three poems
Mark Johnson
Also and Too
1
Leave nothing undone, risk finding yourself
answerable for disorder ! When I say that is being
capacious, like a great river, and say also, or
maybe something like the opposite like
being perceived
minutely as one for whom
food, yes, is pleasant but whose
desire for knowledge
of evil
makes laziness impossible, you
add - we made a deal - Some
find it in music
if they are usually doing it, while
others are liable to seize upon ——
are made happy by mittens
nine out of ten, mittens
and why not, I love mine.
I love mine too.
2
They say
means of gratification are many
if you’ve been forewarned
every moment past
-keep ’em coming- will
be followed by pain.
“They” is clearly the voice of self-love
of course it is - the light that, climbing
sap-like inside a tree up
to the top seems
valuable, of value, when you
are stationed there, too –
“light,” another name for
that various power whose loss
you were forewarned against.
O sensitive parrot aware you
never encountered language
3
Does pain affect mind ? Let
a beast look around a
degree of folly
is of trifling consequence except when
supercharged by the misery to which
a beast is exposed acting
on this short life. Then, the folly
does it a wickedness,
there is one emotion. Well
much that is alarming binds us
to this life but also, happily,
rivets, nothing, drunkenness
do too !
A Effort
1
Why not warn me
I am holding my one fish
tangible reward of thrift
incautiously too near the fire ?
You are thinking you’re young
who doesn’t love a youthful crime
do wrong and return to virtue later
but – you are old, mind wisely gone,
my farmed fish a coal a bit
excited by the injury done it
after death before
dinner. Always die poor !
The glorious view
up here, at last
not a fall risk.
2
In every classic age
a effort suffices to win
the spoils of sundry triumphs
minus remorse,
a plus. Not now. In
this period THE duty’s been
“research clade
of selves.”
Yet hope applies its own odd force,
doubt whether modern physician…
I will fall from a precipice ?
Anyway, was it ever, when ??
vain to hope one’s tiny, best
failures might be remembered ?
Not even in classic ages !
3
This lobby seems
the
place for a horse
to sleep but stay, Sleep ! Mental balance,
horse, is inconsistent with
relief. So I am not
a rider. You are
not weary. Why mercy, then – if mercy we
admit we suffer and our work suffers,
we suffer, our work suffers – and see
every little thwarted thing ride us
out into water…
Deserving Nature
1
Few arguments
for deserving nature
in its local form surpass
When the day,
hunting approbation, begins
before other days,
I forgive it.
2
Having
practiced
and practiced
gregariousness till
you like your fellow men
as they are – your failure then
complete and final – being
itself puts you within
reach of a muscular,
pleasing failure
health.
3
Don’t negotiate
it away, glory
in the brand which
marks you for a villain that velocity,
if you
leave every other being unmolested
as during your infancy
well, I have often been amazed at the lack
of bygones - put plainly, of a
past - amongst those who left every
other being unmolested. Not
surviving is
as disgraceful as a nation.
Above, some absurdities
not unlike the beauty of a chin.
4
Labor to cherish as tender
anything labor
can tenderize ! stuff
preciouser than toast
say, doubt – as for that, act
as if doubt had secured by
indirectly forbidden means
the right to prevent its own destruction.
Go
doubt you’re asleep, that
morning will come, that
it’s come, that it
hasn’t come
for you. Doubt a
statement of purposelessness really a feint
mentioning tender green fields, animals, air, can
repel false honor, bad support,
wrong education, INTERESTED nurture, plus also
the forcible prohibition of discussion
of misery, the object and tendency
of which is to promote
misery.