Dead Poets Society #91 Emily Dickinson: A Man may make a Remark

A Man may make a Remark by Emily Dickinson

A Man may make a Remark - 

In itself - a quiet thing 

That may furnish the Fuse unto a Spark 

In dormant nature - lain - 

 Let us divide - with skill - 

Let us discourse - with care - 

Powder exists in Charcoal - 

Before it exists in Fire -

Dead Poets Society #88 Robert Frost: Sand Dunes

Sand Dunes by Robert Frost

Sea waves are green and wet,
But up from where they die,
Rise others vaster yet,
And those are brown and dry.

They are the sea made land
To come at the fisher town,
And bury in solid sand
The men she could not drown.

She may know cove and cape,
But she does not know mankind
If by any change of shape,
She hopes to cut off mind.

Men left her a ship to sink:
They can leave her a hut as well;
And be but more free to think
For the one more cast-off shell.

Dead Poets Society #87 Anaïs Nin: Risk

Risk by Anaïs Nin

And then the day came,
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took
to Blossom.

Dead Poets Society #85 Bertolt Brecht: The Burning of the Books

The Burning Of The Books by Bertolt Brecht

When the Regime
commanded the unlawful books to be burned,
teams of dull oxen hauled huge cartloads to the bonfires.

Then a banished writer, one of the best,
scanning the list of excommunicated texts,
became enraged: he'd been excluded!

He rushed to his desk, full of contemptuous wrath,
to write fierce letters to the morons in power —
Burn me! he wrote with his blazing pen —
Haven't I always reported the truth?
Now here you are, treating me like a liar!
Burn me!

Dead Poets Society #84 William Carlos Williams: This Is Just To Say

This Is Just To Say by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten 

the plums

that were in 

the icebox

and which 

you were probably 

saving 

for breakfast

Forgive me 

they were delicious 

so sweet 

and so cold

Dead Poets Society #83 W. H. Auden: If I Could Tell You

If I Could Tell You by W. H. Auden

Time will say nothing but I told you so
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when musicians play,
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

There are no fortunes to be told, although,
Because I love you more than I can say,
If I could tell you I would let you know.

The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,
There must be reason why the leaves decay;
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

Perhaps the roses really want to grow,
The vision seriously intends to stay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

Suppose the lions all get up and go,
And the brooks and soldiers run away;
Will Time say nothing but I told you so?
If I could tell you I would let you know.

Dead Poets Society #82 Spike Milligan: Welcome Home

Welcome Home by Spike Milligan

Unaware of my crime
they stood me in the dock.

I was sentenced to life....
without her.

Strange trial.
No judge.
No jury.

I wonder who my visitors will be. 

Dead Poets Society #81 Robert Lowell: Skunk Hour (for Elizabeth Bishop)

Skunk Hour (for Elizabeth Bishop) by Robert Lowell

Nautilus Island's hermit
heiress still lives through winter in her Spartan cottage;
her sheep still graze above the sea.
Her son's a bishop. Her farmer is first selectman in our village;
she's in her dotage.

Thirsting for
the hierarchic privacy
of Queen Victoria's century
she buys up all
the eyesores facing her shore,
and lets them fall.

The season's ill-
we've lost our summer millionaire,
who seemed to leap from an L. L. Bean
catalogue. His nine-knot yawl
was auctioned off to lobstermen.
A red fox stain covers Blue Hill.

And now our fairy
decorator brightens his shop for fall;
his fishnet's filled with orange cork,
orange, his cobbler's bench and awl;
there is no money in his work,
he'd rather marry.

One dark night,
my Tudor Ford climbed the hill's skull;
I watched for love-cars. Lights turned down,
they lay together, hull to hull,
where the graveyard shelves on the town....
My mind's not right.

A car radio bleats,
'Love, O careless Love....' I hear
my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell,
as if my hand were at its throat...
I myself am hell;
nobody's here-

only skunks, that search
in the moonlight for a bite to eat.
They march on their solves up Main Street:
white stripes, moonstruck eyes' red fire
under the chalk-dry and spar spire
of the Trinitarian Church.

I stand on top
of our back steps and breathe the rich air-
a mother skunk with her column of kittens swills the garbage pail.
She jabs her wedge-head in a cup
of sour cream, drops her ostrich tail,
and will not scare.

