Dude 2: Reloaded

Library Movie

Sympathetic Portrait of a Child

The murderder's little daughter
who is barely ten years old
jerks her shoulders
right and left
so as to catch a glimpse of me
without turning round.

Her skinny arms
wrap themselves
this way and that
reversely about her body!
Nervously
she crushes her straw hat
about her eyes
and tilts her head
to deepen the shadow -
smiling excitedly!

As best she can
she hides herself
in the full sunlight
her cordy legs writhing
beneath the little flowered dress
that leaves them bare
from mid-thigh to ankle -

Why has she chosen me
for the knife
that darts along her smile?

--William Carlos Williams

Sunflower Sutra

an excerpt

Unholy battered old thing you were, my sunflower O
my soul, I loved you then!
The grime was no man's grime but death and human
locomotives,
all that dress of dust, that veil of darkened railroad
skin, that smog of cheek, that eyelid of black
mis'ry, that sooty hand or phallus or protuberance
of artificial worse-than-dirt--industrial--
modern--all that civilization spotting your
crazy golden crown--
and those blear thoughts of death and dusty loveless
eyes and ends and withered roots below, in the
home-pile of sand and sawdust, rubber dollar
bills, skin of machinery, the guts and innards
of the weeping coughing car, the empty lonely
tincans with their rusty tongues alack, what
more could I name, the smoked ashes of some
cock cigar, the cunts of wheelbarrows and the
milky breasts of cars, wornout asses out of chairs
& sphincters of dynamos--all these
entangled in your mummied roots--and you there
standing before me in the sunset, all your glory
in your form!
A perfect beauty of a sunflower! a perfect excellent
lovely sunflower existence! a sweet natural eye
to the new hip moon, woke up alive and excited
grasping in the sunset shadow sunrise golden
monthly breeze!
How many flies buzzed round you innocent of your
grime, while you cursed the heavens of the
railroad and your flower soul?
Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a
flower? when did you look at your skin and
decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive?
the ghost of a locomotive? the specter and
shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive?
You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a
sunflower!
And you Locomotive, you are a locomotive, forget me
not!

--Allen Ginsberg

Colors

My skin is kind of sort of brownish
Pinkish yellowish white.
My eyes are greyish bluish green,
But I'm told they look orange in the night.
My hair is reddish blondish brown,
But it's silver when it's wet.
And all of the colors I am inside
Have not been invented yet.

--Shel Silverstein

Warming Her Pearls

Next to my own skin, her pearls. My mistress
bids me wear them, warm them, until evening
when I'll brush her hair. At six, I place them
round her cool, white throat. All day I think of her,

resting in the Yellow Room, contemplating silk
or taffeta, which gown tonight? She fans herself
whilst I work willingly, my slow heat entering
each pearl. Slack on my neck, her rope.

She's beautiful. I dream about her
in my attic bed; picture her dancing
with tall men, puzzled by my faint, persistent scent
beneath her French perfume, her milky stones.

I dust her shoulders with a rabbit's foot,
watch the soft blush seep through her skin
like an indolent sigh. In her looking-glass
my red lips part as though I want to speak.

Full moon. Her carriage brings her home. I see
her every movement in my head...Undressing,
taking off her jewels, her slim hand reaching
for the case, slipping naked into bed, the way

she always does...And I lie here awake,
knowing the pearls are cooling even now
in the room where my mistress sleeps. All night
I feel their absence and I burn.

-- Carol Ann Duffy

Instinct

Although he's apparently the youngest (his little rasta-beard is barely down and feathers),
most casually cornered (he hardly glances at the girl he's with, though she might be his wife),
half-sloshed (or more than half) on picnic-whiskey teen-aged father, when his little son,
two or so, tumbles from the slide, hard enough to scare
himself, hard enough to make him cry,
really cry, not partly cry, not pretend the fright for what must be some scarce attention,
but really let it out, let loudly be revealed the fear of having been so close to real fear,
he, the father, knows just how quickly he should pick the child up, then how firmly hold it,
fit its head into the muscled socket of his shoulder, rub its back, croon and whisper to it,
and finally pull away a little, about a head's length, looking, still concerned, into its eyes,
then smiling, broadly, brightly, as though something had been shared, something of importance,
not dreadful, or not very, not at least now that it's past, but rather something... funny,
funny, yes, it was funny, wasn't it, to fall and cry like that,
though one can certainly understand,
we've all had glimpses of a premonition of the anguish out there, you're better now, though,
aren't you, why don't you go back and try again, I'll watch you, maybe have another drink,
yes, my on, my love, I'll go back and be myself now, you go be the person you are, too.

-- C. K. Williams