Classic and Contemporary Poetry
SWALLOW THE LAKE, by CLARENCE MAJOR Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Gave me things I / could not use. Then. Now | ||||||||
gave me things I could not use. Then. Now. Rain night bursting upon and into -- I shine up-down into Lake Michigan like the glow from the lights of the Loop. Walks. Deaths. Births. Streets. Things I could not give back -- or use. Gave me loneliness. Feelings I could not put into words into people. Blank monkeys of the hierarchy! More deaths! Stupidity and death turning them on, timing them to the beat of my droopy heart, to my Middle Passage blues to my self-corroding hate -- In my release, I come to become neon iron eyes stainless lungs blood zinc-gripped steel I come up abstract -- not able to take their bricks. Their tar. Their flesh. Their plastic. I ran -- stung. Loop fumes hung in my smoky lungs. Duped, left with ideas I could not break or form, I crawled through the game. Illusion illusion and you would swear before screaming -- these choked voices in me screaming. Screaming with crawling thing in the blood, screaming the huge immune loneliness. One becomes immune to the bricks to the feelings. One becomes death. One becomes each one and every person I become. And I could not -- I could not -- I could not whistle and walk in storms along Lake Michigan's shore. Concrete walks. Concrete deaths. I could not -- I could not swallow the lake. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE SYNCOPATED CAKEWALK by CLARENCE MAJOR REVELATION AT CAP FERRAT by CLARENCE MAJOR SAND FLESH AND SKY by CLARENCE MAJOR A GUY I KNOW ON 47TH AND COTTAGE by CLARENCE MAJOR AGING TOGETHER by CLARENCE MAJOR AT THE ZOO IN SPAIN by CLARENCE MAJOR ATELIER CEZANNE by CLARENCE MAJOR BALLROOM DARK by CLARENCE MAJOR |
|