Today I Read

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Today I read this clever piece by someone named Bob Hicok out of The Best American Poetry 2010 series:

The Cunning Optimism of Language

She made me Overlord of the Sewers.
It was a quiet ceremony before bed, consisting of,
you are Overlord of the Sewers. I'm unsure
what my powers are, though clearly absolute,
I thought as we kissed good night. Waking
in this state, I found coffee tasted the same.
I've left a note to my underlings: make
everything better. I'm particularly curious
about raisin bread. How can raisin bread
be improved? Not the cheap shit
but the good stuff. This is love, I tell you,
the random bestowal of a title. Anything else
is fraudulent. Now you have something, sort of
like a tag, by which to gauge if your love is real.
As our beds will tell you, do not remove the tag
under penalty of law. Such stern cops, our beds.
Go to sleep, they tell us, make love, they tell us, 
die. If your lover makes you Overlord, don't ask,
of what? these are one-time offers, I fear,
just as the lightbulb that burned out
last night gets one chance to fail.
I have these minutes, all these chances to fail,
I must be many lightbulbs. It's well-lit
except in the corners, this life.

Today I read – Fidelity – by Tom Clark

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Fidelity, after long practice, 
to The things that have crossed one’s path in life, 
Moves one to find “history” in a morning, 
A moonlit night, a transitory patch 
Of sun upon grass, the turning of a cat’s 
Sleek head over its shoulder to look back 
Into one’s eyes, a lifelong lover’s touch, 
The memory of the shy sweet sidelong 
Smile of a friend one may not see again 
In “this life”—these things define home 
To one now that one lives largely in one’s mind— 
As though there had ever been any other 
Place—once born, once having existed— 
In which to somehow locate a world 

Because brief hours before fadeout life becomes 
A late awakening, much as one assumes 
Is the experience of “lost” generations 
Whose youth is turned back toward childhood by 
Dreams; just so one’s own dim youth now at last 
Appears a kind of slumber from which the slow 
Process of waking took a half century 
Or so, as time now opens up its eyes, 
Yawns, stretches, struggles in dark to discover 
Where it is among whirling things, places, years. 
But of course one will never fully emerge 
From this fog, nor in one’s heart wish to do so, 
For mere excursions don’t suffice on visits 
To dead cities—excavation too’s required, 
Cries out the hungry unborn poem 
Within us, demanding to exist as 
If alive

From The Best American Poetry 2010

Happy B-Day to Maya Angelou

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I Almost Remember by Maya Angelou

I almost remember
     smiling some
years past
     even combing the ceiling
with the teeth of a laugh
(longer ago than the
                      smile).
Open night news-eyed I watch
channels of hunger
     written on children's faces
     bursting bellies balloon
in the air of my day room.

There was a smile, I recall
now jelled in
a never yester glow. Even a laugh
that tickled the tits of
heaven
(older than the smile).
In graphs, afraid, I see the black
brown hands and
white thin yellowed fingers.

Slip slipping from the 
ledge of life. Forgotten by
all but hatred.
Ignored
by all but disdain.

On late evenings when
quiet inhabits my garden
when grass sleeps and
streets are only paths for silent
mist.

       I seem to remember
                        
                          Smiling.