Saturday, January 6, 2024

A poem for our times

For Kenneth and Miriam Patchen 
Al Young

Here 
I am cutting you 
these fresh healthy flowers 
from my sick bed 
where I toss with nickel illuminations. 
Time is a fever 
that burns in the pores 
consuming everything the mind creates. 
I send you 
this cool arrangement of dream blossoms 
these tender stems & shiny leaves 
while I shiver 
& detect in your own eyes 
of gentle remove 
a similar disgust with what has come 
to our fat cancerous land 
of the sensual circus 
& the disembodied broadcast wave, 
swallowing in sorrow 
to hear the old hatred 
& uncover selfishness 
rumbling back up from the bosoms of men 
out into the good open air. 
May these new flowers 
from the forest of my heart 
bring you a breath of the joy 
men must believe they are going to recover 
by moving again & again 
against one another. 

From The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems of the San Francisco Bay Watershed (Sixteen Rivers Press 2010)

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