If you have access to the internet, watch the following poem:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctl9ZY3VSus

(or, if it is easier, you can search youtube for Imani Cezanne “Flowers”)

A Story About the Body

Robert Hass

The young composer, working that summer at an artist’s colony,

had watched her for a week. She was Japanese, a painter, almost

sixty, and he thought he was in love with her. He loved her work,

and her work was like the way she moved her body, used her hands,

looked at him directly when she made amused and considered

answers to his questions. One night, walking back from a concert,

they came to her door and she turned to him and said, “I think you

would like to have me. I would like that too, but I must tell you that

I have had a double mastectomy,” and when he didn’t understand,

“I’ve lost both my breasts.” The radiance that he had carried around

in his belly and chest cavity – like music – withered very quickly,

and he made himself look at her when he said, “I’m sorry. I don’t

think I could.” He walked back to his own cabin through the pines,

and in the morning he found a small blue bowl on the porch outside

his door. It looked to be full of rose petals, but he found when he

picked it up that the rose petals were on top; the rest of the bowl –

she must have swept them from the corners of her studio – was

full of dead bees.


.

Subterranean Night-Colored Magus (3 Moods in the Mode of Miles) -- D.J. Renegade

Subterranean means underground
deep, profound
and Miles was one deep brother
deep like a shaft
decrescendoing to the motherlode
blue blowing undersongs
Miles was a tenor trumpet
ten or eleven levels deeper
than the next cat
painting all up under the canvas
making it bluebleed out the other side
Blowing subterranean solos
underground rhythmic resistance
virtual virtuoso
battling musical mafiosos
burrowing under they skin
Miles, son of a dentist doing rootwork
with a hoodoo horn hollering bebop toasts
He was Petey Wheatstraw
Satchmo's son-in-law
a Signifying Junkie jumping cold turkey
out the lion's mouth
Shine below the deck of the Titanic
blueing up the boilers
Miles could blue like Bird
freight like Trane
early like Bird
night like Trane
wing like Bird
rail like Trane
Rumbling underground.
Nightcolor is blacker
than a million miles of fresh asphalt
Miles was one deep black brother
black and fluid as floating smoke
black as the sky round midnight
black as a tire turning for miles ahead
black kettle stewing a Bitch’s Brew
so black, he was Kind of Blue
Miles, slick as black ice
cool as snow
sweet as black cherries
On the Downbeat like a blackjack
a black jackhammer
black Jack Johnson
black Jack of all trumpeting trades
Miles, the Jack of Spades
was our Ace cuz he played / nightcolors
Deepblack, tripleblack
shinyblack
cinderblack
ashyblack
quarterblack
multi-meta-megablack
All shades of Miles
shifting harmonic gears
in his chromatic Ferrari
Blowing Blue Moods
with his black turned
to the audience
speaking cooly
in the colors of night.
Magi are priests
spell-wailing wizards
Miles was deep, black, and magic
conjuring in the key of We
Magus, Magus? ask minders
of the metronome
Miles is secular they say
but we know you spiritual
a soloing sorcerer with ESP
Lord have mercy
you Rev. Miles tonally testifyin
from the Book of the Blues
blowing muted magic
like chapter and verse
Making a joyful noise
unto the lord
and nobody else hip enough
to dig the scene
You Magi Miles with crazy styles
even sported a Tutu
Miles, 1.6 sacred klicks of cool
Miles, 5,280 feet doing
the east Saint Boogie
moody as any Monk
you were Live and Evil
but In a Silent Way
Your holy brown hands
scribbling neon-blue notes
throwing Milestones through
the stained glass windows of Jazz
so deeply, so darkly
Such magic



Do Not Go Gentle

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

—Dylan Thomas, 1939


Atomic Pantoum

In a chain reaction
the neutrons released
split other nuclei
which release more neutrons

The neutrons released
blow open some others
which release more neutrons
and start this all over

Blow open some others
and choirs will crumble
and start this all over
with eyes burned to ashes

And choirs will crumble
the fish catch on fire
with eyes burned to ashes
in a chain reaction

The fish catch on fire
because the sun’s force
in a chain reaction
has blazed in our minds

Because the sun’s force
with plutonium trigger
has blazed in our minds
we are dying to use it

With plutonium trigger
curled and tightened
we are dying to use it
torching our enemies

Curled and tightened
blind to the end
torching our enemies
we sing to Jesus

Blind to the end
split up like nuclei
we sing to Jesus
in a chain reaction

--Peter Meinke, 1983


To The Indifferent Women

Charlotte Anna Perkins GilmanA Sestina

You who are happy in a thousand homes,

Or overworked therein, to a dumb peace;

Whose souls are wholly centered in the life

Of that small group you personally love;

Who told you that you need not know or care

About the sin and sorrow of the world?

Do you believe the sorrow of the world

Does not concern you in your little homes? —

That you are licensed to avoid the care

And toil for human progress, human peace,

And the enlargement of our power of love

Until it covers every field of life?

The one first duty of all human life

Is to promote the progress of the world

In righteousness, in wisdom, truth and love;

And you ignore it, hidden in your homes,

Content to keep them in uncertain peace,

Content to leave all else without your care.

Yet you are mothers! And a mother's care

Is the first step toward friendly human life.

Life where all nations in untroubled peace

Unite to raise the standard of the world

And make the happiness we seek in homes

Spread everywhere in strong and fruitful love.

You are content to keep that mighty love

In its first steps forever; the crude care

Of animals for mate and young and homes,

Instead of pouring it abroad in life,

Its mighty current feeding all the world

Till every human child can grow in peace.

You cannot keep your small domestic peace

Your little pool of undeveloped love,

While the neglected, starved, unmothered world

Struggles and fights for lack of mother's care,

And its tempestuous, bitter, broken life

Beats in upon you in your selfish homes.

We all may have our homes in joy and peace

When woman's life, in its rich power of love

Is joined with man's to care for all the world.

—Charlotte Anna Perkins Gilman, 1904