poems by lawrence ferlinghetti
Bird With Two Right Wings
And now our government a bird with two right wings flies on from zone to zone while we go on having our little fun & games at each election as if it really mattered who the pilot is of Air Force One (They're interchangeable, stupid!) While this bird with two right wings flies right on with its corporate flight crew And this year its the Great Movie Cowboy in the cockpit And next year its the great Bush pilot And now its the Chameleon Kid and he keeps changing the logo on his captains cap and now its a donkey and now an elephant and now some kind of donkephant And now we recognize two of the crew who took out a contract on America and one is a certain gringo wretch who's busy monkeywrenching crucial parts of the engine and its life-support systems and they got a big fat hose to siphon off the fuel to privatized tanks And all the while we just sit there in the passenger seats without parachutes listening to all the news that's fit to air over the one-way PA system about how the contract on America is really good for us etcetera As all the while the plane lumbers on into its postmodern manifest destiny |
The Changing Light
The changing light at San Francisco is none of your East Coast light none of your pearly light of Paris The light of San Francisco is a sea light an island light And the light of fog blanketing the hills drifting in at night through the Golden Gate to lie on the city at dawn And then the halcyon late mornings after the fog burns off and the sun paints white houses with the sea light of Greece with sharp clean shadows making the town look like it had just been painted But the wind comes up at four o'clock s weeping the hills And then the veil of light of early evening And then another scrim when the new night fog floats in And in that vale of light the city drifts anchorless upon the ocean |
A Vast Confusion
Long long I lay in the sands Sounds of trains in the surf in subways of the sea And an even greater undersound of a vast confusion in the universe a rumbling and a roaring as of some enormous creature turning under sea and earth a billion sotto voices murmuring a vast muttering a swelling stuttering in ocean's speakers world's voice-box heard with ear to sand a shocked echoing a shocking shouting of all life's voices lost in night And the tape of it someow running backwards now through the Moog Synthesizer of time Chaos unscrambled back to the first harmonies And the first light |
Don't Let That Horse
Don't let that horse eat that violin cried Chagall's mother But he kept right on painting And became famous And kept on painting The Horse With Violin In Mouth And when he finally finished it he jumped up upon the horse and rode away waving the violin And then with a low bow gave it to the first naked nude he ran across And there were no strings attached |
History of the Airplane
And the Wright brothers said they thought they had invented something that could make peace on earth (if the wrong brothers didn’t get hold of it) when their wonderful flying machine took off at Kitty Hawk into the kingdom of birds but the parliament of birds was freaked out by this man-made bird and fled to heaven And then the famous Spirit of Saint Louis took off eastward and flew across the Big Pond with Lindy at the controls in his leather helmet and goggles hoping to sight the doves of peace but he did not Even though he circled Versailles And then the famous Yankee Clipper took off in the opposite direction and flew across the terrific Pacific but the pacific doves were frighted by this strange amphibious bird and hid in the orient sky And then the famous Flying Fortress took off bristling with guns and testosterone to make the world safe for peace and capitalism but the birds of peace were nowhere to be found before or after Hiroshima And so then clever men built bigger and faster flying machines and these great man-made birds with jet plumage flew higher than any real birds and seemed about to fly into the sun and melt their wings and like Icarus crash to earth And the Wright brothers were long forgotten in the high-flying bombers that now began to visit their blessings on various Third Worlds all the while claiming they were searching for doves of peace And they kept flying and flying until they flew right into the 21st century and then one fine day a Third World struck back and stormed the great planes and flew them straight into the beating heart of Skyscraper America where there were no aviaries and no parliaments of doves and in a blinding flash America became a part of the scorched earth of the world And a wind of ashes blows across the land And for one long moment in eternity There is chaos and despair And buried loves and voices Cries and whispers Fill the air Everywhere |
Lawrence Ferlinghetti Reading His Poems
Lawrence Ferlinghetti Reading Other Poetry
Me Reading Ferlinghetti's Poems
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