Collecte Works (16 page)

Coming out of Sleep

O rock my baby on the tree tops

and blow me a little tin horn.

They've got us suckin the hind tit

and that's the way I was born.

O let me rise to the door-knob

and let me buy my way.

I know the owner of the store

and that's the way I was raised.

Voyageurs

sang, rowed

their canoes full of furs,

sang as they rowed.

Ten minutes every hour

rested their load.

I walked

from Chicago to Big Bull Falls (Wausau),

eighteen-forty-four,

two weeks,

little to eat.

Came night

I wrapped myself in a piece of bark

and slept beside a log.

See the girls in shorts on their bicycles

right here in Janesville. And why?—

no modesty anymore,

all gone by.

When Johnny (Chapman) Appleseed

came to a place he didn't like

he covered it with apple trees.

He was the early American apple

who changed the earth by dropping seeds.

He walked all over the mid-west states.

His trees grew while he slept.

Gave to the poor tho he himself

lived on roots and had no bed.

Nor had he a wife. Nor creed

that embraced grafting. Johnny

reproduced by seed.

Tell me a story about the war.

All right, six lines, no child should hear more.

The marshal of France made quite a clatter:

Dear people, I know you're too hungry to flatter

but eat your beef-ounce from a doll's platter,

you'll think it's a roast wrapped in a batter.

Along came the bishop his robe a tatter:

Sleep and it won't matter.

Poet Percival said: I struck a lode

but it was only a bunch in a chimney

without any opening

and as I left a sucker jumped me…

This is truly a rich and beautiful country.

Terrible things coming up,

these trailer houses.

People want to live in em,

park all over,

set out for somewhere,

never come home.

Nice!—

needn't clean anything,

just throw it out the window

onto somebody else.

Shiftless life!

1937

In the picture soldiers

moving thru a field

of flowers,

Spanish reds.

The flowers of war

move cautiously

not to tread

the wild heads.

Here we last,

lilacs, vacant lots,

taxes, no work,

debts, the wind widens

the grass.

In the old house

the clocks are dead,

past dead.

Their apples fall down

and rot on the ground—

they don't spray their trees,

trees need care.

You can tell they're no good

that live there.

Apples are high—

that shows they're scarce,

still the stores always seem to have plenty.

Can't get a price

the farmers say—

I guess it's because there'r too many.

The government men said Don't plant wheat,

we've got too much, just keep out weeds.

Our crop comes up thru change of season

to be stored for what good reason

way off and here we need it—Eat

who can, who can't—Don't grow wheat

or corn but quack-grass-bread!

Such things they plant around my head.