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I won my first medal when I was nine years old. It was at the Boston Open.

quote by Nancy Kerrigan
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Sincere Thanks

Sincere thanks to the Africans who,
Made us proud at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games;
For there their talents were exposed to the world.
Thanks to Kenya who got the total of 14 medals:
Made up of 5 Gold medals,5 Silver medals and 4 Bronze medals.
Thanks to Ethiopia who got the total of 7 medals:
Made up of 4 Gold medals, a Silver medal and 2 Bronze medals.
Thanks to Zimbabwe who got the total of 4 medals:
Made up of a Gold medal and 3 Silver medals.
Thanks to Cameroon who got a single Gold medal,
Thanks to Tunisia who got a single Gold medal,
Thanks to Nigeria who got the total of 4 medals:
Made up of a Silver medal and 3 Bronze medals.
Thanks to Algeria who got 2 medals:
Made up of a Silver medal and a Bronze medal.
Thanks to Morocco who got 2 medals:
Made up of a Siver medal and a Bronze medal.
THanks to South Africa who got a single Silver medal,
Thanks to Sudan who got a single Silver medal,
Thanks to Egypt who got a single Bronze medal,
Thanks to Mauritius who got a single Bronze medal,
And tanks to Togo who also got a single Bronze medal.
You've really made Africa proud and we do thank you all!

poem by Edward Kofi Louis
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The Only Way To Control Things

The only way to control things is with an open hand.
Water on rock
a fist can't do anything to stop the rain
that keeps washing its bloody knuckles
by kissing the raw red buds
of the pain-killing poppies clean.
Anger grows ashamed of itself
in the presence of unopposable compassion
just as planets are humbled by their atmospheres.
The soft supple things of life insist
and the hard brittle ones comply.
Bullies are the broken toys of wimps.
Power limps.
But space is an open hand.
Mass may shape it
but it teaches matter how to move
just as the sky converts its openness
into a cloud and a bird
or the silence nurtures
the embryo of a blue word
in the empty womb of the dark mother
like the echo of something that can't be said.

The only way to control things is with an open hand.
Not a posture of giving.
Not a posture of receiving.
Not a posture of greeting or farewell.
Not hanging on or letting go
but the single bridge they both make
when they're both at peace with the flow.
It's not the branch it's not the trunk
it's not the root it's not the fruit
but the open handedness of its leaves
that is a tree's consummate passion.
Isis tattoos her star on their palms
like sailors and sails
to keep them from drowning
and into the valleys of their open hands
that lie at the foot of their crook-backed mountains
the aloof stars risk the intimacy of fireflies
and fate flows down like tributaries into the mindstream
as life roots its wildflowers on both shores
as if there were no sides to the flowing
of our binary lifelines.

The only way to control things is with an open hand.
You cannot bind the knower to the knowing
as if time had to know where eternity was going
before anything could change.
X marks the spot where all maps are born

[...] Read more

poem by Patrick White
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Open Your Box

Open your box,
Open your box,
Open your trousers,
Open your thighs,
Open your legs,
Open, open, open, open, oooh.
Open, open, open, open,
Open your legs,
Open your flies,
Open your ears,
Open your nose,
Open your mouth,
Open, open, open, open, oooh.
Open.
Open your cold feet,
Open, open,
Open, open, open, let's open, let's open the cities.
Open the cities,
Open, open, open the world,
Open, let's open the world.
Open, open, oooh -
Open, open, ooh!

song performed by Yoko Ono
Added by Lucian Velea
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Open Your Box

Open your box,
Open your box,
Open your trousers,
Open your thighs,
Open your legs,
Open, open, open, open, oooh.
Open, open, open, open,
Open your legs,
Open your flies,
Open your ears,
Open your nose,
Open your mouth,
Open, open, open, open, oooh.
Open.
Open your cold feet,
Open, open,
Open, open, open, let's open, let's open the cities.
Open the cities,
Open, open, open the world,
Open, let's open the world.
Open, open, oooh -
Open, open, ooh!

song performed by Yoko Ono
Added by Lucian Velea
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Peter Rugg the Bostonian

I

The mare is pawing by the oak,
The chaise is cool and wide
For Peter Rugg the Bostonian
With his little son beside;
The women loiter at the wheels
In the pleasant summer-tide.

