January 2012
1 post
5 tags
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...
December 2011
1 post
6 tags
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...
November 2011
11 posts
6 tags
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...
5 tags
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 ...
3 tags
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.
5 tags
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...
5 tags
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 ...
6 tags
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...
3 tags
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...
5 tags
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 ...
5 tags
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,...
5 tags
t.s. eliot
Ash Wednesday pt. II
Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree In the cool of the day, having fed to satiety On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained In the hollow round of my skull. And God said Shall these bones live? shall these Bones live? And that which had been contained In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping: Because of the goodness of this...
5 tags
t.s. eliot
Ash Wednesday pt. I
Because I do not hope to turn again Because I do not hope Because I do not hope to turn Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope I no longer strive to strive towards such things (Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?) Why should I mourn The vanished power of the usual reign? Because I do not hope to know again The infirm glory of the positive...
October 2011
4 posts
5 tags
david berman
Snow
Walking through a field with my little brother Seth I pointed to a place where kids had made angels in the snow. For some reason, I told him that a troop of angels had been shot and dissolved when they hit the ground. He asked who had shot them and I said a farmer. Then we were on the roof of the lake. The ice looked like a photograph of water. Why he asked. Why did he shoot them. I...
4 tags
stanley kunitz
The Layers
I have walked through many lives, some of them my own, and I am not who I was, though some principle of being abides, from which I struggle not to stray. When I look behind, as I am compelled to look before I can gather strenth to proceed on my journey, I see the milestones dwindling toward the horizon and the slow fires trailing from the abandoned camp-sites, over which...
4 tags
tomas tranströmer
Midwinter A blue light radiates from my clothing. Midwinter. Clattering tambourines of ice. I close my eyes. There is a silent world there is a crack where the dead are smuggled across the border.
4 tags
franz wright
Alcohol
You do look a little ill. But we can do something about that, now. Can’t we. The fact is you’re a shocking wreck. Do you hear me. You aren’t all alone. And you could use some help today, packing in the dark, boarding buses north, putting the seat back and grinning with terror flowing over your legs through your fingers and hair … I was always waiting,...
September 2011
1 post
2 tags
t.s. eliot
1. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse A persona che mai tornasse al mondo, Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero, Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo. LET us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go,...
August 2011
5 posts
6 tags
jeffrey skinner
Many Worlds
A physicist proposes time does not exist, only an infinite number of dramas, grand or banal, in different locations: a Wyoming ant hefts a leaf and begins the blind trek home. Nancy nicks her thumb chopping arugula in Manhattan. Sheets of rain batter the empty head of a seagull hunkered down amid blonde grasses. A Sudanese teenager takes the first of nineteen steps toward a...
8 tags
boris pasternak
It is not seemly to be famous: Celebrity does not exalt; There is no need to hoard your writings And to preserve them in a vault. To give your all-this is creation, And not-to deafen and eclipse. How shameful, when you have no meaning, To be on everybody’s lips! Try not to live as a pretender, But so to manage your affairs That you are loved by wide expanses, And hear the call of future...
4 tags
evan kennedy
Where Diamonds and Dogs Are Best Friends
Plenty boys strictly thin sticks. Spooked mine slake focus peel off as a dome. Cramming throb drop in plummet chute finds. Fronts rumble. Spare dime. Of mixed verge can’t flush the figures birdsong wrecks. Got grayed tooth to ash and monger it much. Got appetite in lash and mete it much. Stayed such origin, stayed solvent. Sewn scat and rinds. Crisp...
5 tags
james richardson
Vectors: 47 Aphorisms and Ten-Second Essays 1. The road reaches every place, the short cut only one. 2. Those who demand consideration for their sacrifices were making investments, not sacrifices. 3. What you give to a thief is stolen. 4. Despair says I cannot lift that weight. Happiness says, I do not have to. 5. You’ve never said anything as stupid as what people thought you said. 6. Our...
