Men in Hats Rise from the Ground

“Men in hats rise from the ground: / Bless these broken dolls and mend them.”

‘Five O’Clock’ by James Schuyler

Men disport themselves.
They help each other:
“Reach in my chest and massage my heart.
I am not dead.”

If clouds are God’s table linen,
what is rain?
He gave men towels to dry themselves.
He blessed their soap.

The city grew like the desert, by erosion
Men walk in it.
God is not so much dead as resting.
His seventh day has just begun.

Men step out of the wind.
They give money and necessaries.
They steal what belongs to them.
The eighth day, doors open on new sights.

Men in hats rise from the ground:
Bless these broken dolls and mend them.
What goes through cloth, walks and floats?
We rise lightly in you.


Source: Schuyler, James, James Meetze, and Simon Pettet. Other Flowers: Uncollected Poems. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. Print, p. 179.

Photo: Gerace, Joe. “Men in Hats Rise from the Ground” Nov. 14, 2020. JPG.

Double Freilicher

The ribbon around a bomb.

How blessed that red
ribbon — crosstown view —
1978 I can only describe
what I read times what I believe
and I know nothing
here’s among the five false sun-
flowers where the water comes
on high and tehuantepec yesss
crosstown traffic among crows
these are windows / not rules
but also rulers / also cans and bottles
emphasizing broad pale embarkment
buttressing five yellow zinnias / goddammit
why countless empty bowls? why
the abandonment of systems dead
biology dead language dead view
five pot marigolds i forgive you
all.

Circuit Dice Coffee Dramaturge

Wikipedia Poem, 875

atropos

imagine koch met another koch
what brotherless friendship
othered even these plants’ music

the moirai graduates shack up on center street
and sap wondersided all three conversing for
many years with any living man

append the loose fringe of life
three-story building wits growing seemly
never the end of the world war

and for many years
it was a centered king living white hairs
divided into three-story buildings

and for many years
it was a quarrel
overrule eating anyone

seeds seem imagine
seeds seemed from kralupy
there was a giant that could grow seeds inside himself

from kralupy he stood
on these places
dry and wondersided a peerless wit

sap graduate lit out
her nerve expected rigor
on the book of the bad queen ananke

in white hairs divided in 1948
after places painters use white hairs
skin conium the back scars white hairs

divided into white hairs on hungry green leaves
three-story center a graduate street
a painterly fact the sprite in her oval eyes

every sap wondering about aeschylus’ life
the back scars were made
freilicher brought daucus candlestock to lower manhattan

her life in three-story buildings
in aeschylus’ life small atropos
in white hairs shell-case of destinies

dry and even third avenue at sixteenth street
a painter’s taste of three-story building anyone?
seems imaginable so much beautiful writing

in 1948 a graduate student travels to greece
and never returns it stood on top of a spool of thread
in my life three-story buildings imagine fact

beauty in bullet form imagine kenneth koch
met aeschylus and the bad queen
nature’s fate seems by comparison its power

fact: the case of places
dry and very small
atropos in our life

he powers
the center
of hope

four inches in aeschylus’ life
three-stories at the center of a poem
fringed many years’ white hairs

skin conium their family book of brunette
with oval epitome and strong seeds
seems a comparison koch met giants who live for men

append friendship and very funny poems
imagine kralupy it was a quarrel overruled
eating graduate students’ exceptional epitome moirai

group of genealogies
the fates lick ash
nature family their family ween

ananke in aeschylus’ life powers a quarrel
overrule eating it seems from the potion of the parcae
yes, we muddle language probably because fates best god

but later the giant allots lachesis
in her english way it’s clear to fate
the book of destinies from each into each

his eating of the fates their brotherless friendship
and even the word hector all atropos inflexible
never a moiragetes but man’s appellation of hope

four inches long
seeds seeds seeds
dry and euripides’ poison hemlock

conium that centers fact
the end of places
in this dry medical form

I am Begging for the Approval of Any Potential Bros Out There with the Publication of this Three-Thousand Word Essay on Medium #hmu

Wikipedia Poem, No. 601

‪men / stumble around / a bag of steaming chicken bones

but not-doing
         en   stumbles 
chicken bones here  
    
‪men   stumble chicken bones here  

‪men   stumble 
       chicken 
  bones here  
  
‪men   stumble around a bag of steaming chicken bones here  

         ‪men   stumble 
flip flops and 
      broadway   in chicken bones cheap  

‪men   stumble chicken 
bones 
        here  
        
  ‪men   cheap cheap
       stumble chicken bones 
         here  

   ‪men   stumble 
around clucking cheap
        bag of steaming chicken 
        bones 
here  

  ‪men    chicken boned out on   

‪men   stumble 
around 
   bag of steaming chicken bones  

         ‪chicken 
         bones here  

‪men   stumble around 
      a bag of steaming chicken bones here  
      
         ‪men   stumble 
      chicken bones here  
     
‪men   stumble chicken bones 
         here  

‪men   flip flop 
broadway   
    in fucking flip flops 
and faded-red-lipstick-on-tossed-off-marlboro 
  shorts ‬
       
          not listening   but not-doing  that's for sure
      it 
listen   but not-doing
en   stumble 
chicken bones here cheap  
        
‪men   
stumble chicken 
bones here  

‪men   stumble   
chicken bones    here  
men   stumble   

   ‪men   
stumble 
      around a 
bag of steaming 
      chicken bones here  
        
‪en  
        stumble 
chicken bones en here en
   
‪men   cheap men  stumble around 
steaming   

   ‪men   stumble 
      chicken boned here  
      
‪men   stumble around a bag   

      ‪men   
stumble flip flops and broadway   
        fucking chicken bones 
        down there  

  ‪men   stumble 
    chicken bones 
here  

‪men   stumble in flip flops 
  around  
broadway and spring street  
      in 
fucking 
      chicken 
   bones    

‪men   
stumble bones 

      ‪chickens   
stumble 
      over men   oven-pigs
         
       ‪men   stumble 
          chicken 
  bones 
here  

     ‪men   
     stumble chicken 
bones here  

‪men   stumble chicken 
bones here  

  ‪men   stumble around a bag 
of steam 
   around a 
bag 
         of steam   playin' chicken there  

   ‪men   
     stumble  
     
‪men   
          stumble 
chicken'n 
  bones 
here  
          
‪men   there chicken there 
bones 
          here and hear   

‪men   do not hear 
    chicken bones 
       hear  

  ‪hairy men   chant
stumble in flip 
    chicken- 
         bone flop  

‪men   flip chicken bones here  

‪men   flip  
       bones here  

       ‪men   
stumble 
   over at above against   bones 
     here chicken chant

yellow ‪stumbling chicken shit 
bones

men   wear chicken bones 
when  it suits them

‪men   stumble 
chicken bones 
here  
       
          ‪men   stumble 
in spring street on flip flops and 
     broadway   phantom lovers   
phantoms   their damn selves

 

New York, 02062017

All photographs copyright Joseph M. Gerace/wikipoem.org