"And when wilt thou be home, Father?"
"And when, good husband, say:
The cloud hangs heavy on the house
What time thou art away."
He answers straight, he answers short,
"At noon of the seventh day."

"Fail not to come, if God so will,
And the weather be kind and clear."
"Farewell, farewell! But who am I
A blockhead rain to fear?
God willing or God unwilling,
I have said it, I will be here."

He gathers up the sunburnt boy
And from the gate is sped;
He shakes the spark from the stones below,

The bloom from overhead,
Till the last roofs of his own town
Pass in the morning-red.

Upon a homely mission
North unto York he goes,
Through the long highway broidered thick
With elder-blow and rose;
And sleeps in sounds of breakers
At every twilight's close.

Intense upon his heedless head
Frowns Agamenticus,
Knowing of Heaven's challenger
The answer: even thus
The Patience that is hid on high
Doth stoop to master us.

II

Full light are all his parting dreams;
Desire is in his brain;
He tightens at the tavern-post

[...] Read more

poem by Louise Imogen Guiney
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Boston

Where the ferries come to shore
She never really knew how good it would feel
To finally find herself in a place so warm and real
She wears a Red Sox cap
To hide her baby dreads
The girl she was in New England
Is different now and dead
In all the local bars
She flirts and tells the boys while they're talkin'
She's from Boston
She comes from Boston
Talks to her family now and then
Through e-mails and postcards
She tries to explain to them
That education and occupation will have to wait for now
She loves the Rasta, reggae rhythms, her dreams have changed somehow
She wears a Red Sox cap
To hide her baby dreads
The girl she was in New England
Is different now and dead
In all the local bars
She flirts and tells the boys while they're talkin'
She's from Boston
Her toes dig deep and deeper in the sand
She's seduced by the sunsets and her new life at hand
She wears a Red Sox cap
To hide her baby dreads
The girl she was in New England
Is different now and dead
In all the local bars
She flirts and tells the boys while they're talkin'
She's from Boston
She wears a Red Sox cap
To hide her baby dreads
From Boston

song performed by Kenny Chesney
Added by Lucian Velea
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Rescue The Slave

This song was composed while George Latimer, the fugitive slave, was
confined in Leverett Street Jail, Boston, expecting to be carried back
to Virginia by James B. Gray, his claimant.

Sadly the fugitive weeps in his cell,
Listen awhile to the story we tell;
Listen ye gentle ones, listen ye brave,
Lady fair! Lady fair! weep for the slave.

Praying for liberty, dearer than life,
Torn from his little one, torn from his wife,
Flying from slavery, hear him and save,
Christian men! Christian men! help the poor slave.

Think of his agony, feel for his pain,
Should his hard master e'er hold him again;
Spirit of liberty, rise from your grave,
Make him free, make him free, rescue the slave.

Freely the slave master goes where he will;
Freemen, stand ready, his wishes to fulfil,
Helping the tyrant, or honest or knave,
Thinking not, caring not, for the poor slave.

Talk not of liberty, liberty is dead;
See the slave master's whip over our head;
Stooping beneath it, we ask what he craves,
Boston boys! Boston boys! catch me my slaves.

Freemen, arouse ye, before it's too late;
Slavery is knocking, at every gate,
Make good the promise, your early days gave,
Boston boys! Boston boys! rescue the slave.

poem by Anonymous Americas
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Boston

Sicut Patribus, sit Deus Nobis)

The rocky nook with hilltops three
Looked eastward from the farms,
And twice each day the flowing sea
Took Boston in its arms;
The men of yore were stout and poor,
And sailed for bread to every shore.

And where they went on trade intent
They did what freeman can,
Their dauntless ways did all men praise,
The merchant was a man.
The world was made for honest trade,-
To plant and eat be none afraid.

