What God Did Not Plan On

Sleep well
Weep well,
Go to the deep well
As often as possible.
Bring back the water,
Jostling and gleaming.
God did not plan on consciousness
Developing so
Well. Well,
Tell him our
Pail is full
And He can
Go to Hell

The Offering

To the somethingness
Which prevents the nothingness
Like Homer's wild boar
From thrashing this way and that
Its white tusks
Through human beings
Like crackling stalks
And to nothing less
I offer this suffering of my father

Duet on Iberville Street

The man in black leather
Buying a rat to feed his python
Does not dwell on particulars.
Any rat will do.
While walking back from the pet store
I see a man in a hotel garage
Carving a swan in a block of ice
With a chain saw.

from "Their Share" - Body of Work (1983)

The dead don't share
Though they reach towards us
from the grave (I swear
they do) they do
not hand their hearts to you.
They hand their heads,
the part that stares.

from "Of Heaven" - Body of Work (1983)

Who are these shades we wait for and believe
will come some evening in limousines
from Heaven?
The rose
though it knows
is throatless
and cannot say.
My mortal half laughs.
The code and the message are not the same.
And what is an angel
but a ghost in drag?

from "The Words Once" - Whiteboy (1976)

Once we had the words.
Ox and Falcon. Plow.
There was clarity.
Savage as horns.
curved.
We lived in stone rooms.
We hung our hair out the windows and up it climbed the men.
A garden behind the ears, the curls.
On each hill a king
of that hill. At night the threads were pulled out
of the tapestries. The unravelled men screamed.
All moons revealed. We had the words.
....

from "Texas Suite" - Some Lamb (1975)

The Murder Burger
is served right here.
You need not wait
at the gate of Heaven
for unleavened death.
You can be a goner
on this very corner.
Mayonnaise, onions, dominance of flesh.
If you wish to eat it
you must feed it
"Yall come back."
"You bet."

from "Elegy" - Whiteboy (1976)

Tell it
in rhythmic
continuity.
Detail by detail
the living creatures.
Tell it
as must, the rhythm
solid in the shape.
Woman. Arms lifted. Shadow eater.

from "Four Days in Another City" - Some Lamb (1975)

Tempting to place in coherent collage

the bee, the mountain range, the
shadow
of my hoof--

tempting to join them, enlaced by logical

vast & shining molecular
thought-thread
thru all Substance--

Tempting

to say I see in all I see
the place where the needle
began in the tapestry--but ah,
it all looks whole and part--
long live the eyeball and the lucid heart.

Some Lamb

Tragic rabbit, a painting.
The caked ears green like rolled corn.
The black forehead pointing at the strs.
A painting on my wall, alone

as rabbits are
and aren't. Fat red cheek,
all Art, trembling nose,
a habit hard to break as not.

You too can be a tragic rabbit; green and red
your back, blue your manly little chest.
But if you're ever goaded into being one
beware the True Flesh, it

will knock you off your tragic horse
and break your tragic colors like a ghost
breaks marble; your wounds will heal
so quickly water

will be jealous.
Rabbits on white paper painted
outgrow all charms against their breeding wild;
and their rolled corn ears become horns.

So watch out if the tragic life feels fine--
caught in that rabbit trap
all colors look like sunlight's swords,
and scissors like The Living Lord.

The Garden Of Love

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And Thou shalt not. writ over the door;
So I turn'd to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be:
And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars, my joys and desires.

From Songs of Experience,

William Blake

The sow came in with the saddle.
The little pig rocked the cradle.
The dish jumped over the table.
To see the pot swallow the ladle.
The spit that stood behind the door
Threw the pudding-stick on the floor.
"Odsplut!" said the gridiron,
"Can't you agree?
I'm the head constable,
Bring them to me!"

Mother Goose

Sailing To Byzantium

I

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
-- Those dying generations -- at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

II

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnficence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

III

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artiface of eternity.

IV

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

W. B. Yeats

 

Now go out and treat yourself to Anne's books. The ones I have read and loved are:

Interview With The Vampire

The Vampire Lestat

The Queen of the damned

The Tale Of The Body Thief

Memnoch The Devil

The Witching Hour

Lasher

and

Taltos

Anne Rice has many others that are just as grand

go ahead, take a look

you will love her writing.