Very Random Poetry

DESTRUCTION

First of all do you remember the way a bear goes through
a cabin when nobody is home? He goes through
The front door. I mean he really goes through it. Then
he takes the cupboard off the wall and eats a can of lard.

He eats all teh apples, limes, dates, bottled decaffeinated
coffee, and 35 pounds of granola. The asparagus soup cans
fall to the floor. Yum! He chomps up Norwegian crackers
stached for the winter. And the bouillon, salt, pepper,
paprika, garlic, onions, potatoes.

He rips the Green Tara
poster from the wall. Tries the Coleman Mustard. Spills
the ink, tracks in the flour. Goes up stares and takes
a butter. Rips open teh water bed, eats the incense and
drinks teh perfume. Knocks over the Japanese tansu
and the Persian miniature of a man on horseback watching
a woman bathing.

Knocks Shelter, Whole Earth Catalogue,
Planet Drum, Northern Mists, Truck Tracks, and Woman's Sports into the oozing water bed mess.
Down stairs and out the back wall. He keeps on going
for a long way and finds a good cave to sleep it all off.
Luckily he ate the whole medicine cabinet, including stash
of LSD, Peyote, Psilocybin, Amanita, Benzadrine, Valium
and aspirin.

~Joanne Kyger

THE PHILOSOPHERS:
LAO-TZU

"Those who speak know nothing:
Those who know are silent."
Those words, I am told,
Were spoken by Lao-tsu,
Was himself one who knew,
How comes it that he wrote a book
of five thousand words?
~Po Chu-I

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892?1950). Renascence and Other Poems. 1917.

3. The Suicide


?CURSE thee, Life, I will live with thee no more!
Thou hast mocked me, starved me, beat my body sore!
And all for a pledge that was not pledged by me,
I have kissed thy crust and eaten sparingly
That I might eat again, and met thy sneers 5
With deprecations, and thy blows with tears,?
Aye, from thy glutted lash, glad, crawled away,
As if spent passion were a holiday!
And now I go. Nor threat, nor easy vow
Of tardy kindness can avail thee now 10
With me, whence fear and faith alike are flown;
Lonely I came, and I depart alone,
And know not where nor unto whom I go;
But that thou canst not follow me I know.?

Thus I to Life, and ceased; but through my brain 15
My thought ran still, until I spake again:

?Ah, but I go not as I came,?no trace
Is mine to bear away of that old grace
I brought! I have been heated in thy fires,
Bent by thy hands, fashioned to thy desires, 20
Thy mark is on me! I am not the same
Nor ever more shall be, as when I came.
Ashes am I of all that once I seemed.
In me all?s sunk that leapt, and all that dreamed
Is wakeful for alarm,?oh, shame to thee, 25
For the ill change that thou hast wrought in me,
Who laugh no more nor lift my throat to sing!
Ah, life, I would have been a pleasant thing
To have about the house when I was grown
If thou hadst left my little joys alone! 30
I asked of thee no favor save this one:
That thou wouldst leave me playing in the sun!
And this thou didst deny, calling my name
Insistently, until I rose and came.
I saw the sun no more.?It were not well 35
So long on these unpleasant thoughts to dwell,
Need I arise to-morrow and renew
Again my hated tasks, but I am through
With all things save my thoughts and this one night,
So that in truth I seem already quite 40
Free and remote from thee,?I feel no haste
And no reluctance to depart; I taste
Merely, with thoughtful mien, an unknown draught,
That in a little while I shall have quaffed.?

Thus I to Life, and ceased, and slightly smiled, 45
Looking at nothing; and my thin dreams filed
Before me one by one till once again
I set new words unto an old refrain:

?Treasures thou hast that never have been mine!
Warm lights in many a secret chamber shine 50
Of thy gaunt house, and gusts of song have blown
Like blossoms out to me that sat alone!
And I have waited well for thee to show
If any share were mine,?and now I go!
Nothing I leave, and if I naught attain 55
I shall but come into mine own again!?
Thus I to Life, and ceased, and spake no more,
But turning, straightway, sought a certain door
In the rear wall. Heavy it was, and low
And dark,?a way by which none e?er would go 60
That other exit had, and never knock
Was heard thereat,?bearing a curious lock
Some chance had shown me fashioned faultily,
Whereof Life held content the useless key,
And great coarse hinges, thick and rough with rust, 65
Whose sudden voice across a silence must,
I knew, be harsh and horrible to hear,?
A strange door, ugly like a dwarf.?So near
I came I felt upon my feet the chill
Of acid wind creeping across the sill. 70
So stood longtime, till over me at last
Came weariness, and all things other passed
To make it room; the still night drifted deep
Like snow about me, and I longed for sleep.

But, suddenly, marking the morning hour, 75
Bayed the deep-throated bell within the