Property:Has text
From Off the Road Database
This is a property of type Text.
T
<div class="poem">
<p>Whose head is swinging from the swollen strap?<br />
Whose body smokes along the bitten rails,<br />
Bursts from a smoldering bundle far behind<br />
In back forks of the chasms of the brain,—<br />
Puffs from a riven stump far out behind<br />
In interborough fissures of the mind...?
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>“Let’s have a pencil Jimmy—living now<br />
at Floral Park<br />
Flatbush—on the Fourth of July—<br />
like a pigeon’s muddy dream—potatoes<br />
to dig in the field—travlin the town—too—<br />
night after night—the Culver line—the<br />
girls all shaping up—it used to be—”
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>“But I want service in this office SERVICE<br />
I said—after<br />
the show she cried a little afterwards but—”
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>Kiss of our agony Thou gatherest,<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 9em;"> O Hand of Fire</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 13em;"> gatherest—</span>
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>The intent escalator lifts a serenade<br />
Stilly<br />
Of shoes, umbrellas, each eye attending its shoe, then<br />
Bolting outright somewhere above where streets<br />
Burst suddenly in rain.... The gongs recur:<br />
Elbows and levers, guard and hissing door.<br />
Thunder is galvothermic here below.... The car<br />
Wheels off. The train rounds, bending to a scream,<br />
Taking the final level for the dive<br />
Under the river—<br />
And somewhat emptier than before,<br />
Demented, for a hitching second, humps; then<br />
Lets go.... Toward corners of the floor<br />
Newspapers wing, revolve and wing.<br />
Blank windows gargle signals through the roar.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p><span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> And so</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> of cities you bespeak</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> subways, rivered under streets</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> and rivers.... In the car</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> the overtone of motion</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> underground, the monotone</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> of motion is the sound</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> of other faces, also underground—</span>
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>Daemon, demurring and eventful yawn!<br />
Whose hideous laughter is a bellows mirth<br />
—Or the muffled slaughter of a day in birth—<br />
O cruelly to inoculate the brinking dawn<br />
With antennae toward worlds that glow and sink;—<br />
To spoon us out more liquid than the dim<br />
Locution of the eldest star, and pack<br />
The conscience navelled in the plunging wind,<br />
Umbilical to call—and straightway die!
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>And does the Daemon take you home, also,<br />
Wop washerwoman, with the bandaged hair?<br />
After the corridors are swept, the cuspidors—<br />
The gaunt sky-barracks cleanly now, and bare,<br />
O Genoese, do you bring mother eyes and hands<br />
Back home to children and to golden hair?
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>The phonographs of hades in the brain<br />
Are tunnels that re-wind themselves, and love<br />
A burnt match skating in a urinal—<br />
Somewhere above Fourteenth TAKE THE EXPRESS<br />
To brush some new presentiment of pain—
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>A tugboat, wheezing wreaths of steam,<br />
Lunged past, with one galvanic blare stove up the River.<br />
I counted the echoes assembling, one after one,<br />
Searching, thumbing the midnight on the piers.<br />
Lights, coasting, left the oily tympanum of waters;<br />
The blackness somewhere gouged glass on a sky.<br />
And this thy harbor, O my City, I have driven under,<br />
Tossed from the coil of ticking towers.... Tomorrow,<br />
And to be.... Hereby the River that is East—<br />
Here at the waters’ edge the hands drop memory;<br />
Shadowless in that abyss they unaccounting lie.<br />
How far away the star has pooled the sea—<br />
Or shall the hands be drawn away, to die?
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p><span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 10em;">*</span>
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>Performances, assortments, résumés—<br />
Up Times Square to Columbus Circle lights<br />
Channel the congresses, nightly sessions,<br />
Refractions of the thousand theatres, faces—<br />
Mysterious kitchens.... You shall search them all.<br />
Some day by heart you’ll learn each famous sight<br />
And watch the curtain lift in hell’s despite;<br />
You’ll find the garden in the third act dead,<br />
Finger your knees—and wish yourself in bed<br />
With tabloid crime-sheets perched in easy sight.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p><span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> Then let you reach your hat</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> and go.</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> As usual, let you—also</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> walking down—exclaim</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> to twelve upward leaving</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> a subscription praise</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> for what time slays.</span>
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>“what do you want? getting weak on the links?<br />
fandaddle daddy don’t ask for change—IS THIS<br />
FOURTEENTH? it’s half past six she said—if<br />
you don’t like my gate why did you<br />
swing on it, why <i>didja</i><br />
swing on it<br />
anyhow—”
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>O caught like pennies beneath soot and steam,<br />
Kiss of our agony thou gatherest;<br />
Condensed, thou takest all—shrill ganglia<br />
Impassioned with some song we fail to keep.<br />
And yet, like Lazarus, to feel the slope,<br />
The sod and billow breaking,—lifting ground,<br />
—A sound of waters bending astride the sky<br />
Unceasing with some Word that will not die...!
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p><span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> And somehow anyhow swing—</span>
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p><span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 11em;"> <i>To Find the Western path</i></span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 11em;"> <i>Right thro' the Gates of Wrath</i></span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 20em;"> <i>—Blake</i></span>
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>For Gravesend Manor change at Chambers Street.<br />
The platform hurries along to a dead stop.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>And why do I often meet your visage here,<br />
Your eyes like agate lanterns—on and on<br />
Below the toothpaste and the dandruff ads?<br />
—And did their riding eyes right through your side,<br />
And did their eyes like unwashed platters ride?<br />
And Death, aloft,—gigantically down<br />
Probing through you—toward me, O evermore!<br />
And when they dragged your retching flesh,<br />
Your trembling hands that night through Baltimore—<br />
That last night on the ballot rounds, did you<br />
Shaking, did you deny the ticket, Poe?
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>Our tongues recant like beaten weather vanes.<br />
This answer lives like verdigris, like hair<br />
Beyond extinction, surcease of the bone;<br />
And repetition freezes—“What
</p>
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