My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer

A POSTSCRIPT TO THE BERKELEY RENAISSANCE

A POSTSCRIPT TO THE BERKELEY RENAISSANCE What have I lost? When shall I start to sing A loud and idiotic song that makes The heart rise frightened into poetry Like birds disturbed? I was a singer once. I sang that song. I saw the thousands of bewildered birds Breaking their cover into poetry Up from the heart. What have I lost? We lived in forests then, Naked as jaybirds in the ever-real, Eating our toasted buns and catching flies, And sometimes angels, with our hooting tongues. I was a singer once. In distant trees We made the forests ring with sacred noise Of gods and bears and swans and sodomy, And no one but a bird could hear our voice. What have I lost? The trees were full of birds. We sat there drinking at the sour wine In gallon bottles. Shouting song Until the hunters came. I was a singer once, bird-ignorant. Time with a gun said, “Stop, Find other forests. Teach the innocent.” God got another and a third Birdlimed in Eloquence. Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page 45 45 What have I lost? At night my hooting tongue, Naked of feathers and of softening years, Sings through the mirror at me like a whippoorwill And then I cannot sleep. “I was a singer once,” it sings. “I sing the song that every captured tongue Sang once when free and wants again to sing. But I can sing no song I have not sung.” What have I lost? Spook singer, hold your tongue. I sing a newer song no ghost-bird sings. My tongue is sharpened on the iron’s edge. Canaries need no trees. They have their cage. A POEM FOR DADA DAY AT THE PLACE, APRIL 1, 1955 Darling, The difference between Dada and barbarism Is the difference between an abortion and a wet dream. An abortion Is a conscious sacrifice of the past, the painting of a mustache On Mona Lisa, the surrender Of real children. The other, darling, is a sacrifice Of nobody’s children, is barbarism, is an Eskimo Running amok in a museum, is Bohemia Renouncing cities it had never conquered. An ugly Vandal pissing on a statue is not Phidias Pissing on a statue. Barbarism Is something less than a gesture. Destroy your own gods if you want Dada: Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page 46 46 ...