Manly Poems for Manly Men

[Man Ray]

I Have A Rendevous With Death

I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade
When Spring comes round with rustling shade
And apple blossoms fill the air.
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath;
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow flowers appear.

God knows 'twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear . . .
But I've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

Alan Seeger (1888-1916)

 

[Guest]

The Northwest Passage

Chorus:

Ah, for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage
To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea;
Tracing one warm line through a land so wild and savage
And make Northwest Passage to the sea.


Westward from the Davis Strait 'tis there 'twas said to lie
The sea route to the Orient for which so many died;
Seeking gold and glory, leaving weathered, broken bones
And a long-forgotten lonely cairn of stones.

Three centuries thereafter, I take passage overland
In the footsteps of brave Kelso, where his "sea of flowers" began
Watching cities rise before me, then behind me sink again
This tardiest explorer, driving hard across the plain.

And through the night, behind the wheel, the mileage clicking west
I think upon Mackenzie, David Thompson and the rest
Who cracked the mountain ramparts and did show a path for me
To race the roaring Fraser to the sea.

How then am I so different from the first men through this way?
Like them, I left a settled life, I threw it all away.
To seek a Northwest Passage at the call of many men
To find there but the road back home again.


A lyric by Stan Rogers​

 

[Tzara]

You know, we guys seem to be falling well behind the women in terms of volume and, probably, quality for our poems. I even see that Georgie Gordon, Lord B, one of the most boyish boyz that ever shtupped a C has so far cast his literary flights with the distaff team.

We'd better, guys, bring in the cleanup hitter.

Not known as poet. (Poems are, after all, a prissy form of writing. Like who the fuck is Shakespeare, Homer, Dante?) He's known for manly fiction. But upon occasion poems would find their wimpy way off of his pen to paper.

OK. C'est Papa Hemingway.

You all think Sylvia Plath was morose and dwelled on death? Hey. Suicide is manly and here St. Ernest does attest:

Montparnasse

There are never any suicides in the quarter among people one knows
No successful suicides.
A Chinese boy kills himself and is dead.
(they continue to place his mail in the letter rack at the Dome)
A Norwegian boy kills himself and is dead.
(no one knows where the other Norwegian boy has gone)
They find a model dead
alone in bed and very dead.
(it made almost unbearable trouble for the concierge)
Sweet oil, the white of eggs, mustard and water, soap suds
and stomach pumps rescue the people one knows.
Every afternoon the people one knows can be found at the café.​

Oh, wait. This is early Ernest and perhaps is wrong.

This poem suggests pills as killers, which is, one knows, a girly way to do it. Bring us men your guns and rope! Those manly ways to kill us!

Cher Papa corrected this flaw in one of his late, late poems, left untitled:

If my Valentine you won't be,
I'll hang myself on your Christmas tree.​

Ah! Direct, daunting, thoughtful verse from a recent Nobel laureate.

 

[The Mutt]

No offence love, but you and manly hardly mix. Nonthethess try Carroll and Lear as a start

Now why on earth would I possibly take offense at that?

 

[champagne1982]

A poem by Laurence Binyon, published September 21st, 1914.

For The Fallen

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

 

[Angeline]

Piute Creek
Gary Snyder

One granite ridge
A tree, would be enough
Or even a rock, a small creek,
A bark shred in a pool.
Hill beyond hill, folded and twisted
Tough trees crammed
In thin stone fractures
A huge moon on it all, is too much.
The mind wanders. A million
Summers, night air still and the rocks
Warm. Sky over endless mountains.
All the junk that goes with being human
Drops away, hard rock wavers
Even the heavy present seems to fail
This bubble of a heart.
Words and books
Like a small creek off a high ledge
Gone in the dry air.
A clear, attentive mind
Has no meaning but that
Which sees is truly seen.
No one loves rock, yet we are here.
Night chills. A flick
In the moonlight
Slips into Juniper shadow:
Back there unseen
Cold proud eyes
Of Cougar or Coyote
Watch me rise and go.

 

[DeepAsleep]

O Captain, My Captain?

Or this piece, by Sutphen

I came
The semen shot
up, up, up
but never came down.
Where the fuck did it go?

~R

 

[Angeline]

My Father's Love Letters
Yusef Komunyakaa

On Fridays he'd open a can of Jax
after coming home from the mill,
and ask me to write a letter to my mother
who sent postcards of desert flowers
taller than men. He would beg,
promising to never beat her
again. Somehow I was happy
she had gone, and sometimes wanted
to slip in a reminder, how Mary Lou
Williams' "Polka Dots & Moonbeams"
never made the swelling go down.
His carpenter's apron always bulged
with old nails, a claw hammer
looped at his side and extension cords
coiled around his feet.
Words rolled from under the pressure
of my ballpoint: Love,
Baby, Honey, Please.
We sat in the quiet brutality
of voltage meters and pipe threaders,
lost between sentences.
The gleam of a five-pound wedge
on the concrete floor
pulled a sunset
through the doorway of his toolshed.
I wondered if she laughed
and held them over a gas burner.
My father could only sign
his name, but he'd look at blueprints
and say how many bricks
formed each wall. This man,
who stole roses and hyacinth
for his yard would stand there
with eyes closed and fists balled,
laboring over a simple word, almost
redeemed by what he tried to say.

 

[cjh]

Wolves in the Street
- Stephen Dobyns

Tonight the world wishes to intrude itself
between our nakedness and one desire.
I climb from bed, walk to the window. Wolves prowl
back and forth between the houses and parked cars.
In their jaws they carry pieces of what they
have captured, sometimes a hand, sometimes a foot.
You lie uncovered on white sheets. I study
your breasts, your thin waist. I try to tell myself
your body is all I have ever wanted.
How long before the world overwhelms us?
You turn toward me, your lips move, wanting to speak.
In the ornate mirror above the bureau,
I see my teeth and snout, my small yellow eyes.
I cannot hear your words for all the barking.