compendium of universal human situations

carl sandburg

The Hammer

I have seen
The old gods go
And the new gods come.

Day by day
And year by year
The idols fall
And the idols rise.

Today
I worship the hammer. 

h.d.

The Pool

Are you alive?

I touch you.

You quiver like a sea-fish.

I cover you with my net.

What are you—banded one?

wallace stevens

The Weeping Burgher

It is with a strange malice
That I distort the world.

Ah ! that ill humors
Should mask as white girls.
And ah ! that Scaramouche
Should have a black barouche.

The sorry verities!
Yet in excess, continual,
There is cure of sorrow.

Permit that if as ghost I come
Among the people burning in me still,
I come as belle design
Of foppish line.

And I, then, tortured for old speech—
A white of wildly woven rings;
I, weeping in a calcined heart—
My hands such sharp, imagined things.

edna saint vincent millay

The Bean-Stalk

Ho, Giant! This is I!
I have built me a bean-stalk into your sky!
La,—but it’s lovely, up so high!

This is how I came,—I put
Here my knee, there my foot,
Up and up, from shoot to shoot—
And the blessed bean-stalk thinning
Like the mischief all the time,
Till it took me rocking, spinning,
In a dizzy, sunny circle,
Making angles with the root,
Far and out above the cackle
Of the city I was born in,
Till the little dirty city
In the light so sheer and sunny
Shone as dazzling bright and pretty
As the money that you find
In a dream of finding money—
What a wind! What a morning!—

Till the tiny, shiny city,
When I shot a glance below,
Shaken with a giddy laughter,
Sick and blissfully afraid,
Was a dew-drop on a blade,
And a pair of moments after
Was the whirling guess I made,—
And the wind was like a whip

Cracking past my icy ears,
And my hair stood out behind,
And my eyes were full of tears,
Wide-open and cold,
More tears than they could hold,
The wind was blowing so,
And my teeth were in a row,
Dry and grinning,
And I felt my foot slip,
And I scratched the wind and whined,
And I clutched the stalk and jabbered,
With my eyes shut blind,—
What a wind! What a wind!

Your broad sky, Giant,
Is the shelf of a cupboard;
I make bean-stalks, I’m
A builder, like yourself,
But bean-stalks is my trade,
I couldn’t make a shelf,
Don’t know how they’re made,
Now, a bean-stalk is more pliant—
La, what a climb! 

mark leidner

Romantic Comedies

He has a turtle and she has a shell.

She’s the principal and he’s the janitor.

She’s a widowed social worker looking for a father figure and he’s an elderly vagrant.

She’s a woman and he’s … a woman.

He’s unprincipled and she’s … principled.

Everyone in his life has drowned and he hates dogs and she’s a collegiate swimming coach with a thousand dogs.

He’s a collapsing star in the heart of the galaxy and she’s an ex-con with 5,000 spacebucks and nothing to lose.

He’s clever and she’s stupid.

He’s good-looking and she’s ugly.

She’s sort of interested in him, but he’s not sure how interested he is in her, though he is, a little bit.

He is always being ironic and she is disdainful of irony.

He’s a prosperous historian living in the present day, and she’s a historian struggling to make ends meet … from the future.

She’s a Nereid and he’s a Dryad.

She’s a sassy black oncologist and he’s a racist with prostate cancer.

She’s a plucky explorer of catacombs with a lust for adventure and smoldering good-looks, but he’s the quiet type, content to stay at home, reading about the exploration of catacombs only in books.

He’s moneyed and she’s a bitch.

He’s squeamish around blood but she is courteous around blood.

He’s a Muslim terrorist and she’s a normal Muslim.

He blew up the World Trade Center and she blew up when she heard he blew up the World Trade Center.

She’s a singer/songwriter but he’s just a songwriter/gay.

They’re both gay.

He’s a foot fetishist and she’s an amputee.

She’s a world-renowned gourmet cook and he’s a world-renowned fast-food restaurant mogul.

He’s a highly sought-after model caught up in the spree of drugs and sex that is the Berlin fashion scene, and she died in a car wreck six years ago in Zurich.

It’s midnight on the mesa, a dry breeze rustles across the colorless sand, and high atop a wind-chiseled monolith, they are two black cobras, drenched in silver moonlight, coiling in a furious act of forbidden cobra love.

She likes things one way and he likes them the other.

He’s hungry and doesn’t care where they eat, and she keeps saying she doesn’t care either, but every restaurant he offers up, she shoots down.

