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Self examination
to see what little I am
to see an absent satisfaction
close to the dirt
to see inside a machine
to see what things
make a man himself
to see how fine the machines are
to see me wanting like a bad king
to possess death
Poèmes sur le thème : machine
Poèmes sur le thème « machine » sur Poets.by.
Knob
Finite snail evolved from a peg,
all twist & no spiral, turning
neither inward nor upward: here’s
a key to our egalitarian metaphysics.
The knob involves us in the machine’s
unfinished business, it turns us
into connoisseurs of the abstract.
And hell, it’s fun to roll things
between the fingers—
they were made for this.
The caveman in me says
smash it & suck out the marrow.
The Medieval peasant says
splash it with holy water
to drive out the small devil
whose millstone it must be.
Open-Backed Banjo
I am untroubled by serpents
or the marinated feet of pigs.
I bear no antipathy toward bears
or the bees they bedevil,
& the devil never tempts me
to any evil I can’t invent on my own
(forgive me if I don’t delve into the details).
What makes me break down is a banjo,
lonesome as our only god the clock
but with two hands, both of them fast.
Looking in its open back
can be disconcerting: What makes it go?
There’s nothing but a bare rod
& the smell of rain.
Where’s the balance wheel?
The escapement?
Running in
Birth is mundane, a mere formality
A realization of dreams, or of lust.
In the nurse’s arms, swaddled in clothes,
The baby screams, or whimpers with eyes shut.
This is it; you have bought it, my lad.
Formalities over, the manager stands up
The key in his cupped palms.
Theatrical, he pauses as if in a short prayer
And drops it into your open palm.
In her flowered dress, hair braided
Arm resting around the baby on her left
Proof of my manhood, her motherhood
She looks at him, at me, in gratitude and love.
I stand a little apart, look uncomprehending
At the beast, silent; glittering chrome
Massive tyres, sweeping handlebars
The Dream of the Starving Birds
After long delay I have entered
the room of the starving birds.
I bought a machine selling squirrels
and placed it in my room with
pigeons on porches
(their gentle, multicolored wings!),
little birds in cages asking to be fed,
a great black raven, and,
beyond my sight, another
Larger bird.
Then I chanced them;
journeyed, left the room,
but I worried,
and soon I came back to feed them.
A sense of urgency has driven me
to take my plate of omelet upstairs.
The Egg and the Machine
He gave the solid rail a hateful kick.
From far away there came an answering tick
And then another tick. He knew the code:
His hate had roused an engine up the road.
He wished when he had had the track alone
He had attacked it with a club or stone
And bent some rail wide open like a switch
So as to wreck the engine in the ditch.
Too late though, now, he had himself to thank.
Its click was rising to a nearer clank.
Here it came breasting like a horse in skirts.
(He stood well back for fear of scalding squirts.)
Then for a moment all there was was size
Confusion and a roar that drowned the cries
He raised against the gods in the machine.
Then once again the sandbank lay serene.
Hospital
Welcome to our vertical facility.
Affliction put you in your current
horizontal state. Our machines
will swallow then disgorge you.
Our nurses will swaddle you,
lay you in a basket of morphine,
float you out upon a reservoir of misery.
Our physicians will take note of you.
Lie flat, please, as little waves
of pain lap, nip at your being.
Abel Melveny
I bought every kind of machine that’s known—
Grinders, shellers, planters, mowers,
Mills and rakes and ploughs and threshers—
And all of them stood in the rain and sun,
Getting rusted, warped and battered,
For I had no sheds to store them in,
And no use for most of them.
And toward the last, when I thought it over,
There by my window, growing clearer
About myself, as my pulse slowed down,
And looked at one of the mills I bought—
Which I didn’t have the slightest need of,
As things turned out, and I never ran—
A fine machine, once brightly varnished,
And eager to do its work,
Now with its paint washed off—