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.