frank ocean and all black things that disappear on their own by Jonathan Jacob Moore

you deserve time

before the proverbial train hits

and the album drops

 

you both prepare for the reactions

molecular and digital:                                                 “where this nigga at”

he lived full and died empty.

and ain’t that what they say about you, frank?

you in hiding because the hook would Sodom and Gomorrah us?

some people practice becoming ash

 

or

                                                            “we are in shock and              lost”

 

but you hate coming outside, sometimes, too… don’t you, frank?

and you write in a song you never wrote but i hear

you sing it

on the tracks or wherever you’ve taken up residence:

some days when my whole/body hurts/the biggest blessing/the sweetest curse

 

“So Much to say but not enough pen or paper”                 

 

                                                                                                                        or the blackest

thing is dying empty and being filled to the brim

you have no time to go ghost when you are               already            you get back in the

studio                               still translucent                        and you, get off the tracks

right before the album drops               right before your shot at acclaim.

and you could never get the ashes thing down.

you are heavy              all hook                       number-one-

single.

from Sunday Morning by Raul Zurita

Over the cliffs of the hillside: the sun

then below in the valley

the earth covered with flowers

Zurita enamored friend

takes in the sun of photosynthesis

Zurita will now never again be friend

since 7 P.M. it’s been getting dark

Night is the insane asylum of the plants

XLII

Enclosed with the four walls of

a bathroom: I looked up at the ceiling

and began to clean the walls and

the floor the sink   all of it

You see: Outside the sky was God

and he was sucking at my soul —believe me!

I wiped my weeping eyes

LVII

In the narrow broken bed

restless all night

like a spent candle lit again

I thought I saw Buddha many times

At my side I felt a woman’s gasp for air

but Buddha was only the pillows

and the woman is sleeping the eternal dream

LXIII

Today I dreamed that I was King

they were dressing me in black-and-white spotted pelts

Today I moo with my head about to fall

as the church bells’ mournful clanging

says that milk goes to market

LXXXV

They’ve shaved my head

they’ve dressed me in these gray wool rags

—Mom keeps on smoking

I am Joan of Arc

They catalog me on microfilm

XCII

The glass is transparent like water

Dread of prisms and glass

I circle the light so as not to lose myself in them

The Mower by Philip Larkin

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found

A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,

Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.

Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world

Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.

The first day after a death, the new absence

Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind

While there is still time.

Before the Scales, Tomorrow by Otto Rene Castillo

And when the enthusiastic

story of our time
is told,
for those
who are yet to be born
but announce themselves
with more generous face,
we will come out ahead
—those who have suffered most from it.

And that
being ahead of your time
means suffering much from it.

But it’s beautiful to love the world
with eyes
that have not yet
been born.

And splendid
to know yourself victorious
when all around you
it’s all still so cold,
so dark.