greenstorm | Poetry For Later

"I don't go organic often, but when I do..." by John Stammers.

I don’t ‘go organic’ often, but when I do
cash registers explode, shop assistants lurch back
beneath furry earflaps,
the wild beasts knitted on Iroquois sweaters
leap up,
their hunters let fall their bows,
returning, at all fleet, to tented encampments of their tribe
to sit wordlessly
with the Great Spirit.
Cram up my basket, I say, for I am not all water -
though hydration may form the signal part
of any halfway harmonious regime.
I am told that amaranth binds a higher protein content
than the equivalent weight
of any goodly-made walrus.
Pass me that cantaloupe, farmed in biotic growing methods
by organo-wonks with expensive recreational habits.
I wish to pay
largely for it, if you would be so kind,
and desire
little change from a high denomination banknote.
Only stay, stay your hand there on its surface
to let my own against the edge of yours, tender, as in a slow wooing.
Fresh we were and wild,
O yes wild, I say, were we,
implacable huntress of the free-range legume.
And what does it come to in any sort of natural currency?
A single meal for two, free of human taint,
the feel of cool, green skin beneath your palm touched along mine,
and a further difficulty - I see that, scourge of the brassicas -
I do not always know what I am doing.

Application to the Arts Council for a grant to write this poem Christopher Meredith

Sir/Madam
The poem (hereinafter called The Poem)
will consist of approximately 35-45 lines.
In the opening two or three lines
a startling image will be broached.
All nouns at this stage will be concrete
and multisyllabic latinate words
will be avoided.
The immediacy this generates
may well pull the reader (hereinafter
The Reader) through The Poem
with a sense of its integrity,
though it may not necessarily be comprehensible.
This will be facilitated by a firm but
unobtrusive control of rhythm and line
breaks.
More images will follow.
They will establish an atmosphere, a milieu
both oblique and bleak,
perhaps outdoors: a Landscape, some Weather.
Some small detail will suggest the larger world
(e.g., a thumbnail scraping at dried paint
standing for the crisis of lost meaning etc.).
Point of view will be crucial to The Poem.
Late on and subtly it will emerge
That there is an I
about whom (or who) The Reader must be
cautious. (I may not be the author, etc.)
Near the end there will be a shift –
perhaps there is a sudden change of tense.
Earlier images recur, perhaps a little altered,
(e.g. the sky is dark, a thumbnail picks at dried blood)
reflecting and refracting all that has been said.

Your fund provides an excellent opportunity
to embark on The Poem. I have approached
my employers, who are sympathetic, for release.
I believe you favour most those projects
devoted to capital investment.
This is one such. If successful, I plan
to build a house for all eternity.
(My CV is enclosed.)

Repost:
Is/Not Margaret Atwood

Love is not a profession
genteel or otherwise

sex is not dentistry
the slick filling of aches and cavities

you are not my doctor
you are not my cure,

nobody has that
power, you are merely a fellow/traveller

Give up this medical concern,
buttoned, attentive,

permit yourself anger
and permit me mine

which needs neither
your approval nor your suprise

which does not need to be made legal
which is not against a disease

but against you,
which does not need to be understood

or washed or cauterized,
which needs instead

to be said and said.
Permit me the present tense.

Today and Two Thousand Years from Now Philip Levine

The job is over. We stand under the trees
waiting to be told what to do,
but the job is over.

The darkness pours between the branches above,
but the moon's not yet
on its walk

through the night sky trailed by stars.
Suddenly a match flares, I see
there are only us two,

you and me, alone together in the great room
of the night world, two laborers
with nothing to do,

so I lean to the little flame and light my Lucky
and thank you, comrade, and again
we are in the dark.

Let me now predict the future. Two thousand years
from now we two will be older,
wiser, having escaped

the fleeting incarnations of workingmen.
We will have risen from the earth
of southern Michigan

through the tangled roots of Chinese elms
or ancient rosebushes to take
the tainted air

into our leaves and send it back, purified,
down the same trail we took
to escape the dark.

Two thousand years passed in a flash to shed
no more light than a wooden match
gave under the trees

when you and I were lost kids, more scared than
now, but warm, useless, with names
and different faces.

When We'll Worship Jesus Amiri Baraka

We'll worship Jesus
When jesus do
Somethin
When jesus blow up
the white house
or blast nixon down
when jesus turn out congress
or bust general motors to
yard bird motors
jesus we'll worship jesus
when jesus get down
when jesus get out his yellow lincoln
w/the built in cross stain glass
windows & box w/black peoples
enemies we'll worship jesus when
he get bad enough to at least scare
somebody—cops not afraid
of jesus
pushers not afraid
of jesus, capitalists racists
imperialists not afraid
of jesus shit they makin money
off jesus
we'll worship jesus when mao
do, when toure does
when the cross replaces Nkrumah's
star
Jesus need to hurt some a our
enemies, then we'll check him
out, all that screaming and hollering
& wallering and moaning talkin bout
jesus, jesus, in a red
check velvet vine + 8 in. heels
jesus pinky finger
got a goose egg ruby
which actual bleeds
jesus at the apollo
doin splits and helpin
nixon trick niggers
jesus w/his one eyed self
tongue kissing johnny carson
up the behind
jesus need to be busted
jesus need to thrown down and whipped
till something better happen
jesus aint done nothin for us
but keep us turned toward the
sky (him and his boy allah
too, need to be checked
out!)
we'll worship jesus
when he get a boat load of ak-47s
and some dynamite
and blow up abernathy robotin
for gulf
jesus need to be busted
we ain't gonna worship nobody
but niggers gettin up off
the ground
not gon worship jesus
unless he just a tricked up
nigger somebody named
outside his race
need to worship yo self fo
you worship jesus
need to bust jesus (+ check
out his spooky brother
allah while you heavy
on the case
cause we ain gon worship jesus
we aint gon worship
jesus
we aint gon worship
jesus
not till he do somethin
not till he help us
not till the world get changed
and he ain, jesus ain, he can change the world
we can change the world
we can struggle against the forces of backwardness, we can change the world
we can struggle against ourselves, our slowness, our connection with the
oppressor, the very cultural aggression which binds us to our enemies as
their slaves.
we can change the world
we aint' gonna worship jesus cause jesus dont exist
xcept in song and story except in ritual and dance, except in slum stained
tears or trillion dollar opulence stretching back to history, the history
of the oppression of the human mind
we worship the strength in us
we worship our selves
we worship the light in us
we worship the warmth in us
we worship the world
we worship the love in us
we worship our selves
we worship nature
we worship ourselves
we worship the life in us, and science, and knowledge, and transformation
of the visible world
but we aint gonna worship no jesus
we aint gonna legitimize the witches and devils and spooks and hobgoblins
the sensuous lies of the rulers to keep us chained to fantasy and illusion
sing about life, not jesus
sing about revolution, not no jesus
stop singing about jesus
sing about, creation, our creation, the life of the world and fantastic
nature how we struggle to transform it, but dont victimize our selves by
distorting the world
stop moaning about jesus, stop sweating and crying and stompin and dying for jesus
unless thats the name of the army we building to force the land finally to
change hands. And lets not call that jesus, get a quick consensus, on that,
lets damn sure not call that black fire muscle no invisible psychic dungeon
no gentle vision srait jacket, lets call that peoples army, or wapenduzi or simba
wachanga, but we not gon call it jesus, and not gon worship jesus, throw
jesus out yr mind. Build the new world out of reality, and new vision
we come to find out what there is of the world
to understand what there is here in the world!
to visualize change, and force it.
we worship revolution