ALL WATCHED OVER BY MACHINES OF LOVING GRACE by Richard Brautigan (1968)

I like to think (and

the sooner the better!)

of a cybernetic meadow

where mammals and computers

live together in mutually

programming harmony

like pure water

touching clear sky.

I like to think

(right now, please!)

of a cybernetic forest

filled with pines and electronics

where deer stroll peacefully

past computers

as if they were flowers

with spinning blossoms

I like to think

(it has to be!)

of a cybernetic ecology

where we are free of our labors

and joined back to nature

returned to our mammal

brothers and sisters

and all watched over

by machines of loving grace.

ALPHABET by Catherine French (first published in The Nation, March 1992)

The truth is I dreaded each wide letter
and by extension the aging yellow-white pages
with the standard letter bearers--apple, zebra,
xylophone, coat. These physical counterparts
were secret code I would never crack--the yak,
its matted hair and soulful eyes, destined for slaughter
or a tundra isolation; the ball, untouched
in a sunless backyard, round and red and unattainable;
the blue dress on a white hanger,
freed of the sticky reminder of flesh. I knew
how they failed in that attempted joining
of physical and abstract, how each sound
fell short of the world. But fear gives way
to routine, and routine yields up
its indirection, that sing-song
also a simple path away
until what remains is as unnoticeable
and profound as mother's heartbeat and blood flow,
those first unviewed x's, their rhythm beat
into soft flesh as certainly as large black letters
embed into page--the traffic washing by at night,
the crickets speaking like martians, the wind
pushing dried leaves across cement in sudden bursts.
But when I close the book, they are already out
and hanging before me like dizzying hummingbirds,
my own thought refusing to settle or still
to definite line, but unable to return
to full quiet again.

HOW THINGS WORK by Gary Soto (1985)

Today it's going to cost us twenty dollars
To live. Five for a softball. Four for a book,
A handful of ones for coffee and two sweet rolls,
Bus fare, rosin for your mother's violin.
We're completing our task. The tip I left
For the waitress filters down
Like rain, wetting the new roots of a child
Perhaps, a belligerent cat that won't let go
Of a balled sock until there's chicken to eat.
As far as I can tell, daughter, it works like this:
You buy bread from a grocery, a bag of apples
From a fruit stand, and what coins
Are passed on helps others buy pencils, glue,
Tickets to a movie in which laughter
Is thrown into their faces.
If we buy goldfish, someone tries on a hat.
If we buy crayons, someone walks home with a broom.
A tip. a small purchase here and there,
And things just keep going. I guess.

IS ABOUT by Allen Ginsburg (1986)

Dylan is about the Individual against the whole creation
Beethoven is about one man's fist in the lightning clouds
The Pope is about abortion & the spirits of the dead...
Television is about people sitting in their living room looking at their things
America is about being a big Country full of Cowboys Indians Jews Negroes & Americans
Orientals Chicanos Factories skyscrapers Niagara Falls Steel Mills radios homeless Conservatives, don't forget
Russia is about Czars Stalin Poetry Secret Police Communism barefoot in the snow
But that's not really Russia it's a concept
A concept is about how to look at the earth from the moon without ever getting there. The moon is about love & Werewolves, also Poe
Poe is about looking at the moon from the sun
or else the graveyard
Everything is about something if you're a thin movie producer chain-smoking muggles
The world is about overpopulation, Imperial invasions, Biocide Genocide, Fratricidal Wars, Starvation, Holocaust, mass injury &
murder, high technology
Super science, atom Nuclear Neutron Hydrogen detritus, Radiation Compassion Buddha, Alchemy
Communication is about monopoly telivision radio movie newspaper spin on Earth, i.e. planetary censorship.
Universe is about Universe.
Allen Ginsberg is about confused mind writing down newspaper headlines from Mars--
The audience is about salvation, the listeners are aBOUT SEX, Spiritual gymnastics, nostalgia for the Steam Engine & Pony Express
Hitler Stalin Roosevelt & Churchill are about arithmetic & Quadrilateral equations, above all chemistry physics & chaos theory--
Who cares what it's all about?
I do! Edgar Allen Poe cares! Shelly cares! Beethoven & Dylan care.
Do you care? What are you about
or are you a human being with 10 fingers and two eyes?

THING LANGUAGE by Jack Spicer

This ocean, humiliating in its disguises
Tougher than anything.
No one listens to poetry. The ocean
Does not mean to be listened to. A drop
Or crash of water. It means
Nothing.
It
Is bread and butter
Pepper and salt. The death
That young men hope for. Aimlessly
It pounds the shore. White and aimless signals. No
One listens to poetry.

Al Filreis's course on modernism and postmodernism
John Cage quotations
DeHumanufactured: Postmodern Poetry
Postmodern Poetries