Read Ebook: Against This Age by Bodenheim Maxwell

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Ebook has 164 lines and 17833 words, and 4 pages

If you subtract a nose you add religion, Supine, and in a glitter of explanation Expanding the unreasonable second Of chattering, pugnacious flesh. The inquisitive elevation of noses Does not fit into the smooth Curvatures of faith. If you remove the lips you add Philosophy, for lips express the warm Quarrel of emotions and become Crimson antagonists to contemplation. If you subtract the eyes you add The fertile smugness of earth, For eyes are rapid skeptics Tossing light beyond the circles of earth. Flesh will remain and vacillate Between the cocaine of belief And times of wakefulness Designed to replenish the drug. Then reconstruct the face With shifting experiments Of spirit, fantasy, and intellect, Intent upon violating The tyrannies of formal reiteration. Men will revile you and bestow The necessary background.

DEFINITIONS

Men, each snuggling proudly Into an inch of plausible falsehood, Will hate the careless smile That whitens these definitions. The table has been broken by fists; The fanatic has mangled his voice; The scientist cautiously repairs the room Beyond which he dares not peer. Life, they will never cease to explain you.

TO A CORPULENT SINGER

Bulging maturity Constructs an unfair version Of curves not visible To eyes upon the outside face.

If a soul is more Slender than the motives of wind, Flesh provides the necessary Privacy, and in a rising voice The soul proclaims its gratefulness.

Who has watched a bear Pawing his idea of a breeze? The audience in this falsely walled Room is pouncing awkwardly Upon the small part of a singer's voice. The actual sounds swing easily To eyes and ears beyond the edge of earth.

And if to this meandering Of metaphysical remarks I should add a face Where tragedy experiments with lanterns To aid a long, sharp nose and wondering lips, And laughter is conscious of being The excited, misunderstood child of a soul, The singer would receive Final details of her disguise.

TOPSY-TURVY

If I insist that violets Are intellectual eyes Dotting with a wave of sight The chained recalcitrance of earth, Philosophers and scientists-- Blind boys who bolt themselves within a room-- Will seek to torture me For the flashing witchcraft That rides on thunderclaps Called imagination. The crystallized escape Of fear is known as logic, And men have used it to light Small spaces in the wilderness of black. But I prefer to mount Huge horses of the wind, Whose fantastic laughter Separates to metaphors And similes that hurl their decorations Against the wide malevolence of space. When I return to the morbid Helplessness of earth And shake off the dream of freedom, Men ply their knives of gods And creeds upon my skin. Much traveling through space Has made me immune to pain, And metaphors and similes Aid my counting of blood-drops, Bringing color to mathematics.

Lady upon whose head I weave the motives of this poem, Change your sex to a barely visible Trembling that can match the fluttering charm Of the wreath that I have made for you. When this task is finished We may saunter gayly Past the cunning niches That psychology has made for us.

REVILE THE ACROBAT

Maiden, where are you going, With impudence that makes your arms and legs Unnecessary feathers? Your eyes have interceded Between the flesh and soul, And show a light of reconciliation. For whom have you prepared yourself?

Maiden, why is this acrobat Better than men who stand within The favored halls of mind and heart, Playing, with lust and dignity, Violins and trumpets?

They are not better, and he, Whose thoughtful quickness combines The pliantness of mind and soul, He is not worse--the thoughts of men Stand still on high roofs of the mind, Or borrow sorceries of flesh, While he, with flimsy trails Of ruffles on a gaudy jacket, Springs into the air; assaults Every stately, fierce, robust Finality that men have made. He cares not whether he is right or wrong. He seeks a decorative speed Of thought and soul, and he is not afraid Of being insincere. Men loathe him, but I clothe him With magnificent, specific Fabrics slighter than the remorse of a child And bearing involved births of colors. Strength is not alone The size and thickness known to men!

COMPULSORY TASKS

RHYMED CONVERSATION WITH MONEY

How many planets have you raped, Where only animals escaped To scrape with melancholy needs The bones of last men lost in weeds? Since you are blunt and fraudulent You must receive a bare treatment. Adverbs and adjectives undress When greeted by excrescences. You are the stench on any street, Thick with the vagaries of defeat: The wench who plies her squawking crime Within the alley-ways of time. For men desire to guard with pain The limitations of their brain, And drag the numbness of their hearts Within ornate and creaking carts. And for these tasks they must be bold, Clutching endurance from a cold Squirming with you within the dark, And rising blistered with your mark. Again you give to doubting lust An argument which it can trust. Imagination spoils the scene And needs a dagger, crude and mean. For you were made by men to choke A lyric with an obscene joke And strike the mind when it is strong, With whips methodical and long. Men who are inarticulate Desire to parody their fate With gibberish of clinking coins. When life, excited thief, purloins The voice and energy of men, They lead him to a mouldy pen: They seek revenge and watch him wilt, Finding importance in his guilt. They do not know that they have made The thief to revel in his aid. And you are there to strain your cheek Against imaginations weak-- Coquettish counterfeit of strength. I have observed your metal length Of hands drop on the poet's throat, And yet he scarcely saw you gloat. To certain men you merely feed The stoics of creative need.

