the revolution will not be televised

You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,
Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.

There will be no pictures of you and Willie May
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.

Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be right back after a message
bbout a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.

oda a federico garcía lorca / ode to federico garcía lorca

Si pudiera llorar de miedo en una casa sola,
si pudiera sacarme los ojos y comérmelos,
lo haría por tu voz de naranjo enlutado
y por tu poesía que sale dando gritos.

Porque por ti pintan de azul los hospitales
y crecen las escuelas y los barrios marítimos,
y se pueblan de plumas los ángeles heridos,
y se cubren de escamas los pescados nupciales,
y van volando al cielo los erizos:
por ti las sastrerías con sus negras membranas
se llenan de cucharas y de sangre
y tragan cintas rotas, y se matan a besos,
y se visten de blanco.

Cuando vuelas vestido de durazno,
cuando ríes con risa de arroz huracanado,
cuando para cantar sacudes las arterias y los dientes,
la garganta y los dedos,
me moriría por lo dulce que eres,
me moriría por los lagos rojos
en donde en medio del otoño vives
con un corcel caído y un dios ensangrentado,
me moriría por los cementerios
que como cenicientos ríos pasan
con agua y tumbas,
de noche, entre campanas ahogadas:
ríos espesos como dormitorios
de soldados enfermos, que de súbito crecen
hacia la muerte en ríos con números de mármol
y coronas podridas, y aceites funerales:
me moriría por verte de noche
mirar pasar las cruces anegadas,
de pie llorando,
porque ante el río de la muerte lloras
abandonadamente, heridamente,
lloras llorando, con los ojos llenos
de lágrimas, de lágrimas, de lágrimas.

Si pudiera de noche, perdidamente solo,
acumular olvido y sombra y humo
sobre ferrocarriles y vapores,
con un embudo negro,
mordiendo las cenizas,
lo haría por el árbol en que creces,
por los nidos de aguas doradas que reúnes,
y por la enredadera que te cubre los huesos
comunicándote el secreto de la noche.

Ciudades con olor a cebolla mojada
esperan que tú pases cantando roncamente,
y silenciosos barcos de esperma te persiguen,
y golondrinas verdes hacen nido en tu pelo,
y además caracoles y semanas,
mástiles enrollados y cerezas
definitivamente circulan cuando asoman
tu pálida cabeza de quince ojos
y tu boca de sangre sumergida.

Si pudiera llenar de hollín las alcaldías
y, sollozando, derribar relojes,
sería para ver cuándo a tu casa
llega el verano con los labios rotos,
llegan muchas personas de traje agonizante,
llegan regiones de triste esplendor,
llegan arados muertos y amapolas,
llegan enterradores y jinetes,
llegan planetas y mapas con sangre,
llegan buzos cubiertos de ceniza,
llegan enmascarados arrastrando doncellas
atravesadas por grandes cuchillos,
llegan raíces, venas, hospitales,
manantiales, hormigas,
llega la noche con la cama en donde
muere entre las arañas un húsar solitario,
llega una rosa de odio y alfileres,
llega una embarcación amarillenta,
llega un día de viento con un niño,
llego yo con Oliverio, Norah
Vicente Aleixandre, Delia,
Maruca, Malva Marina, María Luisa y Larco,
la Rubia, Rafael Ugarte,
Cotapos, Rafael Alberti,
Carlos, Bebé, Manolo Altolaguirre,
Molinari,
Rosales, Concha Méndez,
y otros que se me olvidan.
Ven a que te corone, joven de la salud
y de la mariposa, joven puro
como un negro relámpago perpetuamente libre,
y conversando entre nosotros,
ahora, cuando no queda nadie entre las rocas,
hablemos sencillamente como eres tú y soy yo:
para qué sirven los versos si no es para el rocío?

Para qué sirven los versos si no es para esa noche
en que un puñal amargo nos averigua, para ese día,
para ese crepúsculo, para ese rincón roto
donde el golpeado corazón del hombre se dispone a morir?

Sobre todo de noche,
de noche hay muchas estrellas,
todas dentro de un río
como una cinta junto a las ventanas
de las casas llenas de pobres gentes.

