Poem 1: Something for Lenin
so no poet
shd be stuped as, enough / to believe
ov those trnsfrmative pwrs of poetry
or ny sch alchemies, settoutt like picnics… / it
as poetics, is a movement / follwing in fumes /
offring it spaces to commune / & laugh & dance,
or it’s / nthing worth a momnt ov time.
Poem 2: a possible identity:
NOAH [Noach נַֹח,]:
meaning restful, repose.
an endless pilgrimage, frm distance to still distance /
spread across & measured / by stepping /
ovr bodies looking like me side of street.
i am restless / i hesitate making
my steps.
not in flows; i wndr / staccato, broken punctuation,
punctuated masses of sillables, w/o any rhyme.
whthr young or old / unended motion;
perpetuity.
half drunk, my experience, i / fall frwrd at times
not in stumbling, not in sobriety,
bt mostly i’m pshed violently back / to no start.
mine poetics: is it poetry / to cry out so mch? in
lashings in mucking
i roam homeless, i sleep / out my van
stffing pages full ov memories
half-digestd & thot.
th’ hermitage does not exist
it wont on this landscape
long as im inn it;
its doors do not / swing outwrds,
thy are nott barred, bt
are thickkened airs.
they arn’t tears, they / are ruts leading back.
it is sm vague dialectic of rest. / it is sensless, and stuped.
it reeches frward in busyness,
and dance.
I havn’t, but I try, to / learn to dance.
Poem 3: a few words in solidarity with Wet’suwet’en
the tender stinging fear
of this distant longing, of watch
without so mch to make of it as a shout,
writing spit on these walls sm
1100 kilometers away, dim, meager hope.
th tender crunching fear
of solidarity, which is that it’ll b a shout
a shot or a crack in their vast infrastructure of fears
, a shadowy coupling made bright abt their chckpoints,
our peaceability givin way to unity, and rage.
itll be the cry, understood & understanding, realizing
there’s so gd many that feel this tenderness,
& for this last time forgive ourslvs this meekness
that frctional is fear and cry. nw we heard.
(& I can’t write this big bold enough letters to
undo the violence; but I’ll yell).
Noah is a 24 year old communist writer living in Oakland. They studied at UC Davis, and UC Berkeley. They draw inspiration from Charles Olson, Samuel Beckett, Amiri Baraka, and Claudia Rankine, among many others.
The Los Angeles Press 