Poems by Maxwell Bodenheim

Brown faces twisted back
Into an ecstasy of tight resistance;
Eyes that are huge sweat drops
...

Grey, drooping-shouldered bushes scrape the edges
Of bending swirls of yellow-white flowers.
S...

The wind was shrill and mercenary,
Like a housewife pacing down the sky.
Green weeds and tin-c...

The gown you wear is curiously like sound--
Tangles of dahlia-murmurs taking shape
In shrinking...

Like a drowsy, rain-browned saint,
You squat, and sometimes your voice
In which the wind tak...

I: POET You have escaped the comedy
Of swift, pretentious praise and blame,
And smashed a ta...

POET
Will you, like other men,
Offer me indigo indignities? UNDERTAKER
Indigo indign...

Like a vivid hyperbole,
The sun plunged into April's freshness,
And struck its sparkling madn...

Sun-light recedes on the mountains, in long gold shafts,
Like the falling pillars of a temple....

O the agony of having too much power!
In my passive palm are hundreds of lives.
Strange alchemy...

The lilies sag with rain-drops:
Their petals hold fire that does not break out.
(As though it ...

With crafty brooding life turned to Jack Rose
And made him heroin-peddler, and his pose
Was su...

Like prayers born dead, long shadows
Strew the floor and clutch at your feet,
But buoyant wit...

You seemed a caryatid melting
Into the wind-blown, dark blue temple of the sky.
But you bent d...

Gingerly, the poets sit.
Gingerly, they spend
The adjectives of dribbling flatteries,
With ...