Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra –
“I tell you: one must have chaos within oneself, to give birth to a dancing star.”
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Of the dark past
A child is born
With joy and grief
My heart is torn
Calm in his cradle
The living lies.
May love and mercy
Unclose his eyes!
Young life is breathed
On the glass;
The world that was not
Comes to pass.
A child is sleeping:
An old man gone.
O, father forsaken,
Forgive your son!
Because your voice was at my side
I gave him pain,
Because within my hand I held
Your hand again.
There is no word nor any sign
Can make amend —
He is a stranger to me now
Who was my friend.
Long torso lashing,
dark water streaming,
I rise from the sea,
my scaled sides a flexed
and living geometry
upon the night.
Poison glistening in
the facets of my tongue,
stars flecking my hide,
I fly against the moon;
my tail, the antidote,
slithers behind.
I slough off death,
raise the bodies entombed,
reap the bone orchard,
clothe these ivory sticks
in fast failing flesh
to reap them once again.
In the restless bondage
of my sleek embrace
I encircle the earth
like a devouring lover.
I consume empires
and cough up history.
I eat dead souls and
feed each wanting womb.
In the curve of my coils
the wailing faces
stretch and tighten.
Endlessly, I swallow.
by D.H. Lawrence
Won’t it be strange, when the nurse
brings the newborn infant
to the proud father, and shows its little
webbed greenish feet
made to smite the waters behind it?
or the round, wild vivid eye of a
wild-goose staring
out of the fathomless skies and seas?
or when it utters that undaunted little
bird-cry
of one who will settle on ice-bergs, and
honk across the Nile?—
And when the father says: This is none of mine!
Woman, where got you this little
beast?—
will there be a whistle of wings in the
air, and an icy draught?
will the singing of swans, high up, high
up, invisible
break the drums of his ears
and leave him forever listening for the
answer?
by Glenn Werner
There are two basic reasons
to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge.
The first is because it’s a beauty to
behold
the breeze is cool at noon
the walkway is an urban pasture
the horizon bears a cathedral
the tower seems to lift you
the clouds gather at its spires
the stone embraces your soul
the cables sing whale songs
that tell you that you are its favorite.
And second is because it’s deep in
the night
and the person with your money
never came
and the fare for the subway is gone
and the walk is an hour to get there
and the sky is black and empty
and the air is damp and still
and the street lamps are sallow
and the fact is that only the old bridge
is willing to take you home.
in life
one is always
balancing
like we juggle our mothers
against our fathers
or one teacher
against another
(only to balance our grade average)
3 grains of salt
to one ounce truth
our sweet black essence
or the funky honkies down the street
and lately i’ve begun wondering
if you’re trying to tell me something
we used to talk all night
and do things alone together
and i’ve begun
(as a reaction to a feeling)
to balance
the pleasure of loneliness
against the pain
of loving you
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.
Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed —
I, too, am America.
by Stephen Crane
In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter,” he answered,
“But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart.”
by Stephen Crane
A man saw a ball of gold in the
sky;
He climbed for it,
And eventually he achieved it —
It was clay.
Now this is the strange part:
When the man went to the earth
And looked again,
Lo, there was the ball of gold.
Aye, by the heavens, it was a
ball of gold.
by Charles Tomlinson
Crowding this beach
are milkstones, white
teardrops; flints
edged out of flinthood
into smoothness chafe
against grainy ovals,
pitted pieces, nosestones,
stoppers and saddles;
veins of orange
inlay black beads:
chalk swaddled babyshapes,
tiny fists, facestones
and facestone’s brother
skullstone, roundheads
pierced by a single eye,
purple finds, all
rubbing shoulders:
a mob of grindings,
groundlings, scatterings
from a million necklaces
mined under sea-hills, the pebbles
are as various as people.
