Words, by bob brown

O O

Darling Sit

O O

Were marooned on a Dry-eyed in its center

Little old Scanning the seas

Eye of an islette For you

Dear Dear

Fancy in poetry

Now that aeroplanes

Anchor to stars

Is a trifle old-fashioned Poets who used to yank down

Whole stellar systems to stuff Their mental mattresses To-day tug lonelily at their

Inelastic celluloid galluses

Trying to lift by boot-straps

Leaden cloddish earthen poetry feet.

Aeroplanes have made the Muse shy

As Pegasus shied of old on

Encountering unexpected comets.

(microtext)

Big fat gaping minds

Gazing into books

Lumbering after thoughts

Lean lithe print

Glancing back at them

Keeping well ahead

Fat old minds

Creaking at their work

Blithe, fresh running type

Circling swiftly

Round them

Lament of an etcher

I have etched and etched

Scratched a thousand

Coppers, zincs and alloys

Filled them with criss-crosses

Zig-zags and cross-hatches

Like finely-woven spider-webs

I might have spent my time

To more purpose

Weaving panama hats

For all the public cares

About real Art

And now Old and broken

Unappreciated

In spite of my exhausting effort

To make the Brooklyn Bridge

Look true to life

As accurate as a photograph

With every cable stretched taut and

All the finely scratched little lines

Just as God put them in our thumbs

I face failure and renounce

The unappreciative public

In future I will devote myself to

An even subtler Art

From this day onward

I will scratch my back

For my own exclusive selfish pleasure

Scratch and scratch it

Backwards and forwards

This way and that

With an old yellow-fingered

Chinese ivory back-scratcher

Shaped as a long-nailed

Grasping ghostly hand

With all my skill

I will scratch

As finely as the finest etching

Grave with supreme technique

Superb sworling compositions

On my back where even I

Cannot see my masterpieces

My art shall henceforth be

Concealed from all

Art for Art's sake

(microtext

Writing with a

Fountain pen

Is dull work

Gimme a regular pen

Or a fountain

A grace before writing

Lord God we have in Common

This good language

To nourish us

Lord God keep us

From stammering it

Sipping it

Stuttering it

Snuffling it

Dribbling it on our

Pouter-pigeon breasts

A letter at a time

Like gruelish alphabet soup

Writing

Apathy of life

Immobility of mind

Sat-on souls

God -on your dump-heap

Throne of punctured tyres

Off Pegasus

Sitting there stolidly

Straight through eternity

Flattening piled tins of

Sardined souls

God -do you never feel like

Getting up to stretch and yawn

Say in the seventh heaven

Just to give the soul-boys

An occasional inning

(microtext)

New York 1930

Talkies

Twisting the rails of

Rhino

Winding up phonographs

Pushing adio plugs

Dropping nickels down slots

Jiggling telephone hooks

Talkies

Diddling with spark plugs

Cranking cranky Fords

Twisting rhinoceros rails

Rhino talks!

The snatch of life

Belonging most to me

Is an embroidered, mind-woven strip of being

Fringed along one side by

Lace of dreams

The other edge bound tightly by a

Creamy Chinese silk-band of awakening.

On this strip I sit cross-legged

Weaving the fabric as a caterpillar spins its cocoon

Using threads of experience and imagination in

undreamed design.