Alguien se les ha muerto, tal vez
han perdido sus colocaciones en las oficinas,
en los hospitales, en los ascensores,
en las minas,
sufren los seres tercamente heridos
y hay propósito y llanto en todas partes:
mientras las estrellas corren dentro de un río interminable
hay mucho llanto en las ventanas,
los umbrales están gastados por el llanto,
las alcobas están mojadas por el llanto
que llega en forma de ola a morder las alfombras.

Federico,
tú ves el mundo, las calles,
el vinagre,
las despedidas en las estaciones
cuando el humo levanta sus ruedas decisivas
hacia donde no hay nada sino algunas
separaciones, piedras, vías férreas.

Hay tantas gentes haciendo preguntas
por todas partes.
Hay el ciego sangriento, y el iracundo, y el
desanimado,
y el miserable, el árbol de las uñas,
el bandolero con la envidia a cuestas.

Así es la vida, Federico, aquí tienes
las cosas que te puede ofrecer mi amistad
de melancólico varón varonil.
Ya sabes por ti mismo muchas cosas.
Y otras irás sabiendo lentamente.

---

If I could weep with fear in a solitary house,

if I could take out my eyes and eat them,

I would do it for your black-draped orange-tree voice

and for your poetry that comes forth shouting.

Because for you they paint hospitals bright blue,

and schools and sailors' quarters grow,

and wounded angels are covered with feathers,

and nuptial fish are covered with scales,

and hedgehogs go flying to the sky:

for you tailorshops with their black skins

fill up with spoons and blood,

and swallow red ribbons and kiss each other to death,

and dress in white.

When you fly dressed as a peach tree,

when you laugh with a laugh of hurricaned rice,

when to sing you shake arteries and teeth,

throat and fingers,

I could die for how sweet you are,

I could die for the red lakes

where in the midst of autumn you live

with a fallen steed and a bloodied god,

I could die for the cemeteries

that pass like ash-gray rivers

with water and tombs,

at night, among drowned bells:

rivers as thick as wards

of sick soldiers, that suddenly grow

toward death in rivers with marble numbers

and rotted crowns, and funeral oils:

I could die to see you at night

watching the sunken crosses go by,

standing and weeping,

because before death's river you weep

forlornly, woundedly,

you weep weeping, your eyes filled

with tears, with tears, with tears.

If at night, wildly alone, I could

gather oblivion and shadow and smoke

above railroads and steamships,

with a black funnel,

biting the ashes,

I would do it for the tree in which you grow,

for the nests of golden waters that you gather,

and for the vine that covers your bones,

revealing to you the secret of the night.

Cities with a smell of wet onions

wait for you to pass singing raucously,

and silent sperm boats pursue you,

and green swallows nest in your hair,

and also snails and weeks,

furled masts and cherry trees

definitively walk about when they glimpse

your pale fifteen-eyed head

and your mouth of submerged blood.

If I could fill town halls with soot

and, sobbing, tear down clocks,

it would be to see when to your house

comes summer with its broken lips,

come many people with dying clothes,

come regions of sad splendor,

come dead plows and poppies,

come gravediggers and horsemen,

come planets and maps with blood,

come buzzards covered with ashes,

come masked men dragging damsels

pierced by great knives,

come roots, veins, hospitals,

springs, ants,

comes night with the bed where

a solitary hussar is dying among the spiders,

comes a rose of hatred and pins,

comes a yellowish vessel,

comes a windy day with a child,

come I with Oliverio, Norah,

Vicente Aleixandre, Delia,

Maruca, Malva Marina, María Luisa, and Larco,

the Blond, Rafael Ugarte,

Cotapos, Rafael Alberti,

Carlos, Bebé, Manolo Altolaguirre,

Molinari,
Rosales, Concha Méndez,

and others that slip my mind.

Come, let me crown you, youth of health,

and butterflies, youth pure

as a black lightningflash perpetually free,

and just between you and me,

now, when there is no one left among the rocks,

let us speak simply, man to man:

what are verses for if not for the dew?

What are verses for if not for that night

in which a bitter dagger finds us out, for that day,

for that dusk, for that broken corner

where the beaten heart of man makes ready to die?

Above all at night,

at night there are many stars,

all within a river

like a ribbon next to the windows

of houses filled with the poor.