4 tags
nick laird
Use of Spies
Upright and sleepless, having watched three bad movies, I am flying across the ocean to see you. I am a warrior and nothing will stop me, although in the event both passport control and a stoned cabbie from Haiti will give it a go, but I meant to mention something else. Just before dinner I woke in mid-air, opened the shutter and saw the sun rising. Light swung over the clouds like a...
July 2011
10 posts
7 tags
dorothy parker
Ballade of a Talked-Off Ear
Daily I listen to wonder and woe, Nightly I hearken to knave or to ace, Telling me stories of lava and snow, Delicate fables of ribbon and lace, Tales of the quarry, the kill, the chase, Longer than heaven and duller than hell- Never you blame me, who cry my case: “Poets alone should kiss and tell!” Dumbly I hear what I never should know, Gently I...
6 tags
john ashbery
Meaningful Love
What the bad news was became apparent too late for us to do anything good about it. I was offered no urgent dreaming, didn’t need a name or anything. Everything was taken care of. In the medium-size city of my awareness voles are building colossi. The blue room is over there. He put out no feelers. The day was all as one to him. Some days he never leaves his...
4 tags
david berman
New York New York
A second New York is being built a little west of the old one. Why another, no one asks, just build it, and they do. The city is still closed off to all but the work crews who claim it’s a perfect mirror image.
Truthfully, each man works on the replica of the apartment building he lives in, adding new touches, like cologne dispensers, rock gardens, and doorknobs...
2 tags
edna st. vincent millay
Recuerdo
We were very tired, we were very merry— We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry. It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable— But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table, We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon; And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon. We were very tired, we were very merry— We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry; ...
2 tags
joe
sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand toes toes toes toes sand sand sand sand sand sand
2 tags
richard brautigan
Xerox Candy Bar
Ah, you’re just a copy of all the candy bars I’ve ever eaten.
4 tags
dallas clayton
Slumber Party
Your life was once so care free that you combined sleeping and partying into a single event.
5 tags
miroslav holub
Spacetime
When I grow up and you get small, then — (In Kaluza’s theory the fifth dimension is represented as a circle associated with every point in spacetime) — then when I die, I’ll never be alive again? Never. Never never? Never never. Yes, but never never never? No...
3 tags
david berman
About the Party
I loved seeing you the other night (and I think everyone noticed!) which was the first time I’m estimating since the Oak Street Psychic Fair when I first saw your ears as the two beautiful pink wheels they are and your powerful boyfriend unnecessarily claimed that I only spread unhappiness with my harmonica playing. People see each other all the time and they can’t always...
9 tags
joanna fuhrman
Autobiography (Pink Remix)
Everyone’s childhood was swallowed by a whale. Inside the belly, we dreamed of a future where we’d speed, miles underground, through the veins of a snoring giant princess named New York. Inside the belly, we dreamed of a future where Manhattan would become us, but we would be a snoring giant princess named New York, shiny with orange drizzle and telepathic...
June 2011
1 post
1 tag
billy collins*
Litany
You are the bread and the knife, The crystal goblet and the wine… —Jacques Crickillon You are the bread and the knife, the crystal goblet and the wine. You are the dew on the morning grass and the burning wheel of the sun. You are the white apron of the baker, and the marsh birds suddenly in flight. However, you are not the wind in the orchard, the plums on the counter, or the house...
2 tags
charles bukowski
always
the important thing is the obvious thing that nobody is saying
via paul’s facebook
May 2011
6 posts
3 tags
james galvin
Two Horses and a Dog
Without external reference, The world presents itself In perfect clarity.
Wherewithal, arrested moments, The throes of demystification, Morality as nothing more Than humility and honesty, a salty measure. Then it was a cold snap, Weather turned lethal so it was easier To feel affinity With lodgepole stands, rifted aspens, And grim, tenacious sage. History...
4 tags
tsering wangmo dhompa
In the event of change
I am saying primroses lined the pathway of toothless hedges. I am saying the ocean shimmered like corrugated steel in themorning sun. The context of my story changes when you enter. Then I am dungon the wall of the nomad’s field. Then the everyday waking person. I am nodding in your direction like fissures between dandelion fur.Seeing in your manner. I am speaking your...
