is there anything as still as sleeping horses

Lisa Yuskavage, Faucet, 1995

Three poems

Georgetown Poems (7)
The Trouble with Our State
-- by Father Daniel Berrigan

The trouble with our state
was not civil disobedience
which in any case was hesitant and rare

Civil disobedience was rare as kidney stone
No, rarer; it was disappearing like immigrants' disease

You've heard of the war on cancer?
There is no war like the plague of media
There is no war like routine
There is no war like 3 square meals
There is no war like a prevailing wind

It blows softly; whispers
don't rock the boat
the sails obey, the ship of state rolls on.

The trouble with our state
-- we learned it only afterward
when the dead resembled the living who resembled the dead
and civil virtue shone like paint on tin
and tin citizens and tin soldiers marched to the common whip

-- our trouble
the trouble with our state
with our state of soul
our state of seige --
was
Civil
obedience

Fuck Poetry
-- by Todd Moore

ringo sd slapping a clip
into the 45 auto the
targets were whiskey
bottles we'd set out on
fence posts fuck all those
pretty little rhymes
they made us read in high
school ringo yelled
hitting jim beam the
glass exploding into
the weeds he passed the
45 across a porno mag
opened on a women who
was holding her tits out
like a pair of six
shooters do you know
of a poem as packed as
that i fired at jack
daniels & missed & ringo
grabbed the automatic
& took jack out & fuck
metaphors & fuck similes
shit like that & fuck
kerouac & fuck bukowski
suddenly ringo pressed
the 45 barrel against
my forehead & while it
was drilling into my
skin he whispered
& amigo fuck you

Art
-- by Joe Brainard

Looking through a book of drawings by Holbein I realize several moments of truth. A nose (a line) so nose-like. And then I thin to myself "so what?" It's not going to solve any of my problems. And then I realize that at the very moment of appreciation I had no problems. Then I decide that this is a pretty profound thought. And that I ought to write it down. This is what I have just done. But it doesn't sound so profound anymore. That's art for you.