Category: Responding To Walt Whitman

Simple encouragements
Sown in simple beds
Peak above the soil
Saplings take root
Maturing or dying
Furrowed bark
Forms cracks
Monuments
Horizons
Shaped
Long
Ago
By
1
.

-T. Weeks
(A response to “I Was Looking a Long While”)

Cocooned beneath
That glacier capped peak
A magma-powered bomb
Sets and resets its own trigger

Old growth forests
Shroud scars of bygone doom
Deliberating over hues of
Misting falls and permanence

Below we navigate
The gentle drizzle of flipped coins
Picking our way through
puddles of heads and tails

-T. Weeks
(A response to “To a Common Prostitute”)

I’m a candle melting to the floor
Through my feet
Soon I’ll be a puddle of spent wax
In a pile here between these two chairs
And a wall of music
One with this place
One with this room of strangers
All the universe is now

-T. Weeks
(A response to “Laws for Creations”)

We’re all just tumbling
In free fall
All destined to splat
At about the same time
Let’s ride the wind
While we can
Let’s drink the horizon
While we see
Let’s link, let go, and reform
While we’re free

-T. Weeks
(A response to “You Felons on Trial in Courts”)

Ringing that silent bell
Alone in the corner
For the joy of ringing the bell
Watching the room
Slosh with chatter
While the band tosses chords
Into the captured crowd
No one may ever hear it
But when quiet condenses on the walls
And pools below the stage
While the band exhales
We may finally see the song
Was led by the whimsy of that bell
All along
Still ringing in the room

-T. Weeks
(A response to “To Him That Was Crucified”)

I’d like to thank the poor families
The families without
That know how to choose
Choose between meals and gasoline
Choose between a school and a factory
Choose between humiliation and starvation
Choose the church that laps up their tithes
The non-profit that avoids paying taxes
That sends the money back to the US
As a donation to a university full not-poor kids
To subsidize their tuition
To reduce the financial burden on their families
The families that applaud from the suburbs
Pink-faced and clapping for the church
And its sacred wealth
So thank you poor families
Without you I would be a little less rich

-T. Weeks
(A response to “Out from Behind This Mask [To Confront a Portrait]”)

Pacing round the block
Not ready to go home
After picking up the mail
Enjoying the last licks
Of a day winding down
Drinking the embered horizon
There is no prison here
These hands and feet
These eyes and ears
This nose and mouth
These joints and organs
I’m a rocket ship
Hurdling through space
Dragging this rocky earth
In my turbulent wake

-T. Weeks
@life_immense
(A response to “The Singer in the Prison”)

Once there was a boy
The boy wanted good things to happen to him
Somewhere he heard that if he did good things
He would get good things
He also heard that if he did bad things
He would get bad things
Of course karma couldn’t deliver on either promise
And the boy knew that
But he still tried to do mostly good things
Someone asked him why he did good things
Even though good wasn’t coming his way
The boy shrugged and sat down to think
But he got a little distracted
By the hungry gurgles of his empty stomach
So he smiled at the questioners
Apologized for not knowing how to answer
And offered them a sandwich

-T. Weeks
(A response to “Song of Prudence”)

Hithering past the ordeal
Generations and generations shuffle
Modest steps hesitate at the threshold
Nervous about a path unfeelable

There they went and there they go
Leaving a snapshot and a backward glance
Hail Mary for a spot on the wall
Where things go to be remembered

And where is it that they go?
Out like a flame when the wood is spent?
Outside like travelers embarking?
Out of sight to giggle in the shadows?

They are here bowing with the reverent grass
Blooming with surprise on the magnolia
Riding with the summertime dragonfly
Scurrying between weak-kneed stanzas

-T. Weeks
@life_immense
(A response to “Unnamed Land”)

Splash and sink into the dark
Fall through a cool bubbled rush
Rise through a breaking surface
Pull in air to replace stale CO2
Flail limbs just below the surf
Invade the skies of the coraled world
Dip below and paddle ashore

-T. Weeks
(A response to “To a Foil’d European Revolutionaire”)