John Wieners Poems

The scene changes

Five hours later and
I come into a room
where a clock ticks.
...

God love you
Dana my lover
lost in the horde
on this Friday night,
...

I sit in Lees. At 11:40 PM with
Jimmy the pusher. He teaches me
Ju Ju. Hot on the table before us
shrimp foo yong, rice and mushroom
...

And with great fear I inhabit the middle of the night
What wrecks of the mind await me, what drugs
to dull the senses, what little I have left,
...

to Somes

from incarceration, Taunton State Hospital, 1972

gaunt, ugly deformed

broken from the womb, and horribly shriven
...

For I have seen love
and his face is choice Heart of Hearts,
a flesh of pure fire, fusing from the center
where all Motion is one.
...

Yes I put her away.
But now life flares up
As safe as China in a cup
You hear the droppings
of her heart.
...

O poetry, visit this house often,
imbue my life with success,
leave me not alone,
give me a wife and home.
...

The quality of mercy

is not strained

It lieth along the center road

It falleth from the nude sky

as gentle earth rained

over green pastures He maketh
it to abide by Misted Q lanes

whosoever can tell what kiss
brings forward HIS peace

The quality of mercy is not strained
It falleth from the gentle earth like heaven.
...

Destiny lies behind our forces
and what lives in the soul
dies not. It inhabits our dreams
as perpetual as light.

As the spring grass flowers,
it sprouts out in hair on our chin
and keeps birds thin
with the perpetual gnawing of desire.

The higher one goes
up the angelic ladder
remains the minute bits
and ends of our life.

Seeds there to recur when we
are most unaware.
Old faces, letters crop up again.
Words from our poems

Menace the night
...