The waves that rocked them on the deep
To them their secret told;
Said the winds that sung the lads to sleep,
'Like us be free and bold!'
The honest waves refuse to slaves
The empire of the ocean caves.

Old Europe groans with palaces,
Has lords enough and more;-
We plant and build by foaming seas
A city of the poor;-
For day by day could Boston Bay
Their honest labor overpay.

We grant no dukedoms to the few,
We hold like rights and shall;-
Equal on Sunday in the pew,
On Monday in the mall.
For what avail the plough or sail,
Or land or life, if freedom fail?

The noble craftsmen we promote,
Disown the knave and fool;
Each honest man shall have his vote,
Each child shall have his school.
A union then of honest men,
Or union nevermore again.

[...] Read more

poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A letter to a Captain

Captain Owen
Did you find your glory?
The glory you left home for
You should have stayed
Stayed safe at home

Captain Owen
I have seen your photographs
The photographs of words
The photographs of death, of war
The same war you died in

You shouldn't have gone
You should have stayed
Stayed safe at home

Captain Owen
You deserved to live
You would've lived if you never went
And yet if you never went
We would have never known

Captain Owen
Did you get a medal?
I will give you a medal
A medal of humanity
A medal of capturing what no one saw

Deaths that everyone turned away from
But you ran to save

poem by Mariam de Haan
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The White Cliffs

I
I have loved England, dearly and deeply,
Since that first morning, shining and pure,
The white cliffs of Dover I saw rising steeply
Out of the sea that once made her secure.
I had no thought then of husband or lover,
I was a traveller, the guest of a week;
Yet when they pointed 'the white cliffs of Dover',
Startled I found there were tears on my cheek.
I have loved England, and still as a stranger,
Here is my home and I still am alone.
Now in her hour of trial and danger,
Only the English are really her own.

II
It happened the first evening I was there.
Some one was giving a ball in Belgrave Square.
At Belgrave Square, that most Victorian spot.—
Lives there a novel-reader who has not
At some time wept for those delightful girls,
Daughters of dukes, prime ministers and earls,
In bonnets, berthas, bustles, buttoned basques,
Hiding behind their pure Victorian masks
Hearts just as hot - hotter perhaps than those
Whose owners now abandon hats and hose?
Who has not wept for Lady Joan or Jill
Loving against her noble parent's will
A handsome guardsman, who to her alarm
Feels her hand kissed behind a potted palm
At Lady Ivry's ball the dreadful night
Before his regiment goes off to fight;
And see him the next morning, in the park,
Complete in busbee, marching to embark.
I had read freely, even as a child,
Not only Meredith and Oscar Wilde
But many novels of an earlier day—
Ravenshoe, Can You Forgive Her?, Vivien Grey,
Ouida, The Duchess, Broughton's Red As a Rose,
Guy Livingstone, Whyte-Melville— Heaven knows
What others. Now, I thought, I was to see
Their habitat, though like the Miller of Dee,
I cared for none and no one cared for me.

III
A light blue carpet on the stair
And tall young footmen everywhere,
Tall young men with English faces
Standing rigidly in their places,
Rows and rows of them stiff and staid

[...] Read more

poem by Alice Duer Miller
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Open Arms

If love is what you want
Baby here I am
If tenderness is what you need
Ive got that to give
If you need some affection
Baby these are open arms
Open arms open arms open arms open arms
You come hem youve had a hard day
Every door you tried to open
Was closing in your face
Im right here Ill be right here
Ill embrace you
Ill be open with my heart
Ill let you in
Ill be open with my thoughts
Ill be your best friend
If you need some attention
Baby these are open arms
Open arms open arms open arms open arms
Every corner you turn
Trouble come your way
But when you get home
Ill try to be there
And Ill embrace you
These are
These are
These are
Open arms
If time is what you need
Baby Ill stop the clocks
If youre looking for something
Maybe Ive got what you want
If theres one thing to remember
Dont forget that these are open arms
Open arms open arms open arms open arms
These are
These are
These are
Open arms

song performed by Tracy Chapman
Added by Lucian Velea
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M'Fingal - Canto II

