Give Me a Red Breast and a Song by Theodore Best

Give Me a Red Breast and a Song

I have sung down branches

to their sticky booby-traps.

Near things with bald wings

felt serenaded.

I have sung by the roundabout

in the middle of the night.

The lamplight was lamplight.

Nobody told me.

I have sung in gardens at hoses.

I have noted the cold of the flat black grass.

They say I am a territorial beast.

I have eaten from a fat-ball

hanging on a cherry tree.

Through those squares of hard air

what was watching?

I have eaten the beetle

crawling on my lookout.

A green spot’s appeared there –

shiny, like a beetle.

I have eaten a white knotted worm.

I have learnt not to turn from the whisker-claw.

They say I am a territorial beast.

Sometimes things look at me

like we belong together.

Show me a red breast

not a soft beak.

Others throw sticks at me

or screech like the whisker-claw.

All this is usable

for a nest in the wind.

I have harried green rubber in flowerbeds.

I have wrestled the edges of silver.

They say I am a territorial beast.

Though I fear the wind stopping

and a death in the dead grass,

breast upward, head downward,

neck awry,

I know only this:

that my voice is as big

as the one bush it’s filled.

One song,

and all manner of life sees a nesting place.

UEA Creative Writing Anthology 2010: Poetry (Norwich: Egg Box Publishing, 2010), 10-1.

Socrates by Jack Spicer

Socrates

Because they accused me of poems

That did not disturb the young

They gave me a pair of glasses

Filled with tincture of hemlock.

Because the young accused me

Of Piles, horseradish, and bad dreams

They gave me three days

To burn down the city. What dialogues

(If they had let me)

Could I have held with both of my enemies.

Jack Spicer, my vocabulary did this to me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer, ed. by Peter Gizzi and Kevin Killian (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2008), 179.

A Book of Music by Jack Spicer

A Book of Music

Coming to an end, the lovers

Are exhausted like two swimmers. Where

Did it end? There is no telling. No love is

Like an ocean with the dizzy procession of the waves’ boundaries

From which two can emerge exhausted, no long goodbye

Like death.

Coming at an end. Rather, I would say, like a length

Of coiled rope

Which does not disguise in the final twists of its lengths

Its endings.

But, you will say, we loved

And some parts of us loved

And the rest of us will remain

Two persons. Yes,

Poetry ends like a rope.

Jack Spicer, my vocabulary did this to me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer, ed. by Peter Gizzi and Kevin Killian (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2008), 178.

Thing Language by Jack Spicer

THING LANGUAGE

This ocean, humiliating in its disguises

Tougher than anything.

No one listens to poetry. The ocean

Does not mean to be listened to. A drop

Or crash of water. It means

Nothing.

It

Is bread and butter

Pepper and salt. The death

That young men hope for. Aimlessly

It pounds the shore. White and aimless signals. No

One listens to poetry.

Jack Spicer, my vocabulary did this to me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer, ed. by Peter Gizzi and Kevin Killian (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2008), 373.

The Garden of Exquisite Silence by Kristin Dimitrova

The Garden of Exquisite Silence

The white statues arch their necks,

keeping their empty marble gazes

bolted.

It is closed,

this door to the sculptor’s hand

when the stone still

scraped the dust off its face.

Behind each statue’s forehead

there is a message.

If you look for an answer,

you break the head.

If you keep the head safe,

you do not get anywhere.

If you break the hand,

you may still not get an answer.

Decide faster.

Kristin Dimitrova, My Life in Squares (Middlesbrough: Smokestack Books, 2010), 74.

The Architectress by Kristin Dimitrova

The Architectress

The architectress carries blueprints.

Only the slab is poured. The walls

are transparent and rise from everywhere

strictly according to layout.

The architectress has spread the blueprints

on the nonexistent windowsill,

leafs through them for mistakes,

then leans and looks through a window

no less transparent.

The architectress (technically)

doesn't exist.

Which makes the house good enough

and practically finished.

Kristin Dimitrova, My Life in Squares (Middlesbrough: Smokestack Books, 2010), 28.

The Three Lady Beggars at the Book Premiere by Kristin Dimitrova

The Three Lady Beggars at the Book Premiere

We all know each other, more or less.

                 We listen to the reading author

                 with attention.

No one knows the three

                 grey old women

                 in the audience.

When we hear the long awaited ‘help yourself, please’

                 the three grey ladies

                 hurry to the buffet.

We turn our heads away from them.

                 Their rotten smell reminds us

                 of our exit-fee.

They advance without noticing us.

                 Beggars regard the others not as people

                 but as territory.

The three have no place among us.

                 We talk of literature,

                 we will not fill our stomachs with the cheese rolls

                 and we step back squeamishly

                 from the reeking gash into a world

                 that gapes at our cheese rolls,

                 and has neither read, nor heard of literature.

We search for meaning. We came here

                 to treat people to books;

                 part of the meaning came –

to claim our cheese rolls.

