![Such a Birthday, Marie-France (2006)
Birthdays? Who counts them?
Too many? Who cares?
Troubles? Surmount them!
No elevator? Take stairs.
Pebble hurts you in your shoe?
Shake it, take it home with you.
Maybe it’s a thing you need
(for some necklace came this bead).
Birthdays? They’re one way to know
why your life has taught you so.
“Taught me what?” did you ask?
POOpaTApik! That’s your task!
[*The Bard of Montparnasse strikes again. 21.02.2006*]](https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/system/resource/c/f/4/cf4414d5-770d-47e8-9e35-de574d0b280c/attachment/aa1e942b1e24bf7263dce9176fd9c1b7.jpg)
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41 resources. Showing results 31 through 40.
Uploaded ![Poem begun at 3, rue du Midi, B 129, Toulouse, 7 July 1980, 8:55 p.m.—10:25.
(Idea from drive from le Barry to Toulouse yesterday afternoon.)
Revised in Bulgaria, 14 Jul 1980, 3:14 p.m.—4:28 (Preslav notel, Near Vana, in Zlatni Pjasaci, 15-19 July
Title changed 17 July.
SCARECROW, U.S.A.: THE ROAD TO TOULOUSE
A man, hanging stiffly from [the] the roadside tree,
[smeared] dyed my eyes awake with [dying] smears of sunlight,
burst my after-luncheon calm [against the] into some rolling scream
our tires must have sucked into the road
[turning] [curving] twisting out of sight [the] that dangling arm.
“What’s the French word for scarecrow?”
[was] strung out the [rope I climbed to stay aboard] rope I clung to. She steadied it with words,
drove slower till I [heard] understood “Some famers over here
[*19 July. Not like America, I guess?]
[hang] put them in [the] trees. They get in cherry trees”--
and the birds, she meant--“and chuk-chuk-chuk:
all you get is holes.”
I felt the cutting of the beak. The man’s head
Was [missing] gone, back there in the leaves, the limbs
I hadn’t [seen] caught it. The other arm, yes,
[a twist] its tendons of straw clinched for [the] his signature:
[* 16 July: indent 5 spaces or more]
[the] his bled-out warming
[that] from the tinsel-threaded legs, [*Put on line by itself (15 July)*]
the [blowing] [flashing] ravaged vest
the [flap-fringed] [undecipherable] flapping space [*Put on line by itself (16 July)*]
[imagination spun and scoured around/above the broomstick neck
all clarified/signified a matching face
imagination spun and scoured so hopefully
above the splintered broomstick neck
(oh, how imagination spun there, and scoured so hopelessly
to cast a human face!)
15 July, 11:50 a.m.—12:33
16 July, 11:56 a.m.—12:35, 2:10 p.m.—2:48; 3:55—4:27; 5:52—6:48
17 July 11:52 a.m.-12:28
below the bludgeoned [undecipherable] hat,
above the splintered broomstick neck,
(oh, how imagination spun around it,
scouring hopelessly to raise a human face!)
illiterate even, an X, any breathing scar,
some sign enforceable, acknowledging [a past,] people-past, a debt to pay, a surname [dragging] tracing back to wilderness
where family of outlaws, musketry [and]/or cannonball
blazed legacies through [undecipherable] tents and huts, and wild birds witnessing
[and] while wild birds witness[ing]es [undecipherable] and exchanged their chaos in the trees
19 July, 9:25 a.m.—10:10 a.m.
his personal X is last spasm, he marked [*replace “an X... line*]](https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/system/resource/8/0/c/80cf460b-3b3f-4e87-84fd-50c513e2ecc0/attachment/bfc18ee3ddc46c090e188aabcf02f76c.jpg)
Draft, SCARECROW, U.S.A.: THE ROAD TO TOULOUSE
![169
“wash your face”
though dried to somber at the sign
of white so deftly brown again.
Final sip was “All depends
which room you’re in I guess;
just don’t come up behind me;
makes me nervous since the war”;
but didn’t say when the war began
nor dare count all those faces,
clean and white,
that came up from behind
1969
1970
169
A View from the White Helmet
[*”A View from the White Helment”: Written at the start of the 1960’s, when the African nations were beginning to become free. Note that some African leaders received their education at oxford.*]
[*Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of the President of the USA, FDR, liked this poem, according to a City College colleague who knew her, William Turner Levy.*]
A glittering thing,
Africa-long
Approaches,
Gliding through legendary leaves,
Traversing ancient rivers.
A clattering thing,
Africa-long
Echoes,
Like bracelets of ivory](https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/system/resource/3/3/8/33889ae5-b46a-4ac4-a06e-48fe3e7015ef/attachment/15a456791f027855d0ffaeff2e29126a.jpg)
Black Humor in France: for Etha (with annotations) 2
![168
When this white though healing hand
Trespasses and takes command.)
(Hate for friends and hate for foes
Who have not endured hate’s blows
Digested with the crumbs of years.
What can stop these ancient tears
Burning in a little face
So captive in a starched embrace?)
(cs. 1963)
1964
168
Black Humor in France: For Etha
[*Written in Seyssins about a real incident, circumstances that show how humor can help heal the psyche. See my autobiographical essay “A Force in the Field, CAAS, Vol. 18, on this poem.*]
Outshouting bathwater,
whitefaced with soap,
behind me doorbursting,
“BOO!” right at my ear you jumped,
hopping to crouch and grin as
“DAMN!” went coffee sloshing.
“White folks scareya, hunh?”
Black only growled,
but soapface pranced and crowed
“think white!” “think snow!”
till sip of coffee made the chuckle](https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/system/resource/d/a/9/da98e393-0736-41da-a393-b1a6ca4080a2/attachment/91f4690eadf544ea3a7a53c78dff419a.jpg)
Black Humor in France: for Etha (with annotations) 1
Racism in France 2
Racism in France 1
Racism in France 3
Draft, Women Laughing
TRACKS, FOR A BOURGEOIS WOMAN
![TRACKS ... (contd)
p. 2
In three seconds
she had tracked a [mountain] blue peak
far beyond the friendly babble
and well-tried arm
that straightened her.
She stood up--rearranged
around her changeless center:
brushing from her mind a diamond phrase
about the hole she’d made.](https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/system/resource/4/3/7/437f69ec-e08c-4515-b538-319a872b43c6/attachment/7d76cc2321db950a8f635f9093e87c47.jpg)
Drafts, TRACKS, FOR A BOURGEOIS WOMAN 2