Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SWALLOW THE LAKE, by CLARENCE MAJOR


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SWALLOW THE LAKE, by                 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




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