The Sun, who never stops to dine,
Two hours had pass'd the mid-way line,
And driving at his usual rate,
Lash'd on his downward car of state.
And now expired the short vacation,
And dinner o'er in epic fashion,
While all the crew, beneath the trees,
Eat pocket-pies, or bread and cheese,
(Nor shall we, like old Homer, care
To versify their bill of fare)
Each active party, feasted well,
Throng'd in, like sheep, at sound of bell;
With equal spirit took their places,
And meeting oped with three Oh Yesses:
When first, the daring Whigs t' oppose,
Again the great M'Fingal rose,
Stretch'd magisterial arm amain,
And thus resumed th' accusing strain.

"Ye Whigs attend, and hear affrighted
The crimes whereof ye stand indicted;
The sins and follies past all compass,
That prove you guilty, or non compos.
I leave the verdict to your senses,
And jury of your consciences;
Which though they're neither good nor true,
Must yet convict you and your crew.

"Ungrateful sons! a factious band,
That rise against your parent land!
Ye viper race, that burst in strife
The genial womb that gave you life,
Tear with sharp fangs and forked tongue
The indulgent bowels whence ye sprung;
And scorn the debt and obligation,
You justly owe the British nation,
Which, since you cannot pay, your crew
Affect to swear was never due.

"Did not the deeds of England's primate
First drive your fathers to this climate,
Whom jails and fines and every ill
Forced to their good against their will?
Ye owe to their obliging temper
The peopling your new-fangled empire,
While every British act and canon
Stood forth your causa sine qua non.

[...] Read more

poem by John Trumbull
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Canto the First

I
I want a hero: an uncommon want,
When every year and month sends forth a new one,
Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant,
The age discovers he is not the true one;
Of such as these I should not care to vaunt,
I'll therefore take our ancient friend Don Juan—
We all have seen him, in the pantomime,
Sent to the devil somewhat ere his time.

II
Vernon, the butcher Cumberland, Wolfe, Hawke,
Prince Ferdinand, Granby, Burgoyne, Keppel, Howe,
Evil and good, have had their tithe of talk,
And fill'd their sign posts then, like Wellesley now;
Each in their turn like Banquo's monarchs stalk,
Followers of fame, "nine farrow" of that sow:
France, too, had Buonaparté and Dumourier
Recorded in the Moniteur and Courier.

III
Barnave, Brissot, Condorcet, Mirabeau,
Petion, Clootz, Danton, Marat, La Fayette,
Were French, and famous people, as we know:
And there were others, scarce forgotten yet,
Joubert, Hoche, Marceau, Lannes, Desaix, Moreau,
With many of the military set,
Exceedingly remarkable at times,
But not at all adapted to my rhymes.

IV
Nelson was once Britannia's god of war,
And still should be so, but the tide is turn'd;
There's no more to be said of Trafalgar,
'T is with our hero quietly inurn'd;
Because the army's grown more popular,
At which the naval people are concern'd;
Besides, the prince is all for the land-service,
Forgetting Duncan, Nelson, Howe, and Jervis.

V
Brave men were living before Agamemnon
And since, exceeding valorous and sage,
A good deal like him too, though quite the same none;
But then they shone not on the poet's page,
And so have been forgotten:—I condemn none,
But can't find any in the present age
Fit for my poem (that is, for my new one);
So, as I said, I'll take my friend Don Juan.

[...] Read more

poem by Byron from Don Juan (1824)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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HIRED GUNS (For The Lone Ranger)

HIRED GUNS
(For The Lone Ranger)
by Steven A. J. Drake
January 28,2012

1) Fighting a war with words out of
The deep, dark recesses of my mind.
According to my bloodline. I'm related
To Joaquin Murrieta. California.
Robin Hood of the old west.
He got with an Indian woman.
Apache. Geronimo. Arizona.
Perhaps parts of New Mexico.

2) Hard pressed with guns and saddle.
Raised myself up with a bow and arrows.
Slipping back over time's of treacherous
Deep, dark secret shadows. Government stealing
Indian land. Gold and silver.
The white of their eyes. Over the crest
Of mountains. No fair gains for a free ride,
Across the western plains, disguised.

