Protocols 2, DeYtH Banger [top 10 novels of all time .txt] 📗

He goes to heaven. 

I stay on earth, in this cell with the high empty window, 
The long light in summer, the winter stars. 

I work with my quill and colours, bent and blinder 
Each season, colder, but the pages fill. 

Just when I started work the cat arrived 
Sleek and sharp at my elbow, out of nowhere; 

I dipped my pen. He settled in with me. 
He listened and replied. He kept my counsel. 

iii. 
Here in the margin, Pangur, I inscribe you. 
Almost Amen. Prowl out of now and go down 

Into time's garden, wary with your tip-toe hearing. 
You'll live well enough on mice and shrews till you find 

The next scriptorium, a bowl of milk. Some scribe 
Will recognise you, Pangur Bàn, and feed you; 

You'll find your way to him as you did to me 
From nowhere (but you sniffed out your Jerome). 

Stay by him, too, until his Gospel's done. 
(I linger over John, the closing verses, 

You're restless, won't be touched. I'm old. The solstice.) 
Amen, dear Pangur Bàn. Amen. Be sly.

by Michael Schmidt Poem #14 - All Fours

 by Tom Raworth

 

though it might have been chronic
around his neck and shoulders
filled with thick high weeds
the road was lined with stone

almost entranced she started
ordering quantities of everything
down the windows of your station
combed and perfectly normal

bees through blood and perhaps
night air while we rode back
followed him to the front porch
and the chimney bricks were fallen

she hasn't heard from him since
filled in on the background
large machines can dig them
forced to take shelter in that house

watching her move about the kitchen
a uniformed policeman was standing
out like magic on the glass
we were living under siege again

two more men came in carrying
pages of an appointment book
not very good lights things happening
younger all clean and prosperous

a grievance a legitimate grievance
rumbled as the rain began
heavily where the blades pushed it
round doorways little brown children

in your car and go somewhere
dead or senseless at the wheel
crouched there taking no part
on the highway the sedan fishtailed

mosquitoes had been real fierce
with that wind coming off
substandard materials and workmanship
years of polishing have dulled

professional sound of a woman singing
damnation at an empty chair
soft black soot coats the slate
too splendidly suburban for adequate

illegible smears of block printing
held motion to a crawl
skimming over book titles
postured alluringly around the room

the important dynamic was between
peculiar and unique powers
to collect on his insurance
that portion of it reported

lovely little thing with eyes
as efficient as she had to be
shambling on down the tissue
range where embers had gone out

looking at everything said suicide
the area about her had the look
you see in old chromos
breathing not daring to smoke or cough

practically an abandoned road
several varieties of mushroom thrived
standing motionless in the shade
small common objects of assault

blown cell with a dusty bulb
an instant to blank shining glass
blocking out the moon and stars
vending machines on every floor

Poem #15 - Baby Villon

He tells me in Bangkok he’s robbed
Because he’s white; in London because he’s black;   
In Barcelona, Jew; in Paris, Arab:
Everywhere and at all times, and he fights back.

He holds up seven thick little fingers
To show me he’s rated seventh in the world,   
And there’s no passion in his voice, no anger   
In the flat brown eyes flecked with blood.

He asks me to tell all I can remember
Of my father, his uncle; he talks of the war   
In North Africa and what came after,
The loss of his father, the loss of his brother,

The windows of the bakery smashed and the fresh bread   
Dusted with glass, the warm smell of rye
So strong he ate till his mouth filled with blood.
“Here they live, here they live and not die,”

And he points down at his black head ridged   
With black kinks of hair. He touches my hair,   
Tells me I should never disparage
The stiff bristles that guard the head of the fighter.

Sadly his fingers wander over my face,   
And he says how fair I am, how smooth.   
We stand to end this first and last visit.   
Stiff, 116 pounds, five feet two,

No bigger than a girl, he holds my shoulders,   
Kisses my lips, his eyes still open,
My imaginary brother, my cousin,
Myself made otherwise by all his pain.

 

 

 by Philip Levine

Poem #17 - Any

 by George Bowering

 

 

Fresh out of the icebox, this brain looks
the wrong way from time to time, and misses
the cat stepping by, Gerry on the screen
laboring to tell the nuances his pink matter
almost notices, he’s not my brother, not really
my close friend, just my necessary neighbor
on a bicycle going by like a whistle from
the lips of someone I trust. He has a peculiar
skeleton arranged his own way in the mind’s pasture.
We were as they say “of an age” and so inter-
twine somehow, though I wanted to work when
he wanted to play. That long nose is in my life
and in my writing and so is the Okanagan River.
I sometimes get to the river when I am at work,
the sun on my back not the ink in my pen.
There was, when I was last in the Okanagan Valley, a
cat with big paws in the neighborhood, I was told,
fires I could see along the hillside, stunning heat
from the sky, enough to thaw any brain.

Poem #18 - Catch-All

 by Danielle Chapman

 

Mother Dear, never apologize for nettles
I yanked in fury
from Lottie Shoop’s side yard — 

they stung me into seeing
fairy mosses lilypad
her middened juniper,

the quivering gobble of her chin,
teacup clicking dentures as she sprang
up into her wattle hut
and broke a rib

of aloe vera — 
gel belling the top of that claw goblet.

It didn’t cool the sting, and yet, noticing
sunshine thumbing plums in a string
catch-all — 

I was already well.

 

 

Poem #19 - "Love my enemies, enemy my love"

 by Rebecca Seiferle

 

 

Oh, we fear our enemy’s mind, the shape
in his thought that resembles the cripple
in our own, for it’s not just his fear
we fear, but his love and his paradise.
 
We fear he will deprive us of our peace
of mind, and, fearing this, are thus deprived,
so we must go to war, to be free of this
terror, this unremitting fear, that he might
 
he might, he might. Oh it’s hard to say
what he might do or feel or think.
Except all that we cannot bear of
feeling or thinking—so his might
 
must be met with might of armor
and of intent—informed by all the hunker
down within the bunker of ourselves.
How does he love? and eat? and drink?
 
He must be all strategy or some sick lie.
How can reason unlock such a door,
for we bar it too with friends and lovers,
in waking hours, on ordinary days?
 
Finding the other so senseless and unknown,
we go to war to feel free of the fear
of our own minds, and so come
to ruin in our hearts of ordinary days.

Poem #20 - A Sleepless Night

 by Philip Levine

 

 

April, and the last of the plum blossoms
scatters on the black grass
before dawn. The sycamore, the lime,
the struck pine inhale
the first pale hints of sky.
An iron day,
I think, yet it will come
dazzling, the light
rise from the belly of leaves and pour
burning from the cups
of poppies.
The mockingbird squawks
from his perch, fidgets,
and settles back. The snail, awake
for good, trembles from his shell
and sets sail for China. My hand dances
in the memory of a million vanished stars.

A man has every place to lay his head.