Through blue summer nights I will pass along paths,
Pricked by wheat, trampling short grass:
Dreaming, I will feel coolness underfoot,
Will let breezes bathe my bare head.
Not a word, not a thought:
Boundless love will surge through my soul,
And I will wander far away, a vagabond
In Nature - as happily as with a woman.
Words are like days:
colouring books or pickpockets,
signposts or scratching posts,
fakirs over hot coals.
Certain words must be earned
just as emotions are suffered
before they can be uttered
- clean as a kept promise.
Words as witnesses
testifying their truths
squalid or rarefied
inevitable, irrefutable.
But, words must not carry
more than they can
it's not good for their backs
or their reputations.
For, whether they dance alone
or with an invisible partner,
every word is a cosmos
dissolving the inarticulate
From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.
the woman on the lawnmower
finally she just lost her mind
this lovely neighbor of mine
school teacher whose man decided
to just pick up and leave her for no
particular reason on a motorcycle
with a much younger woman out to
california and now she just gets on
her lawnmower and mows her lawn
every midnight as you can
hear the purr of her engine
and those headlights.
in many ways i can
relate to her and
love to watch
those lights
simply going
back and forth
across the night
and god how
this fly-by-night
sight so much helps
me to forget this godforsaken place
like some strange secret escape
and for all you half-crazed uptight
all-knowing no-it-all neighbors
you can go fuck yourselves
as for me out in these deep
and decrepit desolate suburbs
she's truly a breath of fresh air
then goes
on to flick on
her chandelier
and foggy front
pair of porchlights
and you imagine
yourself in there.