Someone of theirs has died, perhaps

they have lost their jobs in the offices,

in the hospitals, in the elevators,

in the mines,

human beings suffer stubbornly wounded

and there are protests and weeping everywhere:

while the stars flow within an endless river

there is much weeping at the windows,

the thresholds are worn away by the weeping,

the bedrooms are soaked by the weeping

that comes wave-shaped to bite the carpets.

Federico,

you see the world, the streets,

the vinegar,

the farewells in the stations

when the smoke lifts its decisive wheels

toward where there is nothing but some

separations, stones, railroad tracks.

There are so many people asking questions

everywhere.

There is the bloody blindman, and the angry one, and the

disheartened one,

and the wretch, the thorn tree,

the bandit with envy on his back.

That's the way life is, Federico, here you have

the things that my friendship can offer you,

the friendship of a melancholy manly man.

By yourself you already know many things,

and others you will slowly get to know.

(translated by Donald D. Walsh)

number 8

It was a face which darkness could kill
               in an instant
a face as easily hurt
          by laughter or light

  'We think differently at night'
               she told me once
lying back languidly

          And she would quote Cocteau

'I feel there is an angel in me' she'd say
               'whom I am constantly shocking'

Then she would smile and look away
     light a cigarette for me
               sigh and rise

and stretch
     her sweet anatomy

          let fall a stocking

poetry as insurgent art (i am signaling you through the flames)

I am signaling you through the flames.

The North Pole is not where it used to be.

Manifest Destiny is no longer manifest.

Civilization self-destructs.

Nemesis is knocking at the door.

What are poets for, in such an age?
What is the use of poetry?

The state of the world calls out for poetry to save it.

If you would be a poet, create works capable of answering the challenge of apocalyptic times, even if this meaning sounds apocalyptic.

You are Whitman, you are Poe, you are Mark Twain, you are Emily Dickinson and Edna St. Vincent Millay, you are Neruda and Mayakovsky and Pasolini, you are an American or a non-American, you can conquer the conquerors with words....

musee des beaux arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

scheherazade

Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake
and dress them in warm clothes again.
How it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running
until they forget that they are horses.
It's not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere,
it's more like a song on a policeman's radio,
how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days
were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple
to slice into pieces.
Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it's noon, that means
we're inconsolable.
Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we'll never get used to it.

these spiritual window-shoppers

These spiritual window-shoppers,
who idly ask, ‘How much is that?’ Oh, I’m just looking.
They handle a hundred items and put them down,
shadows with no capital.

What is spent is love and two eyes wet with weeping.
But these walk into a shop,
and their whole lives pass suddenly in that moment,
in that shop.

Where did you go? “Nowhere.”
What did you have to eat? “Nothing much.”

Even if you don’t know what you want,
buy something, to be part of the exchanging flow.

Start a huge, foolish project,
like Noah.

It makes absolutely no difference
what people think of you.

lovesong

He loved her and she loved him.
His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to
He had no other appetite
She bit him she gnawed him she sucked
She wanted him complete inside her
Safe and sure forever and ever
Their little cries fluttered into the curtains

Her eyes wanted nothing to get away
Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows
He gripped her hard so that life
Should not drag her from that moment
He wanted all future to cease
He wanted to topple with his arms round her
Off that moment’s brink and into nothing
Or everlasting or whatever there was

Her embrace was an immense press
To print him into her bones
His smiles were the garrets of a fairy palace
Where the real world would never come
Her smiles were spider bites
So he would lie still till she felt hungry
His words were occupying armies
Her laughs were an assassin’s attempts
His looks were bullets daggers of revenge
His glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets
His whispers were whips and jackboots
Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing
His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway
Her love-tricks were the grinding of locks
And their deep cries crawled over the floors
Like an animal dragging a great trap
His promises were the surgeon’s gag
Her promises took the top off his skull
She would get a brooch made of it
His vows pulled out all her sinews
He showed her how to make a love-knot
Her vows put his eyes in formalin
At the back of her secret drawer
Their screams stuck in the wall

Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves
Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop

In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs
In their dreams their brains took each other hostage

In the morning they wore each other’s face

how to stop smoking

If you are a man
think of a woman wiggling out of her underwear
saying come on you don’t have to love me.

If you are a woman
think of the man thinking that.

