Poetry Out of a typewriter...#2

by gene fowler

Sitting in a Haight-Ashbury (San Francisco) rented room, looking at a poem I was going to send to anybody...it was fresh out of a pre-Selectric typewriter. No italics, no fancy fonts or even proportional type... . The words, the felt phrasing, ...these did it or it didn't get done. You hoped for a "listening" reader. Or you just hoped. Well, we're out on another frontier. So...here goes! Just the words and the felt phrasing... .


WHO

Evergreens, rough edged against
sky—

no longer green, in coming night, but
black—

night sounds of the hills
gone to dark hum
of city night

& Thoth brought the city, its walls
or laws,

its linear glyphs
sounding our thoughts

& the thoughts weren’t there before.

A climb forward
& a fall back
& a climb

thing is, you can be a dumb brute
or waken, uneasily out of sleep, waken
& sense
& feel
& know

& in that uneasy sensing
be a dumb brute

but with forgetfulness
so your sudden

discovery in the stream’s mirror

startles a long moan

aching in tree branches

& your wild rolling
eyes

wonder at the sound.

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