WE WANT EVERYTHING by Moe SEAGER

These predictable exchanges
we pass on thin winds
Are we talking
or faming ourselves ?
Where's the gust !

You don't know me -
cause itself :
Take my hand, grip
it is malleable.
I'll come. Always at the ready
On the brink of becoming...

You're a black man in Philadelphia
I an orphan shaping poems in Paris.
There we say : ça va ? Bien, et toi ?,
leave it at that.
Like two dogs lifting hind legs
at the hydrant.

Here it sounds : How's it goin man ?
it goes like this :

...each time our children's hands
...ripped to paper ribbons
...snag of the thornbush
...forbidding them fruits of desire
...I stop cold on the boulevard
...un-curl palms scarred and cannot heal.

I am a civilized man
Thus told - to hold my tongue
How absurd. I prefer to hold yours
...Like a shell pressed to my ear
...Resonance of inner cosmos
...Rings from within
...Harmonic convergence
...We want everything.

We must stop lamenting the rain,
Shrinking from heat, humid days
Weather is so much tide
Ocean of air from which we swim.
Direct me to the nearest galaxy.
Shall we summon a boat?

What's happening ? Ask me, again.
No. Yes. Yes ask me !
...You are to me, alchemy
...Look : space between us
...charged with protons of love
...passion particles osmosing the boundaries
...of the vacuum
We are about love
when we choose to be.

Bullets, blades, booby traps
sprung by the masters
parasites embalmed in pale faces
bank vault visions myopic chill light
Hermectic madness.
...C'mon Orpheus
...Play-me your opus
...I wil empty my head
...like a tulip in April.
...We shall build the cult of imagination

You don't know me
but I hear your howls
from the death camps.
Columbus'crematorium.
Migrating birds pass the news.
I wrench requiem from my sleep
brood in the mirror of morning cafe
spittle drops on counter tops
unhinge doors to corridors
days in discord
Arrested in motion on a bridge deck
hammered stone, cold steel rivets
to the base of my skull.

you don't know me
I've been writing to you for years
and crystal clear moments
I sing your song in the darkness
the migrating bird my witness.
...How you be ?
...Go on - tell me
...Tell me more.
...So much more.

Moe SEAGER

When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be (John Keats)

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact'ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;

When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;

And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power

Of unreflecting love!--then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

John Keats

Outside

So, on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another
Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.

Henri LONGFELLOW

Tales of a Wayside Inn

To a child dancing in the wind ( YEATS)

Dance there upon the shore;
What need have you to care
For wind or water's roar?
And tumble out your hair
That the salt drops have wet;
Being young you have not known
The fool's triumph, nor yet
Love lost as soon as won,
Nor the best labourer dead
And all the sheaves to bind.
What need have you to dread
The monstrous crying of wind!

W.B. YEATS

I felt a funeral, in my brain ( Emily DICKINSON)

I felt a funeral in my brain,
And mourners, to and fro,
Kept treading, treading, till it seemed
That sense was breaking through.

And when they all were seated,
A service like a drum
Kept beating, beating, till I thought
My mind was going numb.

And then I heard them lift a box,
And creak across my soul
With those same boots of lead,
Then space began to toll

As all the heavens were a bell,
And Being but an ear,
And I and silence some strange race,
Wrecked, solitary, here.

And then a plank in reason, broke,
And I dropped down and down--
And hit a world at every plunge,
And finished knowing--then--


Emily DICKINSON (1830-1886)

Blowin' in the wind (Bob Dylan)

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, 'n' how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, 'n' how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they're forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

How many years can a mountain exist
Before it's washed to the sea?
Yes, 'n' how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
Yes, 'n' how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesn't see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, 'n' how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

http://www.bobdylan.com/#/songs/blowin-wind

The butcher (Leonard Cohen)

I came upon a butcher,
He was slaughtering a lamb,
I accused him there
With his tortured lamb.
He said, listen to me, child,
I am what I am and you, you are my only son.

Well, I found a silver needle,
I put it into my arm.
It did some good,
Did some harm.
But the nights were cold
And it almost kept me warm,
How come the night is long?

I saw some flowers growing up
Where that lamb fell down;
Was I supposed to praise my lord,
Make some kind of joyful sound?
He said, listen, listen to me now,
I go round and round
And you, you are my only child.

Do not leave me now,
Do not leave me now,
Im broken down
From a recent fall.
Blood upon my body
And ice upon my soul,
Lead on, my son, it is your world.