31 Jul: On Shakespeare.1630 By John Milton

What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones,

The labor of an age in pilèd stones,

Or that his hallowed relics should be hid   

Under a star-ypointing pyramid?

Dear son of Memory, great heir of fame,

What need’st thou such weak witness of thy name?

Thou in our wonder and astonishment

Hast built thyself a live-long monument.

For whilst to th’ shame of slow-endeavouring art,   

Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart   

Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book

Those Delphic lines with deep impression took,   

Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,   

Dost make us marble with too much conceiving;

And so sepúlchred in such pomp dost lie,

That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.

27 Jul: "Go, Ghost, Go" by Sherman Alexie

Go, Ghost, Go

At this university upon a hill,
         I meet a tenured professor
                 Who's strangely thrilled
         To list all of the oppressors --
Past, present, and future -- who have killed.
Are killing, and will kill the indigenous.
         O, he names the standard suspects --
                 Rich, white, and unjust --
         And I, a red man, think he's correct,
But why does he have to be so humorless?

And how can he, a white man, fondly speak
         Of the Ghost Dance, the strange and cruel
                 Ceremony
         That, if performed well, would have doomed
All white men to hell, destroyed their colonies,
And brought back every dead Indian to life?
         The professor says, "Brown people
                 From all brown tribes
         Will burn skyscrapers and steeples.
They'll speak Spanish and carry guns and knives.
Sherman, can't you see that immigration
         Is the new and improved Ghost Dance?"
         All I can do is laugh and laugh
And say, "Damn, you've got some imagination.
You should write a screenplay about this shit --
         About some fictional city,
         Grown fat and pale and pretty,
That's destroyed by a Chicano apocalypse."
The professor doesn't speak. He shakes his head
         And assaults me with his pity.
         I wonder how he can believe
In a ceremony that requires his death.
I think that he thinks he's the new Jesus.
         He's eager to get on that cross
         And pay the ultimate cost
Because he's addicted to the indigenous.

26 Jul: "The Limited" by Sherman Alexie

I saw a man swerve his car
And try to hit a stray dog,
But the quick mutt dodged
Between two parked cars

And made his escape.
God, I thought, did I just see
What I think I saw?
At the next red light,

I pulled up beside the man
And stared hard at him.
He knew that I’d seen
His murder attempt,

But he didn’t care.
He smiled and yelled loud
Enough for me to hear him
Through our closed windows:

“Don’t give me that face
Unless you’re going to do
Something about it.
Come on tough guy,

What are you going to do?”
I didn’t do anything.
I turned right on the green.
He turned left against traffic.

I don’t know what happened
To that man or the dog,
But I drove home
And wrote this poem.

Why do poets think
They can change the world?
The only life I can save
Is my own.

25 Jul: "One need not be a chamber" by Emily Dickinson

ONE need not be a chamber to be haunted,
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.

Far safer, of a midnight meeting 5
External ghost,
Than an interior confronting
That whiter host.

Far safer through an Abbey gallop,
The stones achase, 10
Than, moonless, one’s own self encounter
In lonesome place.

Ourself, behind ourself concealed,
Should startle most;
Assassin, hid in our apartment, 15
Be horror’s least.

The prudent carries a revolver,
He bolts the door,
O’erlooking a superior spectre
More near.

24 Jul: "Grace Marks" by Susanna Moodie

"I dare not think--I cannot pray;

To name the name of God were sin:

No grief of mine can wash away

The consciousness of guilt within.

The stain of blood is on my hand,

The curse of Cain is on my brow;--

I see that ghastly phantom stand

Between me and the sunshine now!

That mocking face still haunts my dreams,

That blood-shot eye that never sleeps,

In night and darkness--oh, it gleams,

Like red-hot steel--but never weeps!

And still it bends its burning gaze

On mine, till drops of terror start

From my hot brow, and hell's fierce blaze

Is kindled in my brain and heart.

I long for death, yet dare not die,

Though life is now a weary curse;

But oh, that dread eternity

May bring a punishment far worse!"

21 Jul: “Cream of the Crop” by Jimmy Nameles

“Cream of the Crop”

People are homogenized,

Spun around an axis,

Skimmed, acidified, separated,

Turned non-soluble liquid,

Reduced in size, and

Distributed by grade.

The cream rises to the top.

They are the buttermilk,

Dense,

Attributing their success to hard work,

Smart choices, and
Focus.

They call the skim milk

Lazy and worthless,

And even worse

Deservent.

19 Jul: "Twelve" by Lynn Melnick

When I was your age I went to a banquet.

When I was your age I went to a barroom

and bought cigarettes with quarters

lifted from the laundry money. Last night

I did all your laundry. I don’t know why

I thought this love could be pure. It’s enough

that it’s infinite. I kiss your cheek when you sleep

and wonder if you feel it.

It’s the same cheek I’ve kissed from the beginning.

You don’t have to like me.

You just have to let me

keep your body yours. It’s mine.

When I was your age I went to a banquet

and a man in a tux pinched my cheeks.

When I was your age I went to a barroom

and a man in a band shirt pinched my ass.

There is so much I don’t know about you.

Last night I skipped a banquet

so I could stay home and do your laundry

and drink wine from my grandmother’s glass.

When I was your age boys traded quarters

for a claw at my carcass on a pleather bench

while I missed the first few seconds of a song

I’d hoped to record on my backseat boombox.