Chorus:
Hired guns to steal your cattle.
Drawing your marksmanship.
Without a medal. Mixed, to even the score.
After the facts at the rue morgue.
Ravens knocking down your door.
Sleep with one eye open. Stars
With a mask for the Lone Ranger.

3) Sky was the limit. Talk to eagles.
Bare down the punches. Wearing a mask for
Zorro. Clearing your head. Broken treaties.
Wiping out the buffalo. Trade fairs that come
Down to zero. No peace of mind.
Stealing your heroes. Gifts of labor
Sought after the facts of tomorrow...
Raising questions up out of the dead.

Bridge:
A whole lot has changed. Stagecoaches. 
Wells Fargo. Pinkerton hired to break up
The Unions. Where are the bodies buried?
In the graves at the O.K. Corral.
Horses prancing in the arena.
Clowns taking the bulls by the horns.
In crowds of desperados.

[...] Read more

poem by Steven Drake
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Open The Gate

I see you from the distance
From beyond the fence you made
Hiding all your feelings
Behind your barricade
Oh have you been invaded
Is this the reason why you hide
I know just how you're feeling
I know - let me inside

Open the gate up
Open the gate up - hurry
Open the gate up - hurry

I want to get near you
But you just won't let me in
'Cause you're so scared of losing
Everything you've got within

Come on now you can trust me
Come on and open the door
'Cause I know just how you're feeling
I know - I've been there before

Open the gate up
Open the gate up - hurry
Open the gate up
Hurry hurry hurry hurry
And do it right now
Do it right now
Do it right now
Do it right now - hurry

Do it right now - do it right now
Do it right now - do it right now
And do it right now - do it right now
Do it right now - do it right now
Hurry

Open the gate up
Open the gate up - hurry
Open the gate up
Hurry hurry hurry hurry
Open the gate up - open the gate up
Or I'm gonna knock the damn door down
Open the gate up - open the gate up
Or I'm gonna knock the damn door down
Open the gate up - open the gate up
Or I'm gonna knock the damn door down
Open the gate up - open the gate up
Or I'm gonna knock the damn door down

[...] Read more

song performed by No Doubt from Beacon Street Collection
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A Boston Ballad, 1854

TO get betimes in Boston town, I rose this morning early;
Here's a good place at the corner--I must stand and see the show.

Clear the way there, Jonathan!
Way for the President's marshal! Way for the government cannon!
Way for the Federal foot and dragoons--and the apparitions copiously
tumbling.

I love to look on the stars and stripes--I hope the fifes will play
Yankee Doodle.

How bright shine the cutlasses of the foremost troops!
Every man holds his revolver, marching stiff through Boston town.

A fog follows--antiques of the same come limping,
Some appear wooden-legged, and some appear bandaged and bloodless. 10

Why this is indeed a show! It has called the dead out of the earth!
The old grave-yards of the hills have hurried to see!
Phantoms! phantoms countless by flank and rear!
Cock'd hats of mothy mould! crutches made of mist!
Arms in slings! old men leaning on young men's shoulders!

What troubles you, Yankee phantoms? What is all this chattering of
bare gums?
Does the ague convulse your limbs? Do you mistake your crutches for
fire-locks, and level them?

If you blind your eyes with tears, you will not see the President's
marshal;
If you groan such groans, you might balk the government cannon.

For shame, old maniacs! Bring down those toss'd arms, and let your
white hair be; 20
Here gape your great grand-sons--their wives gaze at them from the
windows,
See how well dress'd--see how orderly they conduct themselves.

Worse and worse! Can't you stand it? Are you retreating?
Is this hour with the living too dead for you?

Retreat then! Pell-mell!
To your graves! Back! back to the hills, old limpers!
I do not think you belong here, anyhow.