I am the vicious test with which Men find that they are poor or rich. Without my challenge men might fail To leave the blurred and murderous jail. Utopias are merely death: Men need the scorching of my breath.

HIGHLY DELIBERATE POEM

"Mother o' mi-i-ine, mother o' mi-i-ine, Sweet as uh ro-ose in thuh spring-ti-i-ime"--

The man who bawls this song Has the face of a spell-bound, hairless rat. Entranced within a spotlight, He borrows unconsciously Another voice from despair. The ordinary squeak of his life Is paralyzed, and fear of death Lends him a tenor voice To supplicate the Catcher. But the audience fails to understand And makes flat sounds of glee With hands ... Death, quietly Disgusted at this blind approval, Takes away the spotlight. Now safe, the rat presents Jerks of gratitude and scampers off To gnaw at his wife within their dressing-room. That squeezed-in bag of piteous Mythologies described as heart Has opened in one thousand people And received a vision Of past solicitude for other bags. The rat repeats this feat and wins Varieties of coarse sweetmeats. At sixty the rat will be a gorged Machiavelli, wondering Whether he has not blundered. Death finds no interest in killing rats And often allows them to live, Preferring instead the less buried souls Of a poet or a child of ten. But the rat has found a fear Within the second eyes of whiskey And relates it to his wife. "Say, May, this thing is funny! You won't believe me, but tonight Just before I started the act I felt like I was gonna die. What in hell is wrong with me? This booze must be drivin' me bughouse. Well, move a leg, and get that thousand Faulkner promised you, and stop Sitting there and staring at me." Death, who has listened with fastidious Ennui, strolls off to slay A negro infant newly born.

POEM

A curious courtship in your brain Regulates the movements of your limbs. Remorse, the fanciful, abandoned Child of madness, discovers its lips Upon the breast of a hovering Madonna. How many poets present The crushed tips of their hearts Pieced carefully together as a wreath Upon the two heads of this wooing? Imagination is a wound Upon the adventures of thoughts, And one scar left behind Is known as reality. Will they give you robes Threaded with orderly shimmers of repentance, Pardoning the scar in earthly ways?

REALISTIC CREATOR

An intimate and playful accident Common to life had placed him on a bench Beside an old and stiffly wounded wench. With erudite and careful eyes he sent A sneer to tear away her feeble mask And snatch the battered dullness of her heart. He spied her only in the scheming part Of soiled flesh bickering with some trivial task.

The lacerated madness of her soul, And delicate emotions kicked by life, Did not invade the swift tricks of his mind. Regarding her, he could not see the whole, Or catch the psychic lunge behind her strife. His eyes were savagely adroit, and blind.

CITY STREETS

This pavement and the sordid boast of stone And brick that wins the pity of a sky Are only martyred symbols made to buy A dream of permanence for flesh and bone. The jumbled, furtive anecdotes of lips And limbs that bring their fever to this street, They will subside to fragments of defeat Within the cool republic where death trips.

This is an age where flesh desires to shape Intense hyperboles in prose and verse, Transforming city streets and country lanes To backgrounds aiding physical escape. But city streets are waiting to disperse With ruins the fight and plight of earthly pains.

DECADENT CRY

Only an intellect clad in sprightly chiffon Can spy the importance of flowers on a hill.

GIRL

The words of men are not conjectures Lunging toward your soul: They do not wish you to leave The fawning thefts of flesh. When with covered formality They tramp from actual pulpits, They merely bring celestial nonsense For one, uncurious, sanctified bed. Ah, girl, the soul that they give you Is a clumsy, white Concert-master rebuking The first-violin of your body. Again they brand a word, Sacredness, upon your breast, Claiming that your soul is tied To the pliant riot of your limbs.

