7.Feasts of November by Duncan McGibbon (good books for high schoolers .txt) 📖

truth
function of themselves,
they speak of your pose
in hungry streets
in corridors of thirst,
the strings announce
your style,
for we have slept already and they will not hold us long.

Now your word is silent on these fields of wind.
Not even the dew, nor the air, can seep to your offices

Now crumpled on silk in the Amsterdam Hilton,
you call down to the singers to strike up, even you tell us,
but sing it not in Kampuchea.

5.
“The Beautiful People are non-violent anarchists, but I have been worrying about the way they dress.” Mary Quant

Deep in the ditch of their death, the little ones are naked,
the cold flowers bloom, not a flower sweet, but the tongues
trolled into the dust.
Now you call up to the remnants,
"O fellows come and sing
the last song of the night.
Is it plain enough?
The free maids do use it
that weave their bones with thread
(We call, "are you ready?”
“Ay prithee fellows sing.")
for their heads are lopped by fair
cruel roles, come away, death,
bloom, blind breasts.
Now the sisters of suburbia will gloat.
Even the girls on the green lawns rejoice,
but tell them not in the hostels of affliction.

6.
“There is no such thing as an innocent design. In the drive to sell, design is used to convince consumers that products are continually new and improved.” K. Jones


Daughters of liberation weep, for the mighty dead
who let you move easily in demin,
unpinned your jewels, they gave what you needed.

You had what you asked for:
you asked for everything because it was yours,
it was free
We call, "are you ready" ay, prithee fellows sing
Come away, come away
commodity,
come anatomy,
choose yourself,
own yourself,
Your choice in you ownings,
your earnings,
your yearnings
come victim, come pleasure
come away, death.
Your deaths are not yet the charnel bone,
their shapes and textures, tactile, palpable, still the consuming body.
are wasted away on shores,
Tell it Cannes, wear it with sweaters and strings
to blend with the calf-belts from Chloe
do not tell it to kids in cold Bermondsey.

7.

“Poetry is the one literary vocation that cannot be made into a career.” Michael Schmidt.

Deep is your grave, deeper than tears
where the hysterical clothed, the sweet untrusting
laugh, eat freedom meals, drone nursery rhymes.
squat.
Your death of parts, no-one so true
can wear it.
In sad cypress,
the victim's flowered their fists
in shrouds of white,
the lissom skins were bruised

How did the heroes fall? How did the incense,
flowers and rice turn to dust?
Tell it in Convent Garden, your corses black, but wooly,
with yew

8.

“All we demanded was our right to twinkle.” Marilyn Monroe

Loved and lovely, in death the look is still you.
Yew scatters the lying field, the yearning is consumed.

Lay me, O lay me
where snows pile up to rub out the streets,
that lead
to Westwood and the man that took
my nembutal hand from the phone at the last.


Not a friend,
not a friend greet.
Black is the sail
we send from our island villas,
our yew cuttings,
blend with the calf belts,
round our poor corse, soft dancing smocks
easy pants with capes of bloused bodices
black tights, but woolly
So there’s for thy no pains.
We take our pleasure in this song.
and payment shall be pleasure,
one time or another.

Laid by, the little ones are naked,
wooing the vicious to kindle anger
from their final tears. The eye is stilled,
but stares in anger, for the fairest
with gladness they were led along,
and slid along the ashes they have won.


9.

“Chickens come home to roost.” Malcolm X


From the depths, the heroes are vanished
on their height, Lords, listen to our cries

The poor souls sit by their sycamore,
sing their own song,
can sing no more to the heights.
The forhead against the knee cap,
salt tears, the smooth stone
and the green willow serves
for a crown
crowned out, given the blessing.
Tell it, tell it in the streets of Hackney
by the waters of Babylon
tell it in the prisons, and the houses
of the exiles; in the derelict sites and in the
garrets of the sick.
They are confined here, no time to fetch a gun.
Their songs will not leave our minds.


10.


“God is dead. Thank God.” Thomas Altitzer.

The song will not reach the heights,
and who could hear it with the charred ears
of the dead? Whose armour has not failed.

She called her love false,
the eye shifts for the itch,
only the tear can hope
where the brow and the lash are away.
Dose that bode weeping?
The mighty lords have picked
all the goods from the poor
and have mended the bad.

The Lords have frozen our depths,
the little ones have stolen our tears.
11.

“Let me read with open eyes the book my days are writing and learn.”Dag Hammarskjold.

They are alone up there, mighty in their fall.
They are together below us, deep in their pain

The fresh streams run by us but
cannot repeat our groans.
Our instruments are derelict
let no one blame us for ceasing to sing
for the Lords, their scorn we oppose.

Sing willow, sing axes,
we hang our heads
all at one side, unpinned in our
sadness.