6 tags
donald hall
White Apples
when my father had been dead a week I woke with his voice in my ear I sat up in bed and held my breath and stared at the pale closed door white apples and the taste of stone if he called again I would put on my coat and galoshes
4 tags
e. e. cummings
9.
there are so many tictoc clocks everywhere telling people what toctic time it is for tictic instance five toc minutes toc past six tic Spring is not regulated and does not get out of order nor do its hands a little jerking move over numbers slowly we do not wind it up it has no weights springs wheels inside of its slender self no indeed dear ...
3 tags
dorianne laux
Dust
Someone spoke to me last night, told me the truth. Just a few words, but I recognized it. I knew I should make myself get up, write it down, but it was late, and I was exhausted from working all day in the garden, moving rocks. Now, I remember only the flavor — not like food, sweet or sharp. More like a fine powder, like dust. And I wasn’t elated or frightened, but simply rapt,...
4 tags
aaron smith
Boston
I’ve been meaning to tell you how the sky is pink here sometimes like the roof of a mouth that’s about to chomp down on the crooked steel teeth of the city, I remember the desperate things we did and that I stumble down sidewalks listening to the buzz of street lamps at dusk and the crush of leaves on the pavement, Without you here I’m viciously...
April 2011
4 posts
2 tags
lewis carroll
Read this either across or down:
2 tags
james tate
List of Famous Hats
Napoleon’s hat is an obvious choice I guess to list as a famous hat, but that’s not the hat I have in mind. That was his hat for show. I am thinking of his private bathing cap, which in all honesty wasn’t much different than the one any jerk might buy at a corner drugstore now, except for two minor eccentricities. The first one isn’t even funny: Simply...
3 tags
jeffrey skinner
Kafka, Women
We went to buy furniture in Berlin. When I am kind, Felice approaches. I fumble for the door. I suggest the axe of marriage. This illness, feeling its way inside me. Heavy furniture that looked as if, once in position, it could never be moved. Grete, come to the hotel, we will make plans. There’s never this kind of trouble at the brothel. Without my head I would not be...
4 tags
aaron belz
My Best Wand
Of all the magic wands I’ve bought over the years, only the steel one with the sharp tip really works – you point it into someone and say ABRACADABRA and the person magically becomes wounded.
from aaron belz’s book lovely, raspberry. follow him on twitter.
March 2011
2 posts
6 tags
cody walker
Haiku
i’m a mountain and you’re a new weather pattern that crushes mountains
originally published in the equalizer, 1.1
5 tags
evan kennedy
Geese
A hem heralds fissures, diffuse threats. Of stillness, I swam in flocks, and coated. In Vs rise swelling marks. Of instigation, of of.
Mark another tally on lack lust crumple, ripen solace. For gauged polis, athletes flaxen, greasing crossings crowed. Accented and sloped along, better miners a glossy rave querulous. Diagonals fizzle and raise foul lines. A rotation taken to tongue, of...
5 tags
david berman
Self-Portrait at 28
I know it’s a bad title but I’m giving it to myself as a gift on a day nearly canceled by sunlight when the entire hill is approaching the ideal of Virginia brochured with goldenrod and loblolly and I think “at least I have not woken up with a bloody knife in my hand” by then having absently wandered one hundred yards from the house while still seated...
4 tags
shannon burns
Airplane
The captain doesn’t like it when you brush the other passengers’ hair. Everybody gets to cooing and telling very funny jokes and secrets, and drawing moons and stars on the flight crew. If we were in love on the airplane, we could say fuselage to each other in big loamy voices, couldn’t we? And gulp things up? And what else.
January 2011
1 post
2 tags
*announcment*
The moderator of Universal Human Situation is back from aforementioned hiatus, with every intention to resume the posting of poems collected from the universe about universal human situations in their chronological order of discovery on this blog. There are no hard feelings about what has happened over the past year.