Girl, I can forget for a moment That hairs upon the bulge of my chest Must be praised or censured, And I have no desire To belittle you with one, Hopeless, cynical, sententious Group of words, while intellect, Flavoring its tea-cup with a sneer, Watches you from shaded balconies. When you win the torpid illness Known as virtue you are less important Than a quest for daisies in the moon, And when you merely ask For one blow and inertness, An old dream yells and ends With the quietness of sprawling pity. Girl, avoid the plentiful Drugs of seriousness and spend Pieces of your heart on every whim. Give your flesh the light and sharp Contacts of a thistle blown Across the wincing cheeks of rogues. Make your soul and body spurn Each other with a swift impertinence, And let your clawing griefs and joys Be still a moment on the couch of thought. And if at times you turn your head To spy the hatred of philosophers And panting realists, preserve the smile Of one who takes a suitable reward.

COLOR AND A WOMAN

Cry the names of colors And fail to reproduce The brightly worried way In which they burn ideas, Sweeping hues of intangible blood Into the conspiring fires of soul: The darkly reticent manner With which they embalm emotions, Ending the spontaneous treachery With a self-possessed attraction. Chant the names of colors And fascinate the brown Coward, who surrounds himself With crystal safeguards known as facts, But likes the dangerous sounds Of unattained realities. Or, scorn this satirical advice And storm the body of a woman With words as deliberate as wind, Yet heavier, and bearing Colors without a label. The substance of her hair-- Ethereal stems that continue their quest Beyond the warped confines of sight-- Shows the darkness of intellect Answering a miniature sunset Whose dying light does not quite succumb. The steep reserve of her forehead Has been kindled by a flat burden Pale as the cry of a child, yet carrying The hint of trouble found in late afternoon. Her eyes hold emotional evening, With spurts of dawn remaining like anxious relics Kept alive by unsatisfied designs From that derided realm where logic dies. Her breast is the color that a north wind Would have if it were visible to eyes. Upon her body, color in light and darkness Subdues the ribald ponderousness of life And brings the filmy, flashing seriousness Detested by the prostrate toil of mud; Hated in taverns at midnight; Banished from every couch when morning Rearranges the ancient jest.

RELUCTANT LADY

The widely bruised, shy beauty of a brain That renders dogmas bashful with its breath Will raise its last, wan offering to death-- A poise of gossamer that takes the rain Of darkness, with an unexpectant pride. Your thoughts are old and yet too young for life Whose ponderous sneer preserves their curling strife. They wait for heavy spear-points, side by side.

You are a wilted pilgrim on a road Where hills and rubbish-pits receive alike The skeptical remonstrance of your pace. You pass through towns and raise your thoughtful load To shield your loves against the words that strike The sheer, elastic trouble of your face.

PSYCHOLOGY FROM MARS

Torban flattered the details Of his festival in brown--a beard-- With fingers that held a musical length, And spoke of psychology. The clever reproduction Of a human being, His appearance lacked A hairsbreadth of reality And barely failed to convince. His eyes, assemblages of planets Miraculously dwarfed, were small But did not hold the shifting gluttony Common to little eyes. His lips were unsubstantial fibres And the straight line of his nose Gained an unearthly sincerity. His body was muscular but failed to reveal The smug delusion of superiority That lives within physical strength. With a voice in which pity and satire Mingled bewilderedly with each other, He spoke of psychology. "Normal and average men On Mars are charged with being Insane and distorted oracles. Because they desire to resemble each other We force them to live together On drably elaborate plateaus. There they fashion cities-- Geometrical madness That censures shreds of dread and unrest Within the spaces of its heart. There they retreat to farms, And the disciplined exhaustion Of their lives reclines upon Monotonous rewards known as harvests. They cling to homes--slumbering alcoves Plentifully supplied With complimenting mirrors And altars for the mind. Sometimes a revolution Seduces their living flatness, And an original confusion Follows rumours of creation, But the sanity vanishes Into the marching unison Of their repentant madness. We who are sane live below the plateaus. 'Home' to us is a flitting answer: Different spots inevitably Transformed by our bodies garlanded with mind, Or requests of the heart That tarry a moment for shelter. As we wander we tear And rebuild ancient lanes and houses, Leaving a sentinel of change Behind to confront the next traveller. We stroll in twos and threes That endure for a day or an hour, And we never linger At one place to gloat over details. Restless sanity, my friend, Equips the changing cries within us. Restless sanity Prevents us from complacently Dozing over miniatures, With a dream of importance Rocking within the rhythms of our hearts!"

TO TIME

O Time, you are an idiot's fluid curse. O Time, you are an uninspired hearse. O Time, you kill beneath your robe of nurse.

O Time, your eyes are cherubs drowned in pools, O Time, your wisdom scorns the aid of stools, O Time, your kindness blinds the life of fools.

O Time, you blur pretentious intellect. O Time, you break the thrones that thoughts erect. O Time, your hands indifferently correct

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