Dead Poets Society #80 Dylan Thomas: Fern Hill

Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and

cold,

And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was
air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the
nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking
warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would
take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Dead Poets Society #78 Philip Larkin: The North Ship

The North Ship by Philip Larkin

I saw three ships go sailing by, 

Over the sea, the lifting sea, 

And the wind rose in the morning sky, 

And one was rigged for a long journey. 

The first ship turned towards the west, 

Over the sea, the running sea, 

And by the wind was all possessed 

And carried to a rich country. 

The second ship turned towards the east, 

Over the sea, the quaking sea, 

And the wind hunted it like a beast 

To anchor in captivity. 

The third ship drove towards the north, 

Over the sea, the darkening sea, 

But no breath of wind came forth, 

And the decks shone frostily.

The northern sky rose high and black 

Over the proud unfruitful sea, 

East and west the ships came back 

Happily or unhappily: 

But the third went wide and far 

Into an unforgiving sea 

Under a fire-spilling star, 

And it was rigged for a long journey. 

Dead Poets Society #77 Robert Penn Warren: San Francisco Night Windows

Robert Penn Warren: San Francisco Night Windows

So hangs the hour like fruit fullblown and sweet,
Our strict and desperate avatar,
Despite that antique westward gulls lament
Over enormous waters which retreat
Weary unto the white and sensual star.
Accept these images for what they are--
Out of the past a fragile element
Of substance into accident.
I would speak honestly and of a full heart;
I would speak surely for the tale is short,
And the soul's remorseless catalogue
Assumes its quick and piteous sum.
Think you, hungry is the city in the fog
Where now the darkened piles resume
Their framed and frozen prayer
Articulate and shafted in the stone
Against the void and absolute air.
If so the frantic breath could be forgiven,
And the deep blood subdued before it is gone
In a savage paternoster to the stone,
Then might we all be shriven.

Dead Poets Society #75 Robert Frost: Mending Wall

Mending Wall by by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours."

Dead Poets Society #73 John Keats: To Solitude

To Solitude by John Keats

O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell,
Let it not be among the jumbled heap
Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep, --
Nature's observatory -- whence the dell,
Its flowery slopes, its river's crystal swell,
May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep
'Mongst boughs pavilion'd, where the deer's swift leap
Startles the wild bee from the foxglove bell.
But though I'll gladly trace these scenes with thee,
Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind,
Whose words are images of thoughts refin'd,
Is my soul's pleasure; and it sure must be
Almost the highest bliss of human-kind,
When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.

Dead Poets Society #72 Robinson Jeffers: Hurt Hawks

Hurt Hawks by Robinson Jeffers

I

The broken pillar of the wing jags from the clotted shoulder,
The wing trails like a banner in defeat,

No more to use the sky forever but live with famine
And pain a few days: cat nor coyote
Will shorten the week of waiting for death, there is game without talons.

He stands under the oak-bush and waits
The lame feet of salvation; at night he remembers freedom
And flies in a dream, the dawns ruin it.

He is strong and pain is worse to the strong, incapacity is worse.
The curs of the day come and torment him
At distance, no one but death the redeemer will humble that head,

The intrepid readiness, the terrible eyes.
The wild God of the world is sometimes merciful to those
That ask mercy, not often to the arrogant.

You do not know him, you communal people, or you have forgotten him;
Intemperate and savage, the hawk remembers him;
Beautiful and wild, the hawks, and men that are dying, remember him.

II

I'd sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk;
but the great redtail
Had nothing left but unable misery
From the bone too shattered for mending, the wing that trailed under his talons when he moved.

We had fed him six weeks, I gave him freedom,
He wandered over the foreland hill and returned in the evening, asking for death,
Not like a beggar, still eyed with the old
Implacable arrogance.

I gave him the lead gift in the twilight.
What fell was relaxed, Owl-downy, soft feminine feathers; but what
Soared: the fierce rush: the night-herons by the flooded river cried fear at its rising
Before it was quite unsheathed from reality.

Dead Poets Society #71 Ken Kesey: Geometry

Geometry by Ken Kesey

If you draw a line
Precisely safe and parallel to mine,
We can sail together
Clear on past the stars
And never meet.
And since the holes between
These points of distant heat
Are deep and blind,
Sight a course for collision
And hang on tight!
... the precision of our loving
Is the lethal kind.

Dead Poets Society #69 Edward Thomas: Rain Poem

Rain Poem by Edward Thomas

Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain
On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me
Remembering again that I shall die
And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks
For washing me cleaner than I have been
Since I was born into this solitude.
Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:
But here I pray that none whom once I loved
Is dying to-night or lying still awake
Solitary, listening to the rain,
Either in pain or thus in sympathy
Helpless among the living and the dead,
Like a cold water among broken reeds,
Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff,
Like me who have no love which this wild rain
Has not dissolved except the love of death,
If love it be towards what is perfect and
Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint.

