I've written a lot of poems called the Michael Morley
poems, in the first book and in the new book.
And Stephen Paulus sets them to music.
It was done last February, this time last year.
And there are six poems.
I want to read you two of them.
It's a sequence called "Mad Book, Shadow Book."
And here are what the two things are about.
And the first one I'll read is called "Root Song: Morley Goes
Mad."
And the root refers to the root chakra.
There are seven chakras in yoga.
And the root chakra is right down
between 2 root parts of your body.
And that's where it is.
And I'm meditating on that.
And that's what that's about, if that's helpful.
And in the last part, Morley is asleep
but talking in his sleep.
And the thing is composed entirely
of phrases from my dreams.
I dreamed them and wrote them down and put them together.
They're not written phrases, consciously.
So it's Morley's "Root Song."
And then the last section is called "Et in Arcadia, Morley."
And he's a kind of crazy person, unlike me.
When I'm crazy, I become Michael Morley.
But here's where he really freaks out.
This is about as weird as I get.
So far.
Morley's "Root Song"
The cats keep bringing birds into the house.
Some I save.
They are not fit for flight.
They are no use for song.
Bent birds, songs without words, lost between wing and wing.
The night, the rider doing the dark roads.
My root is rubble and barbed wire.
My root is not sweet.
My root is army in the snow.
Now in my mad book I do read.
Now in my shadow book I do peer.
All is clear as night to me.
Every animal is sad.
Sing nonny no.
Sing, hey nonny, mamma mia, Cosa Nostra, bossa nova.
My root's a goat.
My root is a cellar door.
My root is bruise of jewels.
The dreams I had when I was a boy, I have forgotten,
gone, dreaming, verboten, going, going, gone.
E pericoloso sporgersi.
That means, by the way, don't lean out
the window on Italian trains.
Naughty, naughty boy, I have forgotten who I was.
Rivers run through my rooms.
My root is rust and red planet.
My root's hot.
My root is crossed swords.
Now in my mad book I do write, I am King Morley of the roads.
Now in my shadow book, I do slink and slip.
I am the prince of the sinking ship.
Into the house, the cats do creep.
O, lady of the house of sleep, every animal is sad.
Sing nonny, neighborhood, no.
Sing, hey nonny, mamma mia, Cosa Nostra, bossa nova.
My root is nonny.
My root is no, no, no, no, no, no.
Here are some people to see you.
Good evening, Doctor Solstice.
Nurse Equinox, bonsoir, come on in.
There is a serpent asleep on the sofa.
There is an eagle asleep in me.
A thousand dogs are on watch for me.
A hundred planes take off without me.
I have been warned by a man in a mirror.
Je suis Michel de la Mort.
Pericoloso, pericoloso, ich habe genug.
Rivers run through my rooms, mamma mia, Cosa Nostra,
bossa nova.
My root is tundra.
My root is wriggle of padlock and plank.
My root is ladders and lizards.
Now in their mad arms they do hold me.
Now in their shadow arms I do sink.
Corporal Morley, fall in, fall in.
The cats keep bringing wings.
Every sad street without words.
Nurse, nurse, queen, acorn, oh.
And this little Morley went whee, mama, whee,
root tooty toot.
Whee, all the way, drum.
And the last bit, that wasn't when he was asleep,
though you may have thought it.
These are the dream phrases and the repeated phrases,
like a mantra to calm him down in his sleep.
"Et in Arcadia, Morley"
The annual Swedish Association for the Refusal of a Hotel
requests the pleasure of Mr. Morley's pumpkin
to wrinkle the princess.
The islands between here and birth.
AA Dariero Hudson crossed the river in a spoon.
You can't drag a horse uphill during an opera.
Your poems are wigs.
The islands between here and birth.
The peacocks bloom the islands and plant their cries.
The islands, or fire, the islands, the islands
between here and birth.
The islands.