greg Milner
    (review by Damian Whitworth)
and finally...
- All things made New: writing on the Reformation by
    Diarmaid MacCulloch (review by Robert Tombs)...
                                indeed,
                                 the terrible has
                                 already happened;
never leverage on
a positive thought when
working from Pompeii -
as the lessons of failure
from the past magnify -
there is nothing
but hindsight and pessimism
in the past to unearth -
while uncertainty and optimism
toward the future readying
itself for the burial rites
of the already unearthed artefacts
in continuum imito (in a continuum of imitation).

Come see black night.  Black night proposes
                                                      mo­re
Than madness in a prophet's dream, sets free
A lean uncertainty, sweet taste of all
We dare not see.

My sweet Kathryn, you were older than me,
Knew all the black mountains--Olson, Creely, Duncan, Morley, Dorn... While I
                                           was learning
Levertov.  Your dark, unshaven armpits
Drove me wild.  I understood the honor
Of that crazy night--how could feather leave you--
               our dance at the outlaw bar,
Your sapphic gaze bemused by coal miners,
In cowboy boots, as the band played Haggard,
Coe, Willie, Waylon, Johnny Cash, Kristofferson
& Emmy Lou.  I wouldn't trade it for a date
With Miss Brazil, or Russia as it were--
Some people say you made that up,
Changed heritage and grew the hair to seem more European.  I couldn't care
Less. A great dark mystery I loved
Now thirty-seven years ago with me
Just old enough to drink and you come down
From Bingington, I loved the way you said
That frozen town, where your husband lingered,
Teaching English to native speakers.
I know you still loved him. I think you loved
Me, but needed a woman's touch the same
As I.  Strange how a night can be recalled
More than years, one drunken naked sunrise,
Pillow talk instead of class.  I ditched the speech
At PBK, can't remember what they
Fed us, coming for you in a straight shift
Chevy pickup, red as the night was black.

From the top of the Terminal,
your size was splayed out,
a grey **** carpet for the Red River Valley.
And The Forks right beneath
                      our weary walkers' feet
was a thick drop setting up in the center
of your ash grey forehead.
Traced a thumb down Taché and St. Mary's
to the peak of your left cheek on Fermor.

Your traffic light glance blinked us
                    right to a stop
as blue bomb thoughts and temperatures dropped
at the base of our minds
and your wide, widow's peak sky
formed a cold iron bruise 40 minutes past 5.

I've held your muddy diamond eyes
in mine, how many times?
And you'd sigh, sometimes
         from your North End scar,
but the Assiniboine bends around Wellington Crescent,
a stifled, spiced laugh from the failed rebellion
of your Province's youth.
          And you know I'm no novice
to the uncouth barbs of the Winter,
'cuz you wrapped asphalt arms
                                       nice and tight
'round our shoulders.

Osborne & Morley for an A-frame embrace.
The face of a city, its wrinkles a sketch
of laugh line drives for donuts and coffee.
Crows' feet stretched through The Exchange.

We followed your grin
                from
corner to corner,
from Richardson Airport
to Transcona Yards; one earring a lifeline,
the other, steel bones.
From your St. Norbert chin,
to your twin St. Paul crown,
we would wander,
kiss your River East temple
                  then call it a night.

I have names for every smile you gave me:
Vi-Ann in the Village,
The Toad in the Hole,
St. Boniface Cathedral, that first time
in deep snow.
                 I want you to know,
               you frozen Great City,
your terrible beauty is written on me.

Each side-slanted grin I shared with your sidewalks
               encircles my history now,
                          even still.
Fill an eye with 5 years
                of joyous, drunk laughter
which seeds your purple sand sky with fog ghosts.

Still-frame your patchwork, frostbitten face--
the Perimeter Highway's a jaunt-angled toque;
                                           keeps you warm--
I still wear you
           when late Autumn light takes me back.

That Bright Grey Eye
BY HILDA MORLEY
The grey sky, lighter & darker
greys,
            lights between & delicate . . .