For this improv, I chose Craig Raine's poem "A Martian Sends a Postcard Home." His poem proves to me that poetry may forever revitalize language and imagery. The poem doesn't cover any object never written about before, yet makes each image fresh.
Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
and some are treasured for their markings-
they cause the eyes to melt
or the body to shriek without pain.
I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch on the hand.
Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
and rests its soft machine on ground:
then the world is dim and bookish
like engravings under tissue paper.
Rain is when the earth is television.
It has the property of making colours darker.
Model T is a room with the lock inside-
a key is turned to free the world
for movement, so quick there is a film
to watch for anthing missed.
But time is tired to the wrist
or kept in a box, ticking with impatience.
In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,
that snores when you pick it up.
If the ghost cries, they carry it
to their lips and soothe it to sleep
with sounds. And yet they wake it up
deliberately, by tickling with a finger.
Only the young are allowed to suffer
openly. Adults go to a punishment room
with water but nothing to eat.
They lock the door and suffer the noises
alone. No one is exempt
and everyone's pain has a different smell.
At night when all the colours die,
they hide in pairs
and read about themselves-
in colour, with their eyelids shut.
Black Houses
They pound nails into me, say “stay!”
then leave having maimed me less than two centimeters deep,
though I feel the masque all over.
All over this house, not black on the outside, nor black on the inside;
specifically, on every face, I clench nails that hang frames
that grab black faces, black bodies, the familial black display.
They lynch their martyrs and mammies.
Curious visitors who do not come from a house with black face,
inquire about the ops with, “Why don’t you go back where you came from
if you miss it so much? Who painted this baptism for you?
Where did the African garb come from for this recreation?
Were the colors during this banjo lesson in the attic really that bleak?
You should have opened up a curtain.”
The praisers won’t leave my studs alone,
whole of the part, trimmed perfect for purchase, available for slaving.
The thump of hammers could make me sweat sweet sap,
if I were what I used to be. I can’t cry and warp,
the buyers would knock me out and replace.
Their history goes like this: this man here is not an uncle.
He is Martin Luther King. That is grandma,
not Rosa Parks. Black houses, often, are not black at all,
but it is difficult to explain how those are not Buffalo soldiers,
just generic black soldiers hung for comfort,
yet that boy there on the wall, Cousin Jason, did serve.
Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
and some are treasured for their markings-
they cause the eyes to melt
or the body to shriek without pain.
I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch on the hand.
Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
and rests its soft machine on ground:
then the world is dim and bookish
like engravings under tissue paper.
Rain is when the earth is television.
It has the property of making colours darker.
Model T is a room with the lock inside-
a key is turned to free the world
for movement, so quick there is a film
to watch for anthing missed.
But time is tired to the wrist
or kept in a box, ticking with impatience.
In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,
that snores when you pick it up.
If the ghost cries, they carry it
to their lips and soothe it to sleep
with sounds. And yet they wake it up
deliberately, by tickling with a finger.
Only the young are allowed to suffer
openly. Adults go to a punishment room
with water but nothing to eat.
They lock the door and suffer the noises
alone. No one is exempt
and everyone's pain has a different smell.
At night when all the colours die,
they hide in pairs
and read about themselves-
in colour, with their eyelids shut.
Black Houses
They pound nails into me, say “stay!”
then leave having maimed me less than two centimeters deep,
though I feel the masque all over.
All over this house, not black on the outside, nor black on the inside;
specifically, on every face, I clench nails that hang frames
that grab black faces, black bodies, the familial black display.
They lynch their martyrs and mammies.
Curious visitors who do not come from a house with black face,
inquire about the ops with, “Why don’t you go back where you came from
if you miss it so much? Who painted this baptism for you?
Where did the African garb come from for this recreation?
Were the colors during this banjo lesson in the attic really that bleak?
You should have opened up a curtain.”
The praisers won’t leave my studs alone,
whole of the part, trimmed perfect for purchase, available for slaving.
The thump of hammers could make me sweat sweet sap,
if I were what I used to be. I can’t cry and warp,
the buyers would knock me out and replace.
Their history goes like this: this man here is not an uncle.
He is Martin Luther King. That is grandma,
not Rosa Parks. Black houses, often, are not black at all,
but it is difficult to explain how those are not Buffalo soldiers,
just generic black soldiers hung for comfort,
yet that boy there on the wall, Cousin Jason, did serve.
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