In western fields of corn and northern timber lands,
They talk about me, a saloon with a soul,
The soft red lights, the long curving bar,
The leather seats and dim corners,
Tall brass spittoons, a nigger cutting ham,
And the painting of a woman half-dressed thrown reckless across a bed after a night of booze and riots.
Paula is digging and shaping the loam of a salvia,
Scarlet Chinese talker of summer.
Two petals of crabapple blossom blow fallen in Paula's
hair,
And fluff of white from a cottonwood.
With the rain falling
surgically against the roof,
I ate a dish of ice cream
that looked like Kafka's hat.
That Justice is a blind goddess
Is a thing to which we black are wise:
Her bandage hides two festering sores
That once perhaps were eyes.
Just because
people love your mind,
doesn't mean they
have to have
your body,
too.
Just a little more
And we shall see the almond trees in blossom
The marbles shining in the sun
The sea, the curling waves.
Just a little more
Let us rise just a little higher.
Mulberries drop; tart purple rots to wine.
Plump sparrows celebrate and gorge like swine.
Perhaps their revelry should be delayed
Since cats appreciate a marinade.
Jove himself moves in the abyss
As in the heights he goes;
The God is so in all that is,
Yet is what no one knows.
'Twas not my nectar made thy strength divine,
But 'twas thy strength which made my nectar thine!
SIR:- You complain that I have asserted that a partiality for monarchy appeared in your conduct. This fact you deny, and entreat me to bring forward the evidences which I suppose will warrant the assertion. The assertion was not founded on vague rumor, nor was it the result of any scattered and dubious expressions through your Defence of the American Constitutions that might warrant such a suspicion, but from my own judgment and observation soon after your return from Europe in the year 1788. There certainly was then an observable alteration in your whole deportment and conversation.