You have hoarded the wounds,
and you have drained the able heart dry.


12.

“The future lies in plastic.” The Graduate script.

Deep in death's trench to founder,
stretched on the heights to moulder.

There is no man to sing,
come heavy sleep,
come gentle sleep,
close up the living light
that the last cannot heal,
nor the brow cover.
We know your ally,
death is not ours,
but the black might,
knows our rebel hearts.

We cannot befriend your defeat
your sweet wounds cannot lure us
to your sour graves.

And now the new song?
It is the old songs you want.
Do not sing of the innocent dead, the salted out,
of their aspirations, their curetage,
the Curetes dancing backwards
at the phallic cave.

Your hate has crumbled the mountain tops.
Your spite has hardened the depths

For the heights are boarded up
and the depths are flooded
Be still, be still
my bleeding, stricken strings
its my lute and not I that sleeps
my heart will never rest

Your love to us was more wonderful
than the love of an earthly thing

and the other died singing it.
we have much to do,
but it will not leave our mind.

Above us, the uniforms are discovered
that open on bones, not nakedness.


The Deploration

The Deploration
1.Preface
Out of the great window,
overlooking St. Dunstan’s Rd,
seven birds flew past,
wrested a space in the air,
then fluttered apart,
wanted cover, found none
and struck out further
to balance a flight become urgent,
flew upwards into the sun
looked for a place to set down,
found there was nowhere,
adjusted shocked muscles,
for a surer ground,
and, buffeted back:
their confusion scattered them,
as they tried to trim wings,
wheeled ,soared, turned into the wind,
grew fearful now and
circled again, panicked,
dug unto air, with loaded tendons
and left the sky.

No-one has seen them since.

Look for them now
in the landscape
of the hollow city.
We cannot break apart clouds
we never made.

No-one thought at the time.

Look for them now,
the lost;
born, borne and born away,
behind glittering glass,
an indetectable breach in the casual quiet,
we never heard.

No-one thought to look at the time.
Search for them, Lord,
in the sheeted winds,
which time has hardened
into wefts of ice,
in the breach
of the time-hold.

2. To the Dead
The lost man was a smiling friend,
ungainly amid beer, debts and laughter.
His friends still ask for him,
for his tread on the stair,
Beyond the window,
the dove does not ask.
The dove cannot bear him up,
where the crows bear down.
Frightened into the clouds
by the breach,
indetectable,
in the swell of the wind.
Go after him then
in the place of time,
in the lost place,
Lord, the just one,
just one,
the jesting one,
the testing one.
3. The offering
Did we have time to search?
Maybe in the parks,
or where the swings hung still,
or where the trolley tree
hung with blood and drugs
Who came, when, as a child,
he called in the dark?
Now he is voiceless,
in our dark.
Now he is motionless
he cannot walk away from fear.
Did the drip feed frame bear him up,
the white witnesses that write
each day to the skies,
to note a cry in the wind.
I used to come straight from work
full of the echo of children’s voices
I was too far away at the time.
to understand how he had
mastered his sadness: the girlfriend
whose intimacy meant nothing now.
His father and brother’s
helpless love and witness.
look for it.
He spoke as if his dying
were an embarrassment
to be considered lightly.
See if it carries
a sign from the lost.
Look out for the crows
that will make for
his proper goodness.
That our natural strength
will bear him up.
Look in the place for the darkness
for the wounds
we call affliction
which were made for him,
tell him to look in the dark
Which the lord made
for the field of sheets
where he lay
for the crows that wait
Who has seen him here.
Only the lord,
the only one, the lonely one
He is yours lord,
the lorded,
the lauded,
the hoarded.
3. Corpus
On the night he disappeared,
we could no longer hold him up.
His weight is still printed in our arms.
Look for the lost one
among the birds.
The robin that waits in the garden.
Did they carry him away ,the white clothed ones.
Did they carry him to the orchard
where the crows are gathering?
Why did the Lord not hold him back?
I would have come
as he whispered in the cold
“Take me out of the wind”
the wind you have to hold, lord,
as we cannot hold him any more
I never heard where they had hidden him.
look for him this time
where the robin left its trace in the day.
The wonder of a man;
his learning eyes
his strengthening limbs
we had come to call
him as our own.
They took me aside
to check that my name
was on the list of those
he wanted to see.
The leaves spin
from the trees,
the tongues of earth
call for him on the air
The waiting places
an apple once firm in our grip.
Go after him, lord,
where the shadows of trees
hide his going.
You gave us this life, lord,
a man grown tattered
with pain, a man, limping
with the death that let him down,
his notebooks still open,
where his mind danced
in our fight of words,
in our circle of unseen arms
before the birds sent him down.
Lord the mover, the unmoved,