But there is one thing that belongs here--shall I tell you what it
is, gentlemen of Boston?
I will whisper it to the Mayor--he shall send a committee to England;
They shall get a grant from the Parliament, go with a cart to the
royal vault--haste! 30

[...] Read more

poem by Walt Whitman
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Now, Heart' - Some Of What I Remember When I Listen

A river is a process through time, and the river stages are its momentary parts.
—Willard Van Orman Quine

From early poems,1970s, youthful indiscretions/attempts to vocally/poetically arrive at/derive a worthwhile writer's voice. Some explication might serve or enhance these under serving, undeserving though 'striving-after' poems hidden in old journals understandably unpublished but now so with apologies which are these expiatory explanations. Recently rediscovering these early arrivals, derivative yet aspiring I recognized and reembraced an enduring self maturing, arriving into late middle age:

Obsessed newly by jazz, mad about the many miraculous lady singers, entranced all too easily as youth are wont to be by sorrows and sexual infatuations which feel, emphasis on 'feel', like love, here are two of many 'songs' as tributes and life markers to jazz singers who provided soundtrack and felt expression to my angst and easily inflated/deflated sense of self, of beloved others, and of that new territory, independent life away from parental home and childhood community discovering, blundering into the fray of separate hearts and minds, irresponsible genitals and insouciant jouissance ('juiciness', in French) , discovering then and again and again that like Walt Whitman I 'contain worlds' and many disparate selves poorly formed, most of them collective projections and expectations of who or what I wanted to be, what others wanted and expected me to be, resulting in much confusion, tumult and multitudes of momentary throw-away selves. Thus singers like Bessie Smith and Dinah Washington became anchors, warm contexts and containers, for my daily fragmentation and re-formation.

I lived on 3rd street in downtown Chattanooga, a refugee from zealous, politically conservative white evangelicals and the vestigial yet still viral Southern Confederacy. Just a block or two from where Bessie Smith was born, I used to watch from my upstairs porch the steep hilly street's comings and goings with a glimpse of the Tennessee River between tenements across the street, its persistent rich aroma heavy in the air. I imagined Bessie Smith as a little girl playing up and down the street like the kids I saw then - once, two of them gleefully chasing a frighteningly large and confused looking rat.

William—he insisted on 'Willie'—an old man down the street who knew Bessie as a little girl, used to come up to my porch after one day hearing Bessie from my phonograph singing blues onto the always busy but attentive street. One of the first and permanent things I learned from my porch is that a city street has keen, observant eyes, acute ears, omnivorously seeing/hearing everything, indifferently, perhaps, but nothing escapes it, a roving, all-knowing urban Eye of God.

Extremely green and eager as green always is though stutteringly, and without apology, I enjoyed Willie's many stories and back pocket bottles of Old Mr. Boston Apricot Brandy, both of which—story and spirits/spirited story —dissolved or appeared to, age, racial, cultural, and sociological differences, along with those catalysts/cata-lusts, the forever alchemical Bessie and other jazz singers, Billie! Dinah! Ella! Sassy! Lil Ester Phillips! Nina Simone! to name only a few of the sensuous solutio chanteuses resolving sexual confoundaries by Miss-ambiguating sins' plethera with loose lilt and will- o-the-lisp whisper tongues.

One night Willie, much 'in the pocket'—an expression for being well onto tipsy which I've never heard from anyone but him—wanted to dance to a Bessie tune playing, 'Back Water Blues', him recalling nights as a young man in rural Tennessee where he'd worked hard days in oppressive vegetable fields then hit the after hours juke joints for 'colored, twas segregation days, ' he explained, where he would go to drink, dance then dive/delve, as it were, into the sensual mysteries of moist skin, hot breath, mutually open mouths with their commodious moans and mumbles, venial hands, always vital parts, private hearts mutually pounding ancient known rhythms, odors and tastes of gin and those slender, forbidden, now greedily stolen bites in those all too short nights with their damned intrusive dawns.

'Dawnus interuptus, ' I quipped, us both slapping knees, passing the narrative bottle fore and aft hefting moments re-grasped between us, offerings to the equally narrative river, the all-knowing hungry street.

