To You, again

after Walt Whitman

I want to use my books
to make paper mâchés of my friends.

I want it to say: I have read
the rituals of your honeycomb
the chords of your untweezed light rays
the hues of your hieroglyphic gait
the rhythms of your radiant heat
the frame rate of your masonry
the altitude of your laughs
the pathos of your sleep
most of all.

It’s a sorcery of likeness, of love bathed
in the rip and plaster of another day’s
hushnhum. I’ll be tomorrows
and evenings, bridgework
lashed solid as smoke
from the effigetic pitch
of dilatory, dumb hymns
wafted to the cold dash of waves.

-C.S. Henderson

"Thee for my recitative!
Thee in the driving storm even as now, the snow, the winter-day declining,
Thee in thy panoply, thy measur’d dual throbbing and thy beat convulsive,
Thy black cylindric body, golden brass, and silvery steel,
Thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and connecting rods, gyrating, shuttling at thy sides,
Thy metrical, now swelling pant and roar, now tapering in the distance,
Thy great protruding head-light fix’d in front,
Thy long, pale, floating vapor-pennants, tinged with delicate purple,
The dense and murky clouds out-belching from thy smoke-stack,
Thy knitted frame, thy springs and valves, the tremulous twinkle of thy wheels,
Thy train of cars behind, obedient, merrily following,
Through gale or calm, now swift, now slack, yet steadily careering;
Type of the modern—emblem of motion and power—pulse of the continent,
For once come serve the Muse and merge in verse, even as here I see thee,
With storm and buffeting gusts of wind and falling snow,
By day thy warning ringing bell to sound its notes, By night thy silent signal lamps to swing.

Fierce-throated beauty!
Roll through my chant with all thy lawless music, thy swinging lamps at night,
Thy madly-whistled laughter, echoing, rumbling like an earthquake, rousing all,
Law of thyself complete, thine own track firmly holding,
(No sweetness debonair of tearful harp or glib piano thine,)
Thy trills of shrieks by rocks and hills return’d,
Launch’d o’er the prairies wide,across the lakes, To the free skies unpent and glad and strong."

“To a Locomotive in Winter” by Walt Whitman

"7.
It is not to diffuse you that you were born of your mother and
father—it is to identify you;
It is not that you should be undecided, but that you should be decided;
Something long preparing and formless is arrived and form’d in you,
You are henceforth secure, whatever comes or goes.

The threads that were spun are gather’d, the weft crosses the warp,
the pattern is systematic.

The preparations have every one been justified,
The orchestra have sufficiently tuned their instruments—the
baton has given the signal.

The guest that was coming—he waited long, for reasons—he
is now housed,
He is one of those who are beautiful and happy—he is one of
those that to look upon and be with is enough.

The law of the past cannot be eluded,
The law of the present and future cannot be eluded,
The law of the living cannot be eluded—it is eternal,
The law of promotion and transformation cannot be eluded,
The law of heroes and good-doers cannot be eluded,
The law of drunkards, informers, mean persons—not one iota thereof
can be eluded."

from “To Think of Time” by Walt Whitman

Hey guys, it’s Walt Whitman’s birthday!

Here’s the game plan:

- grab your favorite edition of Leaves Of Grass
- go to your favorite park
- read the damn thing
- spend an hour yawping though the streets like you dgaf
- finish the day by celebrating and singing yourself like you should

uutpoetry:

The Heat On Timorous Minnows

a homophonic translation of Baudelaire’s “L’Héautontimorouménos”

Jets repair without cholera
and without hands, like the butchers,
like the noise of a rocker!
And the fire of potpourri,

pours above my Sahara,
a jailer of suffering eyes.
My desire frees from appearance
certain plurals to sell Asian rugs

like vessels quickened and large,
that dance my cortical solar aunt
to sheer sandlots turning around
to a chamber of charging bats!

Are not Swiss jeeps that fax a cord
and dance the divine symphony
grace from the voice of Irony
and my security to mourn?

The last dance of my voice (the crying!)
casts out my song (the poisoner!)
and swings the sinister mirror
out of meager regard!

Just see the play and the county!
Just see the souffle and the juice!
Just see the membranes of rouge.
and the victims of the bureau!

Just see the moon of vampire heart
—and these grand abandonments
of rare eternal condiments
that never prevent our sore ear!

Reminder: try more homophonic translations.