Revolution

By Anne Waldman b. 1945 Anne Waldman

Spooky summer on the horizon I’m gazing at

from my window into the streets

That’s where it’s going to be where everyone is

walking around, looking around out in the open

suspecting each other’s heart to open fire

all over the streets

like streets you read about every day

who are the network we travel through on the way to the center

which is energy filling life

and bursting with joy all over the screen

I can’t sit still any longer!

I want to go where I’m not feeling so bad

Get off this little island before the bridges break

(my heart is a sore thing too)

No I want to sit in the middle watching movies

then go to bed in my head

Someone is banging on it with a heavy stick like the enemy

who is he going to be turns into a face you can’t recognize

then vanishes behind a window behind a gun

Like the lonely hero stalking the main street

cries out Where are you? I just want to know

all the angles of death possible under the American sky!

I can hardly see for all the buildings polluting the sky

until it changes into a barrage of bottles

then clears up for a second while you breathe

and you realize you’e still as alive as ever and want to be

but would like to be somewhere else perhaps Africa

Start all over again as the race gets darker and darker

and the world goes on the way I always thought it would

For the winner is someone we recognize out of our collective past

which is turning over again in the grave

It is so important when one dies you replace her

and never waste a minute

Anne Waldman, “Revolution” from Helping the Dreamer: Selected Poems, 1966-1988. Copyright © 1989 by Anne Waldman. Reprinted with the permission of Coffee House Press, Minneapolis, www.coffeehousepress.com.

Source: Helping the Dreamer: Selected Poems 1966-1988 (Coffee House Press, 1989)

Biography

The author of more than 40 collections of poetry and poetics, Anne Waldman is an active member of the Outrider experimental poetry movement, and has been connected to the Beat movement and the second generation of the New York School. Her publications include Fast Speaking Woman (1975), Marriage: A Sentence (2000), and the multi-volume Iovis project (1992, 1993, 1997).

Her work as a cultural activist and her practice of Tibetan . . .

Continue reading this biography