Poetry is the cry of the heard that awakens angels and kills devils.
…poetry is a subversive raid upon the forgotten language of the collective unconscious.
The poet pickpocket of reality.
Poem is the shadow of a plane fleeing over the ground like a cross escaping a church.
The war against the imagination is not the only war. Using the 9/11 Twin Towers disaster as an excuse, America has initiated the Third World War, which is the War against the Third World.
When poets are treated like dogs, they howl.
The poet by definition is the bearer of Eros and love and freedom and thus the natural-born non-violent enemy of the state.
The poet a subversive barbarian at the city gates, non-violently challenging the toxic status quo.
Poetry is the last lighthouse in the rising sea.
-Ferlinghetti: Poetry as Insurgent Art
What is the Zoo for What
A fountain is a zoo for water, the song
is a zoo for sound, the harmonica
is a zoo for the hot breath of Neil Young,
vagina is a zoo for baby.
Baby, girl baby, is a zoo for vagina.
The rose is a zoo for the smell of the rose,
the smell of the rose rattles its cage,
the zookeeper throws something bleeding
to it, the something bleeding is not enough,
a toddler fell into the cage of the rose,
the toddler was entirely eaten. His name
was Rilke, it was in all the papers.
A Little Pine Box is a zoo for him now,
it said in all the papers.
Then all the kids started doing it. Falling
into the violet’s cage, approaching the cave
where the smell of violets slept, getting
their whole head clawed off by it.
Neil Young did it to a buttercup
and his face got absolutely mauled.
The music that was piped into the zoo
let all the longing escape from it
and it ran riot over the earth, full
of the sight of the smell of a buttercup
rearranging the face of Neil Young,
attacking pets at random, attacking
me in my bed as I slept, attacking
the happy wagging ends of my poems.
Can I put Neil Young in a poem.
Will he get trapped in there forever.
My voice is a zoo right now for this,
and this paces very much inside it,
it would like very much to escape
and eat hot blood again and go home,
and right down to the restless way
I walk I am an argument against zoos.
Zoo is very cruel. Let everything out
and live in the wild. Let it hunt for itself
again. Get the stink of human hand off it.
But the hand is a zoo for hold.
- Patricia Lockwood: Published in the New Yorker: October 28, 2013