Howl Poems

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
...

The sun descending in the west,
The evening star does shine;
The birds are silent in their nest,
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Earth, Ocean, Air, belovèd brotherhood!
If our great Mother has imbued my soul
With aught of natural piety to feel
Your love, and recompense the boon with mine;
...

A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;
The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a jag-time tune;
Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And watching his luck was his light-o'-love, the lady that's known as Lou.
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All day, day after day, they're bringing them home,
they're picking them up, those they can find, and bringing them home,
they're bringing them in, piled on the hulls of Grants, in
...

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
...

BOOK I
DEEP in the shady sadness of a vale
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star,
...

ONCE more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But Gregory's wood and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack- and roof-levelling wind.
...

Preludium

The shadowy Daughter of Urthona stood before red Orc,
When fourteen suns had faintly journey'd o'er his dark abode:
His food she brought in iron baskets, his drink in cups of iron:
...

When I die
I don't care what happens to my body
throw ashes in the air, scatter 'em in East River
bury an urn in Elizabeth New Jersey, B'nai Israel Cemetery
...

The bows glided down, and the coast
Blackened with birds took a last look
At his thrashing hair and whale-blue eye;
The trodden town rang its cobbles for luck.
...

Right down the shocked street with a
siren-blast
That sends all else skittering to the
curb,
...

I do not want to be reflective any more
Envying and despising unreflective things
Finding pathos in dogs and undeveloped handwriting
And young girls doing their hair and all the castles of sand
...

But in the Wine-presses the human grapes sing not nor dance:
They howl and writhe in shoals of torment, in fierce flames consuming,
In chains of iron and in dungeons circled with ceaseless fires,
In pits and dens and shades of death, in shapes of torment and woe:
...

I was a cottage maiden
Hardened by sun and air
Contented with my cottage mates,
Not mindful I was fair.
...

Fit the First
THE LANDING

'Just the place for a Snark!' the Bellman cried,
...

ST Agnes' Eve---Ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in woolly fold:
...

Pet gargoyles grunt and snore and cough,
But sadly you can't turn them off!
The belch and wheeze and sneeze and spit,
I cannot bear the thought of it!
...

Nothing has changed.
The body is susceptible to pain,
it must eat and breathe air and sleep,
it has thin skin and blood right underneath,
...

O France, although you sleep
We call you, we the forbidden!
The shadows have ears,
And the depths have cries.
...

Tuesday morning, November 28, 2023 at 10: 40 a.m.; early Monday morning, December 4, 2023 at 1: 30 a.m.; Sunday morning, December 17, 2023 at 6: 08 a.m.

—this poem is for … and in memory of J. Michael Cook, recently deceased, hometown friend, whom in 1975
introduced me to the wonderful guitar-work of Leo Kottke
...

Utter
Utter black smoke
And scent of burning
And
...

Aged birds and wise
Birds
Time ripens birds
As with Beauty.
...

Had been the howl
Of a generation
Lost in drugs, spirits and alcoholic substances,
Allen Ginsberg, your howl
...

Do you know what?
When lost in a wood
And the wolves howl
It's time for a Bud
...

Howl.
Into the
night, howl.
Howl.
...

ONE BIG SOUL MADE ALL SOULS
Poem by Chan Mongol
Written in March 2005
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