OPUS
Performance Poetry Ensemble
Allen Heinrich
Ah…
If there’s any gospel
to seeing the whole
of one’s life scuttle
past in its last
moments
before dying,
I’ll be watching
for the hours
that were ours
alone,
and those minutes
within them
when the whole
of human history
rose and fell
in feverish reels
of fire
on fire—
Because
even to the end,
will and want
conspire…
Here My Heart
How little it matters if my words feel
inadequate, or that these fourteen lines
cannot promise room enough to reveal
more than a hand’s breadth of those meadow’d times
When I am with you in a certain frame
of mind, reclined upon some swaying limb,
and simply drinking ev’ry mem’ry in,
unthinking all the while, your honey’d name—
Is it not well that I set here my heart
where you may hear its unshyness, or let
smile over my lips this one trembling start
into all that aches to be written yet?
You may break me now with a word, or glance—
But I thought to please you, and spoke the chance…
Tang
I'm fed up with poems
manufactured for astronauts—
the systematically
dehydrated
artificially flavored
mass-produced
pre-packaged powder
passed off as fruit—
Feed me
an earthier flesh,
a natural taste and texture:
peaches for the hands
to find sticky,
and the tongue, tart;
plums I can bite into
deeply, so that after,
I might lick from the corners
of a satisfied mouth,
the tang of ripening juices...
Look who's chalking...
Watch your step...
Pedestrian poetry...
A video snippet...
sidewalkpoet
and a few audio clips:
the glance
sing back to me
poet
when comes the hour
unfinished business