Kristin Dimitrova, My Life in Squares (Middlesbrough: Smokestack Books, 2010), 16.

Tree by Udo Degener

l  e  a  f

l e a f l e a f

l e a f l e a f l e a f l e a f

l e a f l e a f l e a f l e a f

l e a f l e a f l e a f l e a f

l e a f l e a f l e a f l e a f l e a f l e a f

l e a f l e a f l e a f l e a f l e a f l e a f

l e a f l e a f l e a f l e a f b i r d l e a f

l e a f l e a f l e a f l e a f l e a f l e a f

l e a f l e a f l e a f l e a f l e a f l e a f

l e a f l e a f l e a f l e a f l e a f l e a f

l e a f l e a f l e a f l e a f

l e a f l e a f l e a f l e a f

l e a f l e a f l e a f l e a f

l e a f l e a f

l  e  a  f

w o o d

w o o d

w o o d

w o o d

w o o d

w o o d

w o o d

w o o d

w o o d

w o o d

w o o d

w o o d

s  a  w

w o o d

w o o d

wortBILD: Visuelle Poesie in der DDR, Guillermo Deisler and Jörg Kowalski, eds. (Halle, Leipzig: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1990), 54. My translation.

The Twist in the River by Katherine Pierpoint

The Twist in the River

At the clear, beer-coloured and bubbleshot twist in the river –

Every stone a speckled egg spawned in that deep lap,

Every pockmarked, pitted pebble a planet, blindly seeing through its own evolution –

The shallows, and the tall air, are filled with sound and light.

This part of the river expects to be seen, for it has drawn you there,

And the trees, selfless, introduce the sky into your love for the water.

If this place were a person, it would be making up a paper hat while humming –

Entirely self-contained, absorbed yet radiant –

A family moment, appearing normal until years later in retrospect,

When its depth are fully felt, beyond blunt experience.

Underwater, the light thickens slightly but never sets

And the river runs through its own fingers, careless.

Katherine Pierpoint, Truffle Beds (London: Faber and Faber, 1995), 1.

Osmosis by Katherine Pierpoint

Osmosis

The water is to swimmer as a kiss

Placed on a closed but moving eye.

And swimmer is to water

As a ghost to a claiming room.

The swimmer – suspended, flickering –

Parts the soft walls in the thickened realm

Of an element not entirely owned;

A bladder of heavy air,

Embodied; and yet boneless.

Katherine Pierpoint, Truffle Beds (London: Faber and Faber, 1995), 47.

‘Adjectives’: the Novel; the Movie by Roy Fisher

‘Adjectives’: the Novel; the Movie

        Basil Bunting: ‘Adjectives drain nouns’

Defending more than defensive. Ill-equipped, formal,

            luxurious. Defending.

Generous, invasive, status-conscious. Anxious, generous.

Shallow, acquisitive, kitted out, entertaining.

Ill-tended, ill-fed, worn: stale tending to foul.

Grimly, well-organised, obvious. Drunk.

Questing, Attentive. Reserved. Contained

Roy Fisher, Standard Midland (Tarset: Bloodaxe Books, 2010), 35.

Dancing Neanderthal by Roy Fisher

Dancing Neanderthal

Stronger muscles than ours;

Sharper tools –

Could speak?

Possibly.

Write?

Didn’t. Unless with sharp stones

they incised their skins

that would die with them, observing

the ban on lasting records.

Traffic in symbols? Paint on rocks?

Couldn’t?

Didn’t. May have been foresight and hard taboo

to stop themselves inventing

religion, football or flags. Our world’s ways of life

keep strong by prohibitions; and they may just have been

better than us at that, as they no doubt were

at contemplating extinction.

They could have danced?

All night, with that much muscle.

Sung?

No reason why not.

Hard wired to diatonic?

Roy Fisher, Standard Midland (Tarset: Bloodaxe Books, 2010), 32-3.

On Spare Land by Roy Fisher

On Spare Land

Wormwood

rank grass

kids’ dens: the entire

little essay.

Commons without commoners

the Unadopted. A footpath worn

from corner to corner. Wormwood.

And how at the edge the hoardings

paralyse words high up

in the common air.

John Cage

on a bland enough midwestern

campus:

              – use random means

to set coordinates then

hang around at the intersection

all day if need be. There’ll

be something to interest you!

Roy Fisher, Standard Midland (Tarset: Bloodaxe Books, 2010), 13.

Past Time by Harvey Shapiro

PAST TIME

               I believe we came together

               Out of ignorance not love,

               Both being shy and hunted in the city.

               In the hot summer, touching each other,

               Amazed at how love could come

               Like a waterfall, with frightening force

               And bruising sleep. Waking at noon,

               Touching each other for direction,

               Out of ignorance not love.

Richard Kostelanetz, Possibilities of Poetry: An Anthology of American Contemporaries (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1970), 344.

