What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

-- Langston Hughes  
"Dream Deferred"

I hold my honey and I store my bread
In little jars and cabinets of my will.
I label clearly, and each latch and lid
I bid, Be firm till I return from hell.
I am very hungry. I am incomplete.
And none can give me any word but Wait,
The puny light. I keep my eyes pointed in;
Hoping that, when the devil days of my hurt
Drag out to their last dregs and I resume
On such legs as are left me, in such heart
As I can manage, remember to go home,
My taste will not have turned insensitive
To honey and bread old purity could love.

-- Gwendolyn Brooks  
"My Dreams, My Works, Must Wait Till After Hell"

I want to sleep the dream of the apples,
to withdraw from the tumult of cemetries.
I want to sleep the dream of that child
who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas.

I don't want to hear again that the dead do not lose their blood,
that the putrid mouth goes on asking for water.
I don't want to learn of the tortures of the grass,
nor of the moon with a serpent's mouth
that labors before dawn.

I want to sleep awhile,
awhile, a minute, a century;
but all must know that I have not died;
that there is a stable of gold in my lips;
that I am the small friend of the West wing;
that I am the intense shadows of my tears.

Cover me at dawn with a veil,
because dawn will throw fistfuls of ants at me,
and wet with hard water my shoes
so that the pincers of the scorpion slide.

For I want to sleep the dream of the apples,
to learn a lament that will cleanse me to earth;
for I want to live with that dark child
who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas.

-- Federico Garcia Lorca
"Gacela of the Dark Death"

 
Ariel was glad he had written his poems.
They were of a remembered time
Or of something seen that he liked.

Other makings of the sun
Were waste and welter
And the ripe shrub writhed.

His self and the sun were one
And his poems, although makings of his self,
Were no less makings of the sun.

It was not important that they survive.
What mattered was that they should bear
Some lineament or character,

Some affluence, if only half-perceived,
In the poverty of their words,
Of the planet of which they were part.

-- Wallace Stevens
"The Planet On The Table"

They deliver the edicts of God
without delay
And are exempt from apprehension
from detention
And with their God-given
Petasus, Caduceus, and Talaria
ferry like bolts of lightning
unhindered between the tribunals
of Space & Time
The Messenger-Spirit
in human flesh
is assigned a dependable,
self-reliant, versatile,
thoroughly poet existence
upon its sojourn in life
It does not knock
or ring the bell
or telephone
When the Messenger-Spirit
comes to your door
though locked
It'll enter like an electric midwife
and deliver the message
There is no tell
throughout the ages
that a Messenger-Spirit
ever stumbled into darkness

-- Gregory Corso
"Destiny"

The extraordinary patience of things!
This beautiful place defaced with a crop of surburban houses-
How beautiful when we first beheld it,
Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs;
No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing,
Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rockheads-
Now the spoiler has come: does it care?
Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide
That swells and in time will ebb, and all
Their works dissolve. Meanwhile the image of the pristine beauty
Lives in the very grain of the granite,
Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff.-As for us:
We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;
We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident
As the rock and ocean that we were made from.

-- Robinson Jeffers
Carmel Point

Scars and Then Wings

by

Justice Putnam

The fuselage cast
A reflected beacon
That traveled along
Invisible
Hills and pastures

Occasionally
Illuminating
Windows and streams.

(San Francisco, California 2001)

Toward An Understanding Of Metropolitan America

by

Justice Putnam

We lived in cities
Worshipped in shafts of steel
Carried the disease of ignorance

Infecting mountains with jet thunder
Forests wet with water poison
Sands moved by tumult and wind

We see the moon on the crust
Of a jagged sea
White thorns advancing
Broken glass water

We illuminated the night
We fear a kiss
We are strangers

(Muir Beach, California 1988)

Calloused Innocence

by

Justice Putnam

For clarity
Embrace havoc
Lay down with rabid wolves.

Evoke the memory
Older than our lives
Circulating within our very blood.

Community
Homelessness

Wild Providence.

(Portland, Oregon 1981)

Static of the Stars

by

Justice Putnam

Though I walk
Among the seeing
In a so called
Reality

Of time and greed
Power and lust

A so called
Security.

I know it
Is sound that
Really matters

Some think
It is the
Static of the stars

The roaring waves
Or the howling wind

I say
It is
The beating
Of her heart.

I once
Burned all
My bridges
Behind me

So that
To loneliness
I would be led.

I wanted a
Drink of sympathy

I tilted back
An empty cup
Instead.

I wanted
To paint
A picture
Of my reflections

Maybe
Shade over
The ideals
From my past

We might
All seek
Lasting love

But how many
Make love last?

And now I walk
Among the seeing