Ron Whitehead

 

LISTEN

The roaring city
is the Buddah's golden speech.
The waves in the distance
are the Buddah's pure luminous body.
How many thousands of poems
how many songs
have flowed through us tonight!
And when the songbird sings at dawn
we won't be able
to repeat even one word.

 

SHITHOUSE MANIFESTO

poets come out of your toilets
you've been holed up too long

playing with yourselves with
your wastes you're wasting away

all olfactory sensations dead
what with your head now situated

on your posterior oneeyed cyclopian
peering down into midnight bottom

of the outhouse and it's time to
throw away the corncobs and Sears

catalogs and walk back out into
the barnyards the open pastures

of the world where animals and
people and flowers still bloom

where the sun still shines through
the moon at midnight in that other

world you've lost until now it's
high time to wake up pull your sad

face and every other hanging down
part of you out of that stinking

forlorn lost world you'll be fertilizer
soon enough for now it's time to

reconstruct who you are your life
time to check out of the amnesia

motel and get back on the highway
61 or 66 or 69 and finally say

goodbye to those lonesome lost
blue pieces of who you used to

be and say hello to this yellow
sunrise post-world where the crows

are grinning and the morning glories
sing

 

HOW MANY MORE TIMES

How many more times will you see
the sun set the moon rise

How many more times will you hear
the baby laugh the songbird sing

How many more times will you feel
your lover's touch the rain on your face

How many more times will you taste
the sea's salt your lover's lips

How many more times will you smell
the autumn smoke spring's plowed earth

How many more times

© by Ron Whitehead