Automatic World by Philip Lamantia

AUTOMATIC WORLD

The sun has drowned

virgins are no more

there is no need for understanding

but there is so much to see

So come with me

down the boulevard

of crawling veins

Don’t be afraid

blood is cheap!

A paradise song?

A dirty song?

A love sonnet?

Scream it out!

Then we’ll have the human walls

tumbling down to meet our march

into the raw-meat city!

The velvet robes are strewn

across the landscape

We step upon the sidewalk

that goes up and down

up to the clouds

down to the starving people

Don’t ask me what to do!

Keep on going

we’ll end up somewhere fast

on the moon perhaps!

Rainbow guns are dancing

in front of the movie queens

Everyone is laughing

flying dying

never knowing when to rest

never knowing when to eat

And the fountains come falling

out of her thistle-covered breasts

and the dogs are happy

and the clowns are knifing

and the ballerinas are eating stone

O the mirror-like dirt

of freshly spilt blood

trickling down the walls

the walls that reach the stars!

O the flock of sheep

breaking their flesh open

with bones sucked

from the brothels!

O the grave of bats

sailing through shops

with the violent hands!

When will these come?

When will these go?

The sun is riding into your eye

virgins are bursting

from under my flaming palms

and we are slowly floating away

Richard Kostelanetz, Possibilities of Poetry: An Anthology of American Contemporaries (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1970), 246-7.

To The Reader by J. V. Cunningham

TO THE READER

                                 Time will assuage.

                                 Time’s verses bury

                                 Margin and page

                                 In commentary,

                                 For gloss demands

                                 A gloss annexed

                                 Till busy hands

                                 Blot out the text,

                                 And all’s coherent.

                                 Search in this gloss

                                 No text inherent:

                                 The text was loss.

                                 The gain is gloss.

Richard Kostelanetz, Possibilities of Poetry; An Anthology of American Contemporaries (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1970), 74.

The Green Buoy by John Barnie

The Green Buoy

I’ve nothing to say to the

green buoy out there in the waves

bouncing on its chainy knees

then up riding an incomer

down floating with a swagger I’d

never say gracefully the sun

shining on its wet struts

arms akimbo Cossack dancing

Whey-hey as a big one

streams over whispering in its

kellyman ear a secret (You’re

invincible) I’m not supposed to hear.

John Barnie, The Green Buoy (Kinnerton, Presteigne, Powys: The Rack Press, 2006), 12.

Benjamin Sonnet #44 by Clint Burnham

                      X L I V

in focus men in uninformed uniforms

not so much uniform but unformal

become an island hence without

a peninsula or permanent bridge

of land, of metal, of human construction

he said, as he walked off my

porch, an earphone wearing

cop

who gets you from here

to there on lines

stew would make anyone

vegan

one-unit immobile

shoulders

      2 VI 07

Clint Burnham, The Benjamin Sonnets (Toronto: Book Thug, 2009), 54.

The Outsider Ape by Roberto Bolaño

Remember the Triumph of Alexander the Great, by Gustave Moreau?

The beauty and terror, the crystal moment when

All breathing stops. But you wouldn’t stand still under that dome

in dim shadows, under that dome lit by ferocious

rays of harmony. And it didn’t take your breath away.

You walked like a tireless ape among the gods,

For you knew—or maybe not—that the Triumph was unfurling

its weapons inside Plato’s cavern: images,

shadows without substance, sovereignty of emptiness. You wanted

to reach the tree and the bird, the leftovers

from a humble backyard fiesta, the desert land

watered with blood, the scene of the crime where

statues of photographers and police are grazing, and the hostility of life

outdoors. Ah, the hostility of life outdoors!

Roberto Bolaño, The Romantic Dogs, trans. by Laura Healy (London: Picador, 2011), 39.

Day Bleeding Rain by Roberto Bolaño

DAY BLEEDING RAIN

Oh day, bleeding rain,

what are you doing in the soul of the abandoned,

day bleeding volition only barely glimpsed:

behind the reed curtain, in the mire,

with your toes sized up in pain

like a small shivering animal:

but you’re not small and you’re shivering from pleasure,

day cloaked in the might of volition,

frozen stiff in a mire that’s maybe not

of this world, barefoot in the middle of the dream that works its way

from our hearts toward our necessities,

from fury towards desire: curtain of reeds

that opens itself and dirties us and embraces us.

Roberto Bolaño, The Romantic Dogs, trans. by Laura Healy (London: Picador, 2011), 15.

Resurrection by Roberto Bolaño

RESURRECTION

Poetry slips into dreams

like a diver in a lake.

Poetry, braver than anyone,

slips in and sinks

like lead

through a lake infinite as Loch Ness

or tragic and turbid as Lake Balatón.

Consider it from below:

a diver

innocent

covered in feathers

of will.

Poetry slips into dreams

like a diver who’s dead

in the eyes of God.

Roberto Bolaño, The Romantic Dogs, trans. by Laura Healy (London: Picador, 2011), 7.