Dead Poets Society #68 Thomas Hardy: Snow in the Suburbs

Snow in the Suburbs by Thomas Hardy

Every branch big with it,
Bent every twig with it;
Every fork like a white web-foot;
Every street and pavement mute:
Some flakes have lost their way, and grope back upward when
Meeting those meandering down they turn and descend again.
The palings are glued together like a wall,
And there is no waft of wind with the fleecy fall.

A sparrow enters the tree,
Whereon immediately
A snow-lump thrice his own slight size
Descends on him and showers his head and eye
And overturns him,
And near inurns him,
And lights on a nether twig, when its brush
Starts off a volley of other lodging lumps with a rush. 

The steps are a blanched slope,
Up which, with feeble hope,
A black cat comes, wide-eyed and thin;
And we take him in.

Dead Poets Society #67 d.a. levy: the suburban prophets

the suburban prophets by d. a. levy

for R.D.D.

oh its an easy cool
that roling of long grass lawn tranquility
and long grass philosophy
sounds almost as absurd
as suburban hipsters
smoking long grass
like panama red while subtly discussing
plato ouspensky sartre or zen
putting it down
its easy
from the long grass lands &
from the long grass lands
'everything is good'

"everything is good"
in the land of shad trees
"Everything is God"
"the universe is one"
walking in the long grass lands with flowers
within reach of quiet hands

"You bet motherfucker,
let me tell you about
the satori i had last week!"
in the suburbs
its easy
to remember
golden rules & golden days
& god is good even tho non-existent
its a good world in the suburban long grass
you can watch the grass grow
& smell progress in the open sky
and its easy to forget
across the city
are streets of hunger
and that suburban tranquility
doesnt feed those hungry streets
and that suburban tranquility
doesnt mean a good fuck
on suburban lawns

its easy to think there
are jobs for everyone
when youve got one

its easy to quote lau tzu
when yr wife inst on the streets
and dont have to dodge the
welfare children

its an easy cool
laying on the quiet suburban lawn grass
"in tune with the universe"

and its like smoking long grass
panama red
you just slip into
an easy forgetting
and its easy to forget
some men are starving
and some men with guns…

Dead Poets Society #66 Harold Norse: We Bumped Off Your Friend The Poet

We Bumped Off Your Friend The Poet by Harold Norse

Based on a review by Cyril Connolly, Death in Granada, on the last days of Garcia Lorca,The Sunday Times (London), May 20, 1973

We bumped off your friend the poet
with the big fat head this morning

We left him in a ditch

I fired 2 bullets into his ass
for being queer

I was one of the people
who went to get Lorca
and that’s what I said to Rosales

My name is Ruiz Alonzo
ex-typographer
Right-wing deputy
alive and kicking
Falangist to the end

Nobody bothers me
I got protection
The Guardia Civil are my friends

Because he was a poet
was he better than anyone else?

He was a goddamn fag
and we were sick and tired
of fags in Granada

The black assassination squads
kept busy
liquidating professors
doctors lawyers students
like the good old days of the Inquisition!

General Queipo de Llano
had a favorite phrase
“Give him coffee, plenty of coffee!”
When Lorca was arrested

we asked the General what to do

“Give him coffee, plenty of coffee!”

So we took him out in the hills and shot him
I’d like to know what’s wrong with that
He was queer with Leftist leanings

Didn’t he say
I don’t believe in political frontiers?

Didn’t he say
The capture of Granada in 1492
by Ferdinand and Isabella
was a disastrous event?

Didn’t he call Granada a wasteland
peopled by the worst bourgeoisie in Spain?

a queer Communist poet?

General Franco owes me a medal
for putting 2 bullets up his ass

                                                                                             

                                                                San Francisco 1973

Dead Poets Society #65 Norman Mailer: The Shortest Novel of Them All

The Shortest Novel of Them All by Norman Mailer

At first she thought she could kill him in three days.
She nearly did. His heart proved unequal to her compliments.
The she thought it would take three weeks. But he survived.
She revised her tables and calculated three months.
After three years, he was still alive. So they got married.
Now they've married for thirty years. People speak warmly of them.
They are known as the best marriage in town.
It's just that their children keep dying.