19 February 2009

i see nothing to be gained by any explanation. there are no words that need to be said.

West Main Street from Peak Creek Mercantile, Pulaski, VA

YESTERDAY DOWN AT THE CANAL
--Frank O'Hara

You say that everything is very simple and interesting
it makes me feel very wistful, like reading a great Russian novel
does

i am terribly bored
sometimes it is like seeing a bad movie
other days, more often, it's like having an acute disease of the
kidney

god knows it has nothing to do with the heart
nothing to do with people more interesting than myself
yak yak
that's an amusing thought
how can anyone be more amusing than oneself
how can anyone fail to be
can I borrow your forty-five
I only need one bullet preferably silver
if you can't be interesting at least you can be a legend
(but I hate all that crap)

DEER AMONG CATTLE
--James Dickey

Here and there in the searing beam
Of my hand going through the night meadow
They all are grazing

With pins of human light in their eyes.
A wild one also is eating
The human grass,

Slender, graceful, domesticated
By darkness among the bred-
for-slaughter,

Having bounded their paralyzed fence
And inclined his branched forehead onto
Their green frosted table,

The only live thing in this flashlight
Who can leave whenever he wishes,
Turn grass into forest,

Foreclose inhuman brightness from his eyes
But stands here, unperturbed,
In their wide-open country,

The sparks from my hand in his pupils
Unmatched anywhere among cattle,

Grazing with them the night of the hammer
As one of their own who shall rise.

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