She likes monogamy but he likes sleeping around.

He’s bored but she keeps talking.

They’re both vegetarians but are both picky eaters and it’s almost enough to drive each other crazy.

They’re both the same.

They’re exactly the same person.

They’re in love.

They’re both in love … with murder.

She’s a pacifist and he’s a warmonger … until the tables turn and she becomes the warmonger and he the pacifist … though during the turning, on vectors bound for where the other just left, as they pass each other in the middle, like passengers on opposite trains, they see each other and reach out into the void, and for a few brief seconds, before their forward inertia pulls them irrevocably apart, they simultaneously occupy a single position.

He is the ocean and she is the sea.

He knows where a rare ore is and she knows metallurgy.

He said a curse word when he was in space, and she was at mission control and overheard him and reported him to his superiors, after which he was not to be allowed back into space.

He’s trying to solve the Middle East conflict, but she keeps stirring up trouble in the Middle East.

He’s on an important fact-finding mission for the U.N. and she shits facts.

They are the only two deer in the world who can walk upright on their hind legs and speak proper English in British accents, and their favorite activity is debating the superiority of Copernican models of the solar system over the alternate models.

She is a t-shirt full of eggs and he is an egg accidentally blown out of a lake by a strong wind.

He is expanding and she is shrinking.

It is her second day at Ruby Tuesday’s and he has worked there for five years.

He lied to her and she splattered paint all over his car except she made the paint the exact same color as his car to express the complexity of her anger but he didn’t get it.

She is naturally thin and he has to work at it.

She is involuntarily drawn into the story of every house she passes in her car, and he is unable to drive a car because of his leg.

She’s a pale-skinned aesthete who edits a webzine, and he’s a suntanned meathead completely perplexed by the masthead.

She’s his best friend and he’s sick of jerking off each night into the toilet.

He has a piece of turkey stuck between his teeth and she’s got a full Thanksgiving turkey stuck between her knees.

She is uncomfortable and he is fingering her.

She finally trusts him and he finally thrusts himself into her.

He’s thrashing around in a bathtub and she’s a flash flood happening somewhere far away.

He gouged out Christy Schumacher’s face in the yearbook and she is Christy Schumacher.

She’s the first female matador in Spain and he’s the first male bull impersonator willing to take male bull impersonating all the way … to its logical … and gruesome … conclusion.

He’s a carpenter and she’s a virgin.

He has a ponytail and she has no education.

He is widespread poverty, sweeping corruption, and violence institutionalized to a degree unseen elsewhere in the western world, and she is a tiny Latin American nation.

He is the farmscape at sunset and she is the silhouette of the barn, the windmill, and the silo.

She thinks she might be falling for him, but she is cautious because of how badly her last relationship ended, and he is okay with taking things slow because he is patient and cunning.

They both have perfect coital timing.

He is dangling her off a bridge and asking her what bridge it is and she is pleading for her life and screaming the Golden Gate Bridge.

His gaze carries calcium on it like a one-way conveyor belt that deposits massive doses of calcium into whatever he looks at, and she has a calcium deficiency once thought incurable by experts in the field of calcium.

His resemblance to her ex is superficial, but her resemblance to his ex is profound.

She was only joking when she touched her behind and made a sizzling sound, but he was the one who had to drive her to the emergency room to treat the third degree burn on the end of her finger.

He is the rain and she is smoking a cigarette on the patio.

He has always been ashamed of his membership in the militia, and he has always hated everything they stood for, but he has always been in love with her, and she never even gave him the time of day … until he joined.

He is Norway but she is holding out for infinite fjords.

He calls Nashville, laughingly, Nashvegas, but she calls Nashville, icily, Nashville.

She has just excitedly asked him to the annual charity dinner, and he has accepted, albeit reluctantly, anticipating yet another tedious masquerade of bourgeoisie apotheosis.

She thinks swoon is a funnier word than mulligan, and he thinks swoon is a funny word too, but no way in hell is it funnier than mulligan.

She’s a streetwise kangaroo in the last days of the crumbling republic, smuggling food and medicine out of the city, distributing it out of her pouch to the poor, and he’s a power-hungry possum prelate, who secretly convenes a midnight session of the senate, and with pledges of infinite eucalyptus tricks an influential coalition of koalas into illegally declaring marsupial law.

She’s like get a load of this and he’s like whoa.

