#whitmancollection
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“I hear bravuras of birds, bustle of growing wheat,
gossip of flames, clack of sticks cooking my meals,
I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice,
I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused or following,
Sounds of the city and sounds out of the city, sounds of the
day and night”
Song of Myself (1892 version) by WALT WHITMAN
§§§
*Irony great, some say unto delicious, for my writing,
be a fusing of surroundings of silences, admixture of
inconsequential noises, atomic horn and geese honking,
sun rays speaking in tongues, my skin translating, both,
the sounds of the city, those of out of city, merged, both,
accessible, instant recall, stored for tongue tasing upon
these blank pages below, needy for wordy fulfillment,
copy and place these mishmash of cacophonous,
on a single page, simmer, blend and sauce, of course,
salt to taste, mine, author of this recipe being born,
born in the night, prepped by day, the lovely sounds,
kettle or pan, broiler, fryer, slow cooked on full flame
they are the melted butter sweetness crossing the span
between the body of the heartbeat, the ache of the brain,
shot out in rapidity, error’d and stain’d, their state natural,
for this mess of beans, collection of noises, stir my soul
where they contain’d, aromatic, fanatic, exotic, sticky hot,
only a singular harsh invades, the shrill of the voice human
this piece, this poem, a flavoring, a dish-not-to-be-repeated,
once consumed, spoiled milk, molded with Jello mold green,
back to hiding in place of unseen, of bravura masked as cowardice,
when crackle of easy wasted word cowards, daily spewed,
so precious these ingredients, these artful sounds, easy ruined,
chitchats of nothingness, parlous blasé wastrels, seize! cease!
take thy tongue, let it memorize all the oddities that fill your ears,
ecrivez! the cooing, smacking, the alliteration of snap, crackle, and
yes, pop! and if you can love the human voice, of that too, tho not me,
more beloved, the exterior symphony of kettle drum, soft cry of violin,
timpani tingling, guitar plucking, the voice of men, too oft abusing and abused by untruths, emboldened lies, they are the sounds
I love least, love to hate. a shrill disease, the TV liars...*
§§§§§
May
Manhattan Island
May 15, 2020
May 15, 2020 at 3:44 PM UTC
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“Stop this day and night with me
and you shall possess the origin of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun,
(there are millions of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things
at second or third hand,
nor look through the eyes of the dead,
nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either,
nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides
and filter them from your self.”
Song of Myself (1892 version) by WALT WHITMAN
§§§
*These admonitions are the ten conditionals
commandments of straight talk,
boy,
you’ve spent a life lessening and lesson-learning
and all laid before you for taking, gaining,
but for what? for naught?
Start this day, having spent my night with you,
possessing less than what is my now
completed,
this,
my unfinished commencement,
provisioned, a simultaneous beginning and finishing,
emptying a void of
fulfilling questioning.
What does this life desire of me,
that it granted and then removed,
the knowledge of perfection?
leaving me striving, writhing,
shivering unceasingly,
in my saddened, bursting, hacking
and hackneyed chest.
I walk the same cobblestone streets,
observing the descendants of your ancestral tugs
portaging, paying homage to East River tides,
carrying those goods,
the origins of all poems,
from where? to where?
unknown,
but always past our conjoined eyes.
And yet do I look, with our merged eyes,
filtered by a century’s discoloration,
forgive me Walt, for now recalling sights
that you first observed,
that I witness first hand,
100 and fifty years later,
sharing a stolen wisdom with you.
Todays new millionth sunrise bids me stand,
observe the river traffic from my kitchen window,
accept that my takings are debts,
a few, even paid back,
yet, most still owed,
for the origins of all my poems,
are oddly and oddity old,
unoriginal, second, third handed
as I look through the eyes of the dead,
and yours too,
this my unoriginal,
original sin....
(pretending I am a poet)
§§§§§
6:24AM
Manhattan Island,
By the East River
Thu. May 14, 2020
May 14, 2020
May 14, 2020 at 8:33 AM UTC
**~for VB~
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“A child said What is the grass?
fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child?
I do not know what it is any more than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition,
out of hopeful green stuff woven.
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners,
that we may see and remark,
and say Whose?”
Song of Myself (1892 version) BY WALT WHITMAN
§§§
*there is special delight for the city dweller,
when the first clean flushing of brightest spring green
disrupts the unending graying city ribs of worn concrete,
the alternating lifelessness of blasé brick, pretending
off-beige, ***** pale blue, a sooty furnace red,
well done, a good pretense that they are, of color.
I am among thousands whose as a child my breath
gave way, taken by gasp, when first made
entrance to the green diamond sparkle oasis of
Yankee Stadium, hid by the urban dreariness of The Bronx,
near sixty years vision sustained with perfect clarity on
retina-implanted, a shock, an earthly con-trast.
today, an old-timer, a first timer, I’m gifted Whitman’s Song of Myself,
from a friend and poet, who lives hardy by a Port,
another islander like myself, surrounded by wet roads and
pathways to the Northern Pacific, amongst timberlands of
forested and natured grass, a differing kind of stadium,
both of us silently saying, thanks Lord, for lending us yours.
even temporarily, this day, your emeralding grass handkerchief,
equates our dispositions, so differently identical,
your name, our initials, in opposing corners, embroidered,
your grass tapestry upon this troubled earth, a scented, joint, poetic
remembrance, that though it’s but words that bind us, we! we know!
the songs we sing of ourselves, we sing in synchrony harmony.*
§§§§§
Wed. May 13, 2020
Manhattan Island,
by the East River
May 13, 2020
May 13, 2020 at 5:16 PM UTC
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“Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much?
Have you reckon’d the earth much?
Have you practis’d so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?”
Song of Myself (1892 version) by Walt Whitman
§§§
*A night of reckoning, calculations repeated-checked, sums divided,
did I use too many, or not enough, words to be understood, verbiage eloquent,
did daytime reveal my poetic meanings, or double-occlude it’s essence?
I have reckon’d Manhattan Isle, circumnavigated its riverbed boundaries, a younger me, by kayak rounded it, from the Spuyten Duyvil Creek to the Battery, 14,500 acres give or take, a lifeatime to complete a dead reckoning, an unfinished full configuring.
but haven’t reckon’d that Earth and I will be entwined/entombed in each other’s arms, until such time, one of us or both, will be reduced to cosmic dust, our pride, our poems, will be equally unimportant and irrelevant, I reckon.
in retrospective rear view perspective, come to understand that we spend every moment of our lives, reckoning, determine the odds of which fork we will take, laugh out loud, for each moment, a poem is titled, the resultant, a poem - who needs a muse, you’ve got choices!
So, yes, Walt, the questing answers you’ve requested:
Aye, yes, yup, but no to pride, for pride and poetry in one sentence is
a death sentence at multiple levels, pride, poetry, ego, suicide,...sins,
so better no proud for it is the entree, the invitation to fall-fail...*
§§§§§
12:03AM Frieday
May 15th
my deadline missed,
but what is three minutes,
but empty pride...
Manhattan Island
May 15, 2020
May 15, 2020 at 8:51 AM UTC