Jumping to his feet, Willie described 'powder dancin'' (pronounced marvelously, 'powdah') which I had never heard of. Talcum powder would be copiously scattered onto the dance floor where couples in stocking or bare feet would ecstatically dance, gliding and sliding sweetly scented, muskily bent toward later glides and slides in the slippery joy of momentary allure and amour on dimmed porches or surrounding woods often enough and gratis upon delicate slabs of moonlight gratuitously dewy providing cushion for Passion's out and in, honoring and dignifying deities of skin wanting more making more skin, headlong Nature's frictional algo-rhythms indelibly scored in every/each his/her yawing yen.

Willie shouted, 'YOU GOT ANY TALC POWDER? ! '

...The jazz us trembled...

'NO! ' I bellowed, curious.

'YOU GOT ANY FLOUR? ! '

Even more curious, 'YEAH! ! '

'GO GIT IT! QUICK! ! '

He grinned an Old Mr. Boston juke-joint night-memories quaff-again grin.

Martha White, a brand of flour sold down South, has never been put to better use. Willie threw handfuls of 'Martha' over the tenement-planked living room floor as I half protested at the mess it (and me and Willie) was and would become. Completely gripped by his present-in-the-past brandy trance, a much younger man now, he suddenly grabbed me, brandied and tranced, too, my long hair flying, and danced me all over the floor the night through with swigs of Old But Now Spry 'n' Sprightly Mr. Boston with pauses to change record albums on the phonograph, 'catching up our breaths, ' he panted.

Next morning (more likely early afternoon) , Willie long gone, I awakened sprawled on the penitent porch—a cool concrete floor my sinner's bench—sweaty and thick as pan gravy, mosquito bitten, marinaded in Tennessee night mists. I staggered into the living room onto the ghostly floor powdery white, 'stroked' with two attached, or close to, sets of foot prints, heel slides and smears, a kind of 'Jackson Pollock meets Tibetan sand painting 'yazzed' yantra'**' with cigarette ashes flicked into the flickering impermanent mix. I've not powder danced since when we drank discovering oral history's joys, opened eager ears and fraternal arms forgetting fears of race and religion, age and expressed/ espressed Desire's multilingual disseminations.

I know that wheat is anciently sacred but now even more so for flour, the sight and feel of it, its unbaked smell, turns me again toward a Chattanooga 3rd street, its compass river swelling like bread nearby bearing witness still for one cannot say too much about rivers—their irreverence of edges scored, spilling themselves, proclaiming natural gods deeper than memory yet dependent upon it for traced they must be in every human activity, no matter the breech, for something there is to teach even deity though it may be wrong to do so, or hearsay to say it or sing, but the song is there for those whose ears are broken onto bottoms from which cry urgencies of Being and between, dutiful banks barely containing the straining Word.

**From Tibetan Buddhism. Visual meditation devices,
Yantras function as revelatory conduits of cosmic truths.

1. To Bessie Smith,3rd Street Chattanooga (circa 1971)

Already the river begins its sweat.
April to September I'll be on the porch
Come sunsets listening to cars in the
Dark and you, remembering the flour
On the floor and me and Willie in
Stocking feet dancing till dawn,

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poem by Warren Falcon
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The four Monarchyes, the Assyrian being the first, beginning under Nimrod, 131. Years after the Floo