She’s a lonely air traffic controller and his name is Eric Trafalgar and completely he’s out of control.

She’s a disorienting aroma and he’s a bee crashing into a mirror.

He’s a man running up a hill while morphing into a snowball and she’s a snowball rolling down a hill and morphing into a running woman.

Her very existence depends upon the capability of mimetic art, and he doesn’t even know what mimesis is.

He stabs her in the heart with an icicle, but when the icicle melts she resurrects.

He’s looking out across the fan-packed arena through a pair of high-powered binoculars, and she’s on the other side, pointing at him with one of those big foam fingers.

He’s searching for the Holy Grail and she has a map to the last known location of the Holy Grail.

He’s searching for the Holy Grail and she has a cousin who supposedly knows a guy who says he knows where the Holy Grail is.

He’s searching for the Holy Grail and she has little Holy Grail shaped pupils.

He’s searching for the Holy Grail and she’s a trapped cricket too small to leap out of the bottom of the Holy Grail.

He’s searching for the Holy Grail and she’s standing in front of the Holy Grail, smiling up at him impishly, as behind her the Holy Grail imbues the fringes of her body and face with soft gold light.

He’s searching for the Holy Grail and she just swallowed the Holy Grail whole.

She’s the Holy Grail but he’s searching for Atlantis.

He’s radiation and she’s a Geiger counter registering the current level of him in the surrounding rubble.

A fortune teller long ago warned him he would die in Egypt, and she walks like an Egyptian.

He is several flames and she’s a candelabra.

james tate

It Happens Like This

I was outside St. Cecelia’s Rectory
smoking a cigarette when a goat appeared beside me.
It was mostly black and white, with a little reddish
brown here and there. When I started to walk away,
it followed. I was amused and delighted, but wondered
what the laws were on this kind of thing. There’s
a leash law for dogs, but what about goats? People
smiled at me and admired the goat. “It’s not my goat,”
I explained. “It’s the town’s goat. I’m just taking
my turn caring for it.” “I didn’t know we had a goat,”
one of them said. “I wonder when my turn is.” “Soon,”
I said. “Be patient. Your time is coming.” The goat
stayed by my side. It stopped when I stopped. It looked
up at me and I stared into its eyes. I felt he knew
everything essential about me. We walked on. A police-
man on his beat looked us over. “That’s a mighty
fine goat you got there,” he said, stopping to admire.
“It’s the town’s goat,” I said. “His family goes back
three-hundred years with us,” I said, “from the beginning.”
The officer leaned forward to touch him, then stopped
and looked up at me. “Mind if I pat him?” he asked.
“Touching this goat will change your life,” I said.
“It’s your decision.” He thought real hard for a minute,
and then stood up and said, “What’s his name?” “He’s
called the Prince of Peace,” I said. “God! This town
is like a fairy tale. Everywhere you turn there’s mystery
and wonder. And I’m just a child playing cops and robbers
forever. Please forgive me if I cry.” “We forgive you,
Officer,” I said. “And we understand why you, more than
anybody, should never touch the Prince.” The goat and
I walked on. It was getting dark and we were beginning
to wonder where we would spend the night.

emily pettit

An Agreement Requires An Offer And Acceptance

I came here to get you excited.
We have an accidental stare-down.
No bees, no money. No one says this.
I am so frightening. No one is impressed.
It’s all, a duck’s quack doesn’t echo
and no one knows why. You think
you are whispering when you are not.
We are experts at distributing distorted
information. This is how it might feel,
take hold of something between
your finger and your thumb and twist it
sharply. Make a slight adjustment.
A logical consequence appears
to arrive, a bar, a partition, a stick.
I am hitting rocks with a stick.
What do you believe to be important
points of convergence? Vegetables.
Electricity. The extremely challenging
sky. To show adoration with the eyes.
To say something necessary. I avoid
my eyes. I think I mean it.

this poem was respectfully stolen from the the.

guided by voices

I Am A Scientist

i am a scientist - i seek to understand me
all of my impurities and evils yet unknown
i am a journalist - i write to you to show you
i am an incurable
and nothing else behaves like me 

and i know what’s right
but i’m losing sight
of the clues for which i search and choose
to abuse
to just unlock my mind
yeah, and just unlock my mind

i am a pharmacist
prescriptions i will fill you
potions, pills and medicines
to ease your painful lives
i am a lost soul
i shoot myself with rock & roll
the hole i dig is bottomless
but nothing else can set me free

and i know what’s right
but i’m losing sight
of the clues for which i search and choose
to abuse
to just unlock my mind
yeah, and just unlock my mind

i am a scientist - i seek to understand me
i am an incurable and nothing else behaves like me

everything is right
everything works out right
everything fades from sight
because that’s alright with me

william carlos williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast.