When I was your age I enjoyed a hook.

You think I know nothing of metamorphosis

but when I was your age I invented a key change.

You don’t have to know what I know.

15 July: "Full Moon" by Elinor Wylie

My bands of silk and miniver

Momently grew heavier;

The black gauze was beggarly thin;

The ermine muffled mouth and chin;

I could not suck the moonlight in.

Harlequin in lozenges

Of love and hate, I walked in these

Striped and ragged rigmaroles;

Along the pavement my footsoles

Trod warily on living coals.

Shouldering the thoughts I loathed,

In their corrupt disguises clothed,

Morality I could not tear

From my ribs, to leave them bare

Ivory in silver air.

There I walked, and there I raged;

The spiritual savage caged

Within my skeleton, raged afresh

To feel, behind a carnal mesh,

The clean bones crying in the flesh.

14 Jul: "Watched Pot Apostrophes" by Paul Guest

You will never boil.  You’ll go blind
not doing that. In space, your blood
will also refuse to boil.  No surprise
all the movies are dead wrong,
though my nerves aren’t soothed
whenever I’m bobbing in the vacuum
like an apple in ice water.
You are going to receive money.
And then you’ll spend it
on a fiberglass replica
of the sports car you wanted
when you were thirteen.
Or fifteen.  You may think this matters,
this discrepancy fluttering
in your face like a ragged moth.
Trust me, you'll summer in Ceylon.
When they decide to change
the name back.  When all
the maps at once go a little bad.
I’ve assumed more
than is good for one’s soul.
You’ll inform me you bled out a long time ago.
In Chicago.  In Reading.
Somewhere cold.  Winter
all the time, where people go
down to the frozen water
with an old crowbar
to bash the skin of the ice back to flowing current.
You were one of them,
weren’t you, with death
itching in the brain like a cloud of midges?
You won’t fall if I let go.
I never held you in my arms.

13 Jul: Lamium by Louise Glück

This is how you live when you have a cold heart.

As I do: in shadows, trailing over cool rock,

under the great maple trees.

The sun hardly touches me.

Sometimes I see it in early spring, rising very far away.

Then leaves grow over it, completely hiding it. I feel it

glinting through the leaves, erratic,

like someone hitting the side of a glass with a metal spoon.

Living things don't all require

light in the same degree. Some of us

make our own light: a silver leaf

like a path no one can use, a shallow

lake of silver in the darkness under the great maples.

But you know this already.

You and the others who think

you live for truth and, by extension, love

all that is cold.

12 Jul: Amor Fati By Jane Hirshfield

Little soul,

you have wandered

lost a long time.

The woods all dark now,

birded and eyed.

Then a light, a cabin, a fire, a door standing open.

The fairy tales warn you:

Do not go in,

you who would eat will be eaten.

You go in. You quicken.

You want to have feet.

You want to have eyes.

You want to have fears.

10 July: "For some there is no music" by Henry Rollins

"For some there is no music" by Henry Rollins

For some there is no music

No lights

No fire

No untamed madness that breathes life

There is work

Anguish

Frustration

Rage

Despair

A dullness that rings like wooden thunder

1 Jul: William Cowper's "The Castaway"

Obscurest night involv'd the sky,

         Th' Atlantic billows roar'd,

When such a destin'd wretch as I,

         Wash'd headlong from on board,

Of friends, of hope, of all bereft,

His floating home for ever left.

No braver chief could Albion boast

         Than he with whom he went,

Nor ever ship left Albion's coast,

         With warmer wishes sent.

He lov'd them both, but both in vain,

Nor him beheld, nor her again.

Not long beneath the whelming brine,

         Expert to swim, he lay;

Nor soon he felt his strength decline,

         Or courage die away;

But wag'd with death a lasting strife,

Supported by despair of life.

He shouted: nor his friends had fail'd

         To check the vessel's course,

But so the furious blast prevail'd,

         That, pitiless perforce,

They left their outcast mate behind,

And scudded still before the wind.

Some succour yet they could afford;

         And, such as storms allow,

The cask, the coop, the floated cord,

         Delay'd not to bestow.

But he (they knew) nor ship, nor shore,

Whate'er they gave, should visit more.

Nor, cruel as it seem'd, could he

         Their haste himself condemn,

Aware that flight, in such a sea,

         Alone could rescue them;

Yet bitter felt it still to die

Deserted, and his friends so nigh.

He long survives, who lives an hour

         In ocean, self-upheld;

And so long he, with unspent pow'r,

         His destiny repell'd;

And ever, as the minutes flew,

Entreated help, or cried—Adieu!

At length, his transient respite past,

         His comrades, who before

Had heard his voice in ev'ry blast,

         Could catch the sound no more.

For then, by toil subdued, he drank

The stifling wave, and then he sank.

No poet wept him: but the page

         Of narrative sincere;

That tells his name, his worth, his age,

         Is wet with Anson's tear.

And tears by bards or heroes shed

Alike immortalize the dead.

I therefore purpose not, or dream,

         Descanting on his fate,

To give the melancholy theme

         A more enduring date:

But misery still delights to trace

   Its semblance in another's case.

No voice divine the storm allay'd,

         No light propitious shone;

When, snatch'd from all effectual aid,

         We perish'd, each alone:

But I beneath a rougher sea,

And whelm'd in deeper gulfs than he.