Poems By Others

My father’s 95^th birthday
Sneaks up upon me,
Especially because he’s gone
Over twenty seven years now.
I actually visit him
In the Museum of Death
With its repetitive reminders
And exhibits,
The display of veils and tears,
Kind words and curses,
The collection of old horizons
In the Hall of Stammering,
The ghost towns
Of Embarrassment and Longing.
There is a diorama
Of a family
That looks idyllic on the outside,
But when the doors to the innards
are unlatched,
And you peer inside
You see vast bruises,
and firemen
Mirrors,
Dark passages
And few opened fields.
Then the announcement is made
Over the loudspeaker
That the museum shall be closing in an hour.
Though it never does,
This same announcement made
Every hour
On the hour
Echoing and ricocheting
in the shiny marble Hall of Endless Time
as you walk toward the exit
that doesn’t exist.

© brtaub 2009

Blackness
is a title,
is a preoccupation,
is a commitment Blacks
are to comprehend—
and in which you are
to perceive your Glory.

The conscious shout
of all that is white is
“It’s Great to be white.”
The conscious shout
of the slack in Black is
It’s Great to be white.”
Thus all that is white
has white strength and yours.

The word Black
has geographic power,
pulls everybody in:
Blacks here—
Blacks there—
Blacks wherever they may be.
And remember, you Blacks, what they told you—
remember your Education:
“one Drop—one Drop
maketh a brand new Black.”
Oh mighty Drop.
_____And because they have given us kindly
so many more of our people

Blackness
stretches over the land.
Blackness—
the Black of it,
the rust-red of it,
the milk and cream of it,
the tan and yellow-tan of it,
the deep-brown middle-brown high-brown of it,
the “olive” and ochre of it—
Blackness
marches on.

The huge, the pungent object of our prime out-ride
is to Comprehend,
to salute and to Love the fact that we are Black,
which is our “ultimate Reality,”
which is the lone ground
from which our meaningful metamorphosis,
from which our prosperous staccato,
group or individual, can rise.

Self-shriveled Blacks.
Begin with gaunt and marvelous concession:
YOU are our costume and our fundamental bone.

      All of you—
you COLORED ones,
you NEGRO ones,
those of you who proudly cry
“I’m half INDian”—
those of you who proudly screech
“I’VE got the blood of George WASHington in MY
veins”
ALL of you—
you proper Blacks
you half-Blacks,
you wish-I-weren’t Blacks,
Niggeroes and Niggerenes.

       You.

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.

The loved ones we call the dead
depart from us and for a while
are absent. And then as if
called back by our love, they come
near us again. They enter our dreams.
We feel they have been near us
when we have not thought of them.
They are simply here, simply waiting
while we are distracted among
our obligations. At last
it comes to us: They live now
in the permanent world.
We are the absent ones.

And it was at that age…
Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don’t know how or when,
no they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.
I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.
And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.

This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,
I fell in love with a wren
and later in the day with a mouse
the cat had dropped under the dining room table.

In the shadows of an autumn evening,
I fell for a seamstress
still at her machine in the tailor’s window,
and later for a bowl of broth,
steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.

This is the best kind of love, I thought,
without recompense, without gifts,
or unkind words, without suspicion,
or silence on the telephone.

The love of the chestnut,
the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.

No lust, no slam of the door —
the love of the miniature orange tree,
the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,
the highway that cuts across Florida.

No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor —
just a twinge every now and then

for the wren who had built her nest
on a low branch overhanging the water
and for the dead mouse,
still dressed in its light brown suit.

But my heart is always propped up in a field on its tripod,
ready for the next arrow.

After I carried the mouse by the tail
to a pile of leaves in the woods,
I found myself standing at the bathroom sink
gazing down affectionately at the soap,

so patient and soluble,
so at home in its pale green soap dish.
I could feel myself falling again
as I felt its turning in my wet hands
and caught the scent of lavender and stone.

I know I like to keep my secrets close. It’s who I am. 
That doesn’t mean I don’t love you. Doesn’t mean 
I don’t appreciate it when you plant larkspur 
and roses, lavender bushes and apricot trees, 
as if you believe in investing in a world years from now. 
Of course, I appreciate the way you call your congressmen
to tell them about the world you believe we could live in.
I love every time you put a letter in the mail with a stamp,
every time you learn a new skill or make a ten-year-plan. 
How beautiful you are to me when you dream.
It’s lonely here, of course. Everyone always coming toward
but never arriving. I’m not complaining. 
Being the future has its perks. Like infinite potential. 
Like hope. I know it’s hard sometimes to believe 
you will ever get through this. But haven’t you learned by now
that just because you don’t see the way forward
doesn’t mean they way doesn’t exist? 
That is the only promise I can make you, sweetheart.
You can’t see the path. But here it is. 

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

It’s never our finest hour in America but right now,
most things at the ledges of my life are like the sad
shuffling at the edge of an LP. This one time, I forgot

to pick up the tonearm & heard polyvinyl lamentations
until Thursday when I finally realized the sounds were from
my speakers & not one of my own haunted creation.

I would have laughed, but it was war time yet again:
more air strikes crumbling schools, more drone opportunities
& misplaced homilies. You got to be kidding me.

Polished tanks cresting possibility’s hill for another,
unrequited salvo. All the mystifying UFOs & split
infinities in the record’s imaginary are in the past as it

kept playing its static goodbyes: little hiccupping pleas
until somebody, finally, flipped off the infernal machine.

Every day I want to speak with you.
And every day something more important
calls for my attention-
the drugstore, the beauty products, the luggage  
I need to bring for the trip.

Even now I can hardly sit here
among the falling piles of paper and clothing,
the garbage trucks outside already screeching and banging.

The mystics say you are as close as my own breath.
Why do I flee from you? 
Help me. Even as I write these words I am planning
to rise from this chair as soon as I finish this sentence.