When time was young, & World in Infancy,
Man did not proudly strive for Soveraignty:
But each one thought his petty Rule was high,
If of his house he held the Monarchy.
This was the golden Age, but after came
The boisterous son of Chus, Grand-Child to Ham,
That mighty Hunter, who in his strong toyles
Both Beasts and Men subjected to his spoyles:
The strong foundation of proud Babel laid,
Erech, Accad, and Culneh also made.
These were his first, all stood in Shinar land,
From thence he went Assyria to command,
And mighty Niniveh, he there begun,
Not finished till he his race had run.
Resen, Caleh, and Rehoboth likewise
By him to Cities eminent did rise.
Of Saturn, he was the Original,
Whom the succeeding times a God did call,
When thus with rule, he had been dignifi'd,
One hundred fourteen years he after dy'd.
Belus.
Great Nimrod dead, Belus the next his Son
Confirms the rule, his Father had begun;
Whose acts and power is not for certainty
Left to the world, by any History.
But yet this blot for ever on him lies,
He taught the people first to Idolize:
Titles Divine he to himself did take,
Alive and dead, a God they did him make.
This is that Bel the Chaldees worshiped,
Whose Priests in Stories oft are mentioned;
This is that Baal to whom the Israelites
So oft profanely offered sacred Rites:
This is Beelzebub God of Ekronites,
Likewise Baalpeor of the Mohabites,
His reign was short, for as I calculate,
At twenty five ended his Regal date.
Ninus.
His Father dead, Ninus begins his reign,
Transfers his seat to the Assyrian plain;
And mighty Nineveh more mighty made,
Whose Foundation was by his Grand-sire laid:
Four hundred forty Furlongs wall'd about,
On which stood fifteen hundred Towers stout.
The walls one hundred sixty foot upright,
So broad three Chariots run abrest there might.
Upon the pleasant banks of Tygris floud
This stately Seat of warlike Ninus stood:
This Ninus for a God his Father canonized,
To whom the sottish people sacrificed.

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poem by Anne Bradstreet
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The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything

arr! Arr! ARr! ARR!
We are the pirates who dont do anything,
We just stay at home and lie around,
And if you ask us to do anything,
We'll just tell you we dont do anything!
Well, Ive never been to Greenland,
And I've never been to Denver,
And Ive never buried treasure in St. Louie or St. Paul,
And Ive never been to Moscow,
And Ive never been to Tampa,
And Ive never been to Boston in the fall!
'Cause We're the pirates who dont do anything,
We just stay at home and lie around,
And if you ask us to do anything,
We'll just tell you we dont do anything!
And Ive never hoist the mainstay,
And Ive never swabbed the poop deck,
And Ive never veer to starboard,
Cause I never sail at all.
And Ive never walked the gangplank,
And Ive never owned a parrot,
And Ive never been to Boston in the fall!
'Cause were the pirates who dont do anything,
We just stay at home and lie around,
And if you ask us to do anything,
We'll just tell you we dont do anything!
Well, I've never plucked a rooster,
And I'm not too good at ping pong,
And Ive never thrown my mashed potaters,
Up against the wall.
And Ive never kissed a chipmunk,
And Ive never gotten head lice,
And Ive never been to Boston in the Fall!
(Spoken part)
Pirate Captain's Log, 2002,
Who be this band Relient K?
And why be they so full of contradictions?
We don't know, what he did,
but we're down with Captain Kidd,
We don't wake up late for lunch,
But we all eat Captain Crunch,
We don't smoke,
We don't chew,
We watch Captain Kangaroo!
And Ive never licked a spark plug,
And Ive never sniffed a stinkbug,
And Ive never painted daises,
On a big red rubber ball.
And Ive never bathed in yogurt,
And I dont look good in leggings,

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song performed by Relient K
Added by Lucian Velea
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The Landmarks

I.
THROUGH the streets of Marblehead
Fast the red-winged terror sped;

Blasting, withering, on it came,
With its hundred tongues of flame,

Where St. Michael's on its way
Stood like chained Andromeda,

Waiting on the rock, like her,
Swift doom or deliverer!

Church that, after sea-moss grew
Over walls no longer new,

Counted generations five,
Four entombed and one alive;

Heard the martial thousand tread
Battleward from Marblehead;

Saw within the rock-walled bay
Treville's liked pennons play,

And the fisher's dory met
By the barge of Lafayette,

Telling good news in advance
Of the coming fleet of France!

Church to reverend memories, dear,
Quaint in desk and chandelier;

Bell, whose century-rusted tongue
Burials tolled and bridals rung;

Loft, whose tiny organ kept
Keys that Snetzler's hand had swept;

Altar, o'er whose tablet old
Sinai's law its thunders rolled!

Suddenly the sharp cry came
'Look! St. Michael's is aflame!'

Round the low tower wall the fire
Snake-like wound its coil of ire.

Sacred in its gray respect

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poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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