Jimmy's Blues and Other Poems Read Online Free PDF

hell
    but how, in advance,
    can you tell?
    If letting go
    is saying no,
    then what is holding on
    saying?
    Come.
    Can anyone be held?
    Can I—?
    The impossible conundrum,
    the closed circle,
    why
    does lightning strike this house
    and not another?
    Or, is it true
    that love is blind
    until challenged by the drawbridge
    of the mind?
    But, saying that,
    one’s forced to see one’s definitions
    as unreal.
    We do not know enough about the mind,
    Â Â or how the conundrum of the imagination
    dictates, discovers,
    or can dismember what we feel,
    Â Â or what we find.
    Perhaps
    one must learn to trust
    one’s terror:
    the holding on
    the letting go
    is error:
    Â Â the lightning has no choice,
    Â Â Â Â the whirlwind has one voice.

Christmas carol
    Saul,
    how does it feel
    to be Paul?
    I mean, tell me about that night
    you saw the light,
    when the light knocked you down.
    What’s the cost
    of being lost
    and found?
    It must be high.
    And I’ve always thought you must have been,
    stumbling homeward,
    trying to find your way out of town
    through all those baffling signals,
    those one-way streets,
    merry-making camel drivers
    (complete with camels;
    camels complete with loot)
    going
root-a-toot-toot!
    before, and around you
    and behind.
    No wonder you went blind.
    Like man, I can dig it.
    Been there myself: you know:
    it sometime happen so.
    And the stink make you think
    because you can’t get away
    you are surrounded
    by the think of your stink,
    unbounded.
    And not just in the camels
    and the drivers
    and not just in the hovels
    and the rivers
    and not just in the sewers
    where you live
    and not just in the shit
    beneath your nose
    and not just in the dream
    of getting home
    and not just in the terrifying hand
    which holds you tight,
    forever to the land.
    On such a night,
    oh, yes,
    one might lose sight,
    fall down beneath the camels,
    and see the light.
    Been there myself: face down
    in the mud
    which rises, rises, challenging
    one’s mortal blood,
    which courses, races, faithless,
    anywhere,
    which, married with the mud,
    will dry at noon
    soon.
    Prayer
    changes things.
    It do.
    If I can get up off this slime,
    if I ain’t trampled,
    I will put off my former ways
    I will deny my days
    I will be pardoned
    and I will rise
    out of the camel piss
    which stings my eyes
    into a revelation
    concerning this doomed nation.
    From which I am, henceforth,
    divorced forever!
    Set me upon my feet,
    my Lord,
    I am delivered
    out of the jaws of hell.
    My journey splits my skull,
    and, as I rise, I fall.
    Get out of town.
    This ain’t no place to be alone.
    Get past the merchants, and the shawls,
    the everlasting incense: stroke your balls,
    be grateful you still have them;
    touch your prick
    in a storm of wondering abnegation:
    it will be needed no longer,
    the light being so much stronger.
    Get out of town
    Get out of town
    Get out of town
    And don’t let nobody
    turn you around.
    Nobody will: for they see, too,
    how the hand of the Lord has been laid on you.
    Â Â Â Â Ride on!
    Let the drivers stare
    and the camel’s farts define the air.
    Â Â Â Â Ride on!
    Don’t be deterred, man,
    for the crown ain’t given to the also-ran.
    Oh, Saul,
    how does it feel to be Paul?
    Sometimes I wonder about that night.
    One does not always walk in light.
    My light is darkness
    and in my darkness moves, forever,
    the dream or the hope or the fear of sight.
    Ride on!
    This hand, sometimes, at the midnight hour,
    yearning for land, strokes a growing power,
    true believer!
    Will he come again?
    When will my Lord send my roots rain?
    Will he hear my prayer?
    Oh, man, don’t fight it
    Will he clothe my grief?
    Man, talk about it
    That night, that light
    Baby, now you coming.
    I will be uncovered, on that morning,
    And I’ll be there.
    No tongue can stammer
    nor hammer ring
    no leaf bear witness
    to how bright is the light
    of the unchained night
    which delivered
    Saul
    to