Each and Every Door

"The easiest kind of relationship for me is with
ten thousand people. The hardest is with one."

-Joan Baez

The Pull

alfred eisenstaedt

One morning a little of his wine
turned my heart into a lion hunter.

-Rumi

Whatever Comes

nina leen

"Eyes, dreams, lips, and the night goes."

Erat Hora
by Ezra Pound


“Thank you, whatever comes.” And then she turned
And, as the ray of sun on hanging flowers
Fades when the wind hath lifted them aside,
Went swiftly from me. Nay, whatever comes
One hour was sunlit and the most high gods
May not make boast of any better thing
Than to have watched that hour as it passed.


[copyright Ezra Pound, 1926]

Time Cannot Be Worn

alan grant

Time Cannot Be Worn...
by Hart Crane


Time cannot be worn strapped to the supple wrist
Like any buckled jewel or bangle; no,
Lady, though the fingers that attach it twist
The oyster from its shell, may guide the bow
Across cool strings that lift a lasting claim
Upon Eternity. No, Lady,



[copyright Liveright Publishing, 1933]

Rhapsody

james jowers

Rhapsody (excerpt)
by Frank O'Hara


You were there always and you know all about these things
as indifferent as an encyclopedia with your calm brown eyes

it isn’t enough to smile when you run the gauntlet
you’ve got to spit like Niagara Falls on everybody or
Victoria Falls or at least the beautiful urban fountains of Madrid
as the Niger joins the Gulf of Guinea near the Menemsha Bar
that is what you learn in the early morning passing Madison Avenue
where you’ve never spent any time and stores eat up light

I have always wanted to be near it

though the day is long (and I don’t mean Madison Avenue)

lying in a hammock on St. Mark’s Place sorting my poems

[copyright Frank O'Hara, 1951]

Two Songs

allan grant

Two Songs
from "The Lamp and the Bell" by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I

Oh, little rose tree, bloom!
Summer is nearly over.
The dahlias bleed and the phlox is seed.
Nothing's left of the clover.
And the path of the poppy no one knows.
I would blossom if I were a rose.

Summer, for all your guile,
Will brown in a week to Autumn,
And launched leaves throw a shadow below
Over the brook's clear bottom,--
And the chariest bud the year can boast
Be brought to bloom by the chastening frost.

II

Beat me a crown of bluer metal;
Fret it with stones of a foreign style:
The heart grows weary after a little
Of what it loved for a little while.

Weave me a robe of richer fibre;
Pattern its web with a rare device:
Give away to the child of a neighbour
This gold gown I was glad in twice.


But buy me a singer to sing one song--
Song about nothing--song about sheep--
Over and over all day long;
Patch me again my thread-bare sleep.


[copyright Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1921]

Ground Zero

Michael Ochs

Ground Zero
by Colin Dodds

The folding chair, the windowpane that survived
are what made ground zero so strange.
His blinking and his silent fires
are what made ground zero so like us.

Before he arrived, we were hunting out
the history of exactly what happened
to that child or this.
As if the milky way and the past that engulfs us
were just the wake of a gone locomotive.

Ground zero counts on its fingers
the ways god loves his children.

Rainrainrainrainrain.

We had lived in a time and place
in which exactly nothing would explode.
Now everything ticks.

And I hurry off to Grand Central Station,
Grand Zero Station, Ground Zero Station.
I forget which.

The hours and the rooms lightened, untightened.
On television, where most of this happened,
ground zero went for a stroll,
showing his scabs and talking of rockets
in childish bad taste.

Dusk arrived like another catastrophe
that nobody had prepared for.
Women shook out their hair.
Men tried to be in the way.

Death had made a daring escape
from the nursing home and the hospital
and stared through our dream of everyday life.

It's cold now,
but everyone stands outside the store,
even ground zero,
reciting what they have learned.

Blinkblinkblinkblinkblink.

[copyright Medium Rare Publishing, 2003]