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.

jack kerouac

Mexico City Blues “Chorus 113”

Got up and dressed up
and went out & got laid
Then died and got buried
in a coffin in the grave,
Man—
Yet everything is perfect,
Because it is empty,
Because it is perfect
with emptiness,
Because it’s not even happening.

Everything
Is Ignorant of its own emptiness—
Anger
Doesn’t like to be reminded of fits—

You start with the Teaching
Inscrutable of the Diamond
And end with it, your goal
is your startingplace,
No race was run, no walk
of prophetic toenails
Across Arabies of hot
meaning—you just
numbly don’t get there

richard brautigan

Your Catfish Friend

If I were to live my life
in catfish forms
in scaffolds of skin and whiskers
at the bottom of a pond
and you were to come by
one evening
when the moon was shining
down into my dark home
and stand there at the edge
of my affection
and think, “It’s beautiful
here by this pond. I wish
somebody loved me,”
I’d love you and be your catfish
friend and drive such lonely
thoughts from your mind
and suddenly you would be
at peace,
and ask yourself, “I wonder
if there are any catfish
in this pond? It seems like
a perfect place for them.”

charles bukowski

Air and light and time and space

“-you know, I’ve either had a family, a job, something
has always been in the
way
but now
I’ve sold my house, I’ve found this
place, a large studio, you should see the space and
the light.
For the first time in my life I’m going to have a place and the time to
create.”

No baby, if you’re going to create
you’re going to create whether you work
16 hours a day in a coal mine
or
you’re going to create in a small room with 3 children
while you’re on
welfare,
you’re going to create with part of your mind and your
body blown
away,
you’re going to create blind
crippled
demented,
you’re going to create with a cat crawling up your back while
the whole city trembles in earthquake, bombardment,
flood and fire.

Baby, air and light and time and space
have nothing to do with it
and don’t create anything
except maybe a longer life to find
new excuses
for.”

bob hicok

By Their Works

Who cleaned up the Last Supper?
These would be my people.
Maybe hung over, wanting
desperately a better job,
standing with rags
in hand as the window
beckons with hills
of yellow grass. In Da Vinci,
the blue robed apostle
gesturing at Christ
is saying, give Him the check.
What a mess they’ve made
of their faith. My God
would put a busboy
on earth to roam
among the waiters
and remind them to share
their tips. The woman
who finished one
half eaten olive
and scooped the rest
into her pockets,
walked her tiny pride home
to children who looked
at her smile and saw
the salvation of a meal.
All that week
at work she ignored
customers who talked
of Rome and silk
and crucifixions,
though she couldn’t stop
thinking of this man
who said thank you
each time she filled
His glass.

t.s. eliot

Ash Wednesday
pt. IV

Who walked between the violet and the violet
Who walked between
The various ranks of varied green
Going in white and blue, in Mary’s colour,
Talking of trivial things
In ignorance and knowledge of eternal dolour
Who moved among the others as they walked,
Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the springs

Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand
In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary’s colour,
Sovegna vos

Here are the years that walk between, bearing
Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring
One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing

White light folded, sheathing about her, folded.
The new years walk, restoring
Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring
With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem
The time. Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream
While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.

The silent sister veiled in white and blue
Between the yews, behind the garden god,
Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke no word

But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down
Redeem the time, redeem the dream
The token of the word unheard, unspoken

Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew

And after this our exile

t.s. eliot

Ash Wednesday
pt. III 

At the first turning of the second stair
I turned and saw below
The same shape twisted on the banister
Under the vapour in the fetid air
Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears
The deceitul face of hope and of despair.

At the second turning of the second stair
I left them twisting, turning below;
There were no more faces and the stair was dark,
Damp, jagged, like an old man’s mouth drivelling, beyond repair,
Or the toothed gullet of an aged shark.

At the first turning of the third stair
Was a slotted window bellied like the figs’s fruit
And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene
The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green
Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute.
Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,
Lilac and brown hair;
Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind over the third stair,
Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair

Climbing the third stair. Lord, I am not worthy
Lord, I am not worthy
but speak the word only.