Life poems
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California Plush
© Frank Bidart
is the Hollywood Freeway at midnight, windows down and
radio blaring
bearing right into the center of the city, the Capitol Tower
on the right, and beyond it, Hollywood Boulevard
blazing
Adolescence
© Frank Bidart
He stared up into my eyes with a look
I can almost see now.He had that look in his eyes
that bore right into mine.I could sense that he knew I was
envious of what he was doing; and knew that I'dalways wish I had known at the time
Dedication
© Wole Soyinka
Earth will not share the rafter's envy; dung floors
Break, not the gecko's slight skin, but its fall
Taste this soil for death and plumb her deep for life
Working Girls
© Carl Sandburg
THE working girls in the morning are going to work--
long lines of them afoot amid the downtown stores
and factories, thousands with little brick-shaped
lunches wrapped in newspapers under their arms.
Woman with a Past
© Carl Sandburg
THERE was a woman tore off a red velvet gown
And slashed the white skin of her right shoulder
And a crimson zigzag wrote a finger nail hurry.
Weeds
© Carl Sandburg
FROM the time of the early radishes
To the time of the standing corn
Sleepy Henry Hackerman hoes.
To a Contemporary Bunkshooter
© Carl Sandburg
You come along squirting words at us, shaking your fist
and calling us all damn fools so fierce the froth slobbers
over your lips. . . always blabbing we're all
going to hell straight off and you know all about it.
The Year
© Carl Sandburg
IA STORM of white petals,
Buds throwing open baby fists
Into hands of broad flowers.
The Liars
© Carl Sandburg
(March, 1919)A LIAR goes in fine clothes.
A liar goes in rags.
A liar is a liar, clothes or no clothes.
A liar is a liar and lives on the lies he tells and dies in a life of lies.
The Four Brothers
© Carl Sandburg
MAKE war songs out of these;
Make chants that repeat and weave.
Make rhythms up to the ragtime chatter of the machine guns;
Make slow-booming psalms up to the boom of the big guns.
Slants at Buffalo, New York
© Carl Sandburg
A FOREFINGER of stone, dreamed by a sculptor, points to the sky.
It says: This way! this way!
Four lions snore in stone at the corner of the shaft.
Silver Nails
© Carl Sandburg
A MAN was crucified. He came to the city a stranger,
was accused, and nailed to a cross. He lingered hanging.
Laughed at the crowd. "The nails are iron," he
said, "You are cheap. In my country when we crucify
Portrait of a Motor Car
© Carl Sandburg
ITS a lean car
a long-legged dog of a car
a gray-ghost eagle car.
The feet of it eat the dirt of a road
the wings of it eat the hills.
Danny the driver dreams of it when he sees women in red skirts and red sox in his sleep.
It is in Dannys life and runs in the blood of him
a lean gray-ghost car.
Population Drifts
© Carl Sandburg
NEW-MOWN hay smell and wind of the plain made her
a woman whose ribs had the power of the hills in
them and her hands were tough for work and there
was passion for life in her womb.
Old Woman
© Carl Sandburg
THE owl-car clatters along, dogged by the echo
From building and battered paving-stone.
The headlight scoffs at the mist,
And fixes its yellow rays in the cold slow rain;
Against a pane I press my forehead
And drowsily look on the walls and sidewalks.
Momus
© Carl Sandburg
Momus is the name men give your face,
The brag of its tone, like a long low steamboat whistle
Finding a way mid mist on a shoreland,
Where gray rocks let the salt water shatter spray
Against horizons purple, silent.
Loam
© Carl Sandburg
IN the loam we sleep,
In the cool moist loam,
To the lull of years that pass
And the break of stars,
Let Love Go On
© Carl Sandburg
LET it go on; let the love of this hour be poured out till all the answers are made, the last dollar spent and the last blood gone.
Time runs with an ax and a hammer, time slides down the hallways with a pass-key and a master-key, and time gets by, time wins.
Laughing Corn
© Carl Sandburg
THERE was a high majestic fooling
Day before yesterday in the yellow corn.
And day after to-morrow in the yellow corn