Practice.

the thing is

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

the starry night

That does not keep me from having a terrible need of—shall I say the word—religion. Then I go out at night to paint the stars.

—Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to his brother

The town does not exist
except where one black-haired tree slips
up like a drowned woman into the hot sky.
The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die.

It moves. They are all alive.
Even the moon bulges in its orange irons
to push children, like a god, from its eye.
The old unseen serpent swallows up the stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die:

into that rushing beast of the night,
sucked up by that great dragon, to split
from my life with no flag,
no belly,
no cry.

brief song

When love carries us
to this altitude
of lean air, our heads
clear, our hearts
open like parachutes.

the release

At sunset
the shadows of all the trees
break free and go running
across the edge of the world.

when this american woman

When this American woman,
whose thighs are bound in casual red cloth,
comes thundering past my sitting-place
like a forest-burning Mongol tribe,
the city is ravished
and brittle buildings of a hundred years
splash into the street;
and my eyes are burnt
for the embroidered Chinese girls,
already old,
and so small between the thin pines
on these enormous landscapes,
that if you turn your head
they are lost for hours.

my father

The memory of my father is wrapped up in
white paper, like sandwiches taken for a day at work.

Just as a magician takes towers and rabbits
out of his hat, he drew love from his small body,

and the rivers of his hands
overflowed with good deed.

---

translated from the Hebrew by Azila Talit Reissenberger

my last duchess

That's my last duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will't please you sit and look at her? I said
"Frà Pandolf" by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not
Her husband's presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
Frà Pandolf chanced to say "Her mantle laps
"Over my lady's wrist too much," or "Paint
"Must never hope to reproduce the faint
"Half-flush that dies along her throat": such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart how shall I say? too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, 'twas all one! My favor at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men good! but thanked
Somehow I know not how as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech which I have not to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this
"Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
"Or there exceed the mark" and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and make excuse,
E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master's known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretense
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay we'll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

love's not the way to treat a friend

Love’s not the way to treat a friend.
There are so many better things for you
than to see your feelings sold
as magic lanterns to somebody whose body
casts no light.

i live in the twentieth century

I live in the Twentieth Century
and you lie here beside me. You
were unhappy when you fell asleep.
there was nothing I could do about
it. I felt helpless. Your face
is so beautiful that I cannot stop
to describe it, and there’s nothing
I can do to make you happy while
you sleep.

der einsame / the lonely (man)

Der Einsame

Wie einer, der auf fremden Meeren fuhr,
so bin ich bei den ewig Einheimischen;
die vollen Tage stehn auf ihren Tischen,
mir aber ist die Ferne voll Figur.

In mein Gesicht reicht eine Welt herein,
die vielleicht unbewohnt ist wie ein Mond,
sie aber lassen kein Gefühl allein,
und alle ihre Worte sind bewohnt.

Die Dinge, die ich weither mit mir nahm,
sehn selten aus, gehalten an das Ihre -:
in ihrer großen Heimat sind sie Tiere,
hier halten sie den Atem an vor Scham.


---


The lonely

Like someone who sailed distant seas,
I am with the ever natives;
the full days standing on their tables,
but for me distance is full of shape.

In my face a world reaches in,
perhaps deserted like a moon,
but they leave no feeling alone,
and all their words are inhabited.

The things which I took with me
look rare, compared to theirs -:
in their great home they are animals,
here they hold their breath in shame.


---

written 2nd April 1903, Viareggio
translated by Philipp Kellmeyer

not always, but enough

I let my adolescence go for a twenty pound note.
We were skint and needed to feed the meter.

Can I forgive my mother for simply not being there?
My best friend’s dad offered me a lift, his headlights

decking the puddles. I just got in. No questions asked.
My coat was wet from waiting in the rain.

He thrust the note in my hand before
it happened. And in the back seat, I clenched

my fist while he moaned quieter
than the downpour. In the bleak florescence

of the petrol station I watched
his tail lights disappear, swapped

paper for coins. Our house lit up like Christmas.
X Ray Spex spun on the turntable.

I loved Poly Styrene, her voice - raw energy in day-glo.
It meant more to me than money.

Over the years I have learned
to forget that day. Not always, but enough.


---

I am always in awe of Naomi's Poetry Mosaic project.