Allegheny Morning

M. Hill

The Inner Ear

"I do not say these things for a dollar or to fill up time while waiting for a boat."

-Walt Whitman

 

Between Heaven and Hell

W. Bruce Lincoln

Viking Penguin 1998

Cubist Museum, Prague

To Revolution

What has happened to Revolution?

Where does she run, where does she sleep?

Is she dead?


Where is the grave of Revolution?

Hidden in the brambles of an ancient field?

Show me where she lies I don’t believe it.

I hear her singing far away in a distant place.


Prove to me Revolution is done

Or anyone has lost or won ,

That we have arrived in the promised land,

The democracy, the Republic we've long awaited.


Did Revolution retire after 1776?

Was she stillborn in Russia in 1917?

Did Stalin step on the throat of her song?

Was she buried with the Hippie in San Francisco,

Or in Chicago, Vietnam, Attica, in Congress, or on T.V.?


Did you let the torch go out because you thought Revolution was finished

When the American Dream became a formula for playing the stock market?

Show me the corpse of Revolution I don't believe you.

Show me the grave covered with flowers and poems and empty bottles of wine.

Who remembers the eulogy, the service, the crying orphans of Revolution?

There is no evidence, no murder weapon.


She has been beaten, raped, left bleeding lying in a cold cobblestone alley

Surrounded by nurses in intensive care but not dead;

Injured, disfigured, having a near-death experience but not dead never dead.


Revolution may be lying on a moldy mattress in a crumbling warehouse,

Or filed away in the back ward of some facility,

Misdiagnosed, writing manifestoes in her head,

Whispering faintly through cracked lips into tender ears pressed close.


Not dead in Paris, Prague or Budapest

Not dead in Moscow, Memphis or Vilnius

Revolution is alive now in you and me

When we balk at another's command,

Refuse to march in step,

Protest high taxes, low wages, unlawful detention, child labor,

Undeclared war, occupation, "enhanced interrogation",

Sweatshops in China, Nicaragua, California, New York.


Alive when you speak truth, decide for yourself, read any book or pamphlet, say "no"

Or "yes."

Revolution revolves, returns, rebuilds, restores, replies, renews, remains, revamps, and

   replaces.

She lives in spite and because of the World Trade Organization, Trilateral Commission,

   World Bank, CIA, FBI, compassionate conservatives,


I saw her picture in a book

Or maybe Time or even Look;

I saw her dancing off Carson Street in Pittsburgh

Spangles, bangles, belly bare dancing to World Beat rhythm.

I saw her with Hindu priests, highway saints, psychotic messengers, voodoo alcoholics, artists, poets,

  and thieves.

I saw her barefoot naked in a field dancing to invisible music,

I saw her in the back seat of a car sliding down a neon street,

I saw her in the sky high up she looked like an eagle dressed like the wind hair swept

   back like a cloud in the Carolina sky.

Don't tell me she's dead she lives in my radio.


Revolution may be lying pinned beneath a tank in Tienenman Square,

She might be buried in a shallow grave in Mississippi,

Or dragged to pieces along a lonely Texas blacktop,

But she is not dead.

If she sleeps let her sleep she earned it in Johannesburg.

She had a busy day, let her rest.


When she wakes let us bathe her in milk, clothe her in light

Walk with her to greet the new day, the one where dreams come true.


I hear her breathing softly in the next room 

Stirring lightly in her gentle night.

I ponder her fate, read about her in old books, see her in a documentary

I shut my eyes

See her holding hands

With her sisters Hope and Liberty,

Silhouettes dancing

In the horizontal sun.
　

　

Michael R. Hill
Originally published in The White Bufallo Gazette

Editing Room

M. Hill

The Quick Brown Fox

Beechcraft 1900

Tecoma stans

American Cartoonists

 

Hal Hargit, Bruce Chrislip, Mike Hill, Michael Dowers, Edd Vick

Seattle, August 1987

The Inner Ear

"With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino"

-William Shakespeare

Just Another Roadside Attraction

Your Household Bookcase

 

50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship

Salvadore Dali

1948

Dover Publications, Mineola, N.Y., 1992

 

 

 

   "Quite apart from my intrinsic value as a painter- which I am one of the first to be ready to discuss- one thing is certain: that if 'painting' is to survive our epoch of barbarous mechanical progress, this continuity of painting will have its starting point in Salvadore Dali; and it is for this reason that this book is destined to have a daily-growing vital interest. For no person, whether directly or remotely interested in the real phenomenon of painting, will be able to avoid consulting it."

-footnote to the Clear and Brief Prologue

Choreographer

 

Sidewalk, Erie, Pa.

M. Hill

The Inner Ear

"A true poem is a struggle unto death."


-Trefossa

Shakespeare and Wordsworth boost the brain

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/9797617/Shakespeare-and-Wordsworth-boost-the-brain-new-research-reveals.html

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I Am an American in my Car flying over Turtle Island

I am an American in my car flying over Turtle Island

The wind slaps my face

I go chanting my American mantra:

Hope the tires hold

Hope the tires hold

Hope the tires hold

 

There is no heart of America

The center shifts or my grasp of the center slips

Or America is all heart in the

Old-fashioned holistic sense

Any part is the heart of the

Old-fashioned America in the

Old-fashioned Waldensian sense of

Being scientifically and beatifically here now

 

Which is the time to read between the lines of road

I chant my mantra:

I hope I have enough gas

I hope I have enough gas

I hope I have enough gas

Thy road an endless snake

3am over the Alleghenies

Familiar sounds take on musical qualities

Was the sound always there or am I hearing a new vibration

End transmission

 

The Inner Ear

"Human life without some form of poetry is not human life but

animal existence."


-Randall Jarell
 

The Inner Ear

"The poet is a rebuilder of the imagination."

-George Santayana

Film

The Inner Ear

"I was not gifted but I was imaginative and my teachers encouraged me."

-Patti Smith

unused cover

 

Down With Philistine Scum

A Poet Working

The Inner Ear

"An age employed in edging steel

  Can no poetic raptures feel"

-Phillip Freneau

The Inner Ear

"The only war that matters is the war against the imagination

  All other wars are subsumed in it"

-Diane DiPrima

Minneapolis 1990

I Lost My Wallet

I left my wallet in a cab

It's liberating to be free of driver’s license, social security card, old receipts, phone cards

    with 1 ½ minutes left

Whoever wants may assume my identity

Resume my job in Pittsburgh, pay my bills, argue with my

   father, wake up with aching back

Now I can re-create myself to be whatever I please

Artist, poet, musician, seer, monk