Anne Waldman

A WALL, a performance / Anne Waldman

(to rhythms of G. Stein and the Kenward Elmslie of “Girl Machine”)

a will of a wall
where a will there’s a wall
where it is willed,
wall to be eyed over,
and lengthy and never slumbering
and
when a will, there’s wall a wail and that too

absent without leave without permission
as if it didn’t mater water rose – drowning you
(cops in powder blue!)

absent without reticulation without candor
as if you might observe someone steal in
and water rose – drowning you
(more cops in powder blue!)

steal your partner, your lover your other
gesture to rise as if debt rises , drowning you
her life & others a dollar what’s a dollar
as if & when the battle of Wall Street
as if we’re all calm, and the Battle of Wall Street
as if I died first for Wall Street, a zoning tomb

dollar what’s a dollar
dollar what’s a dollar
sweetness of our non-mercenary mercurial reward…..

A.W.O.L. & dollar signs
A.W.O.L & a dollar signs

Wall Street a tomb-zone intoned, signed on

awake as you would be and thinking dutifully
await the call to be hired & spending dutifully
“the belly of our reward”
trinket for your thoughts
aware if you make the grade
awash with “money is the enemy” & “money has an enemy”
awheel its calm machination
awhirl, awhile, a wail and a walled over mentality
Money has an enemy
Money has an enemy

A.W.O.L. & dollar signs
A.W.O.L. & dollar signs
awin, awen: to possess, own, own, own
awkward, and going the wrong way
and “blade being differently shaped and pointed for such uses”
aweless Wall Street

owned
owned
owned & owing

a will of a wall
where a will there’s a wall
where it is willed,
wall to be eyed over,
and lengthy and never slumbering
and
when a will, there’s wall a wail and that too
climbed over

OCCUPY Anniversary, Sept 17, 2012

Anne Waldman is a poet, performer, professor, editor and cultural activist.
She is the author of over 40 books of poetry, including Structure of the World Compared to a Bubble (Penguin), the book-length hybrid poem Manatee/Humanity (Penguin), and the epic The Iovis Trilogy: Colors in the Mechanism of Concealment (Coffee House Press). She is the co-founder with Allen Ginsberg of the renowned Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, where she is chair and artistic director of the Summer Writing Program. She also helped launch the Poetry Project at St Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery in 1966, where she worked for more than a decade. She is the winner of the Poetry Society’s Shelley Memorial Award and is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. www.annewaldman.org