David X Novak
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A Poetry Sampler


This is a sampling of some of my poems, links below the title of the book in which they are found. A “+“ sign after the book’s title means there is a note. My two long poems, The Requiem and The Resurgiad, are represented by excerpts.

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Embodiment & Release +
    [While she is watching me her ice eyes taunt]
    [A sonnet to Will Shakespeare, who didn't write]
    The Pearl
    [Now it is September when it was June]
    Knight with Lance
    The Calm of Calamity
    Specious Milonga


Sonnets +
    [That Our Lord Jesus died upon the cross]
    ["The poetry I write is what I read"]
    ["Deliberate fiction" poetry or else]
    [Vivekananda when he was in town]
    [This is the day that we remember those]
    [“And I did love a soldier once, he was]
    [“She swore to wait for me on my return]
    [“I served my country fifty years ago]
    [“My son was killed in battle, and I say]
    [Father, this bitter cup, and if it be]
    [I knew some time ago that you were not]


The Soul's Refinement +
    [I lay my hand upon my mouth, dear Lord]
    [Lord, he was meant for her, and she for him]
    [Lord, were I not a poet, but myself]
    [Father, unto thy hands do we commit]
    Inaugural Poem for Bill Clinton


The Requiem +
    [In the Grove of Scholars]
    [Discourse on Love]


Against Holy War +
    [Though there has been declared against us]
    [Though you have been deprived, forget]
    [When I would give myself to you]
    [Let those who feel religious fervor]
    [Beautiful Man that like the Lord]
    [To see the Buddha blown to bits]
    [Destruction is an easy vice]


Fascist Heart
    [The joke upon mankind is that]
    ['Tis better that I cease to yearn]
    [Girl, with your petticoat full tempting]
    [That which you give and I receive]
    [Blood on the ceiling, on the floor]
    [Days of collusion, of betrayal]
    [Bodies in billions and in bags]


Between Wakefulness & Sleep
    The Function of Motion
    In Times of Crisis
    Remain Thy Name
    The Generations Pass
    Indian Summer
    The Flight of Birds
    After a Night of Pain
    Thou Art Not Near
    An Angel's Step
    The Tug-of-War
    In a Tumbler Spinning


Irregular Verses
    We Have to Talk
    Stillborn Delivery
    Repelled
    Sociological Love
    The Choice
    By Trinity


Bestial Ballads
    The Death of Kafka
    Lincoln in the Rain
    Kimathi Martyr
    Para encontrarse con él
    Nameless at Bergen-Belsen Camp
    Down with Art
    Without Estate
    Bards of my Métier

The Condemnation +
    Bury This Generation
    From Virtue, Not from Crime, Does Wealth Arise
    Praise God for All the Blessings
    It Is the Breaking Down Produces Art
    A Tyranny Perhaps
    Within the Belly of the Beast
    My Heart Is Gay
    This Wastrel Generation
    Yet It Is Spring
    My Barefoot Rank Is Better


The Soul's Perpetuation
    [Men’s lives are not their own, still less their art]
    [Here in this gallery do we survey]
    [In living I no longer am a novice]
    [Horrible sadness overcomes my heart]
    [I had a dream, and many men have had it]
    [The birds within the trees twitter and chirp]
    [The ancient artists, they were never wrong]
    [Into the dome of Paul’s they flow, so many]
    [Murmur, a little softly, how love fled]
    [My verse be summarized so forth in brief]


The Resurgiad +
    Canto I


The Soul's Restitution
    [If you were here, I need not write a poem]
    [In its front hall, the grand and stately mansion]
    [Que, no hay camino, caminante, so]
    [It was a gambit and the salvo first]
    [A baby sucks its mother’s breast for milk]
    [During the time of the Han dynasty]


Zebra
    [My life has been a sacrifice]
    [Get up and bar the door and pour]
    [Must man then of his mother tongue]
    [’Twas nothing that I said, but merely]
    [There were no joy but only pain]
    [It were the horns of a dilemma]
    [There were no “me” nor were no “I”]
    [It were to exculpate my sin]
    [The gift you gave me of much joy]
    [It were not I am innocent]


Odes
    [She has the look of corpse but while]


Amplitude & Dispersion +
    [Tonight I can compose the saddest songs]
    [And I don’t have the will to live, my heart]
    [Today it rains and rains, it rains like never]
    [Dear God, I call to thee]
    [Into a lonely cave]
    [Sweet, it may be that I forget]
    [Where have you gone, my pretty one]


The Arraignment
    [Trusting dishonesty, it don’t last long]
    [Heads sunk between their shoulder blades, defeated]
    [Homeless and lonely, penniless he begs]
    [Exhaustion tires me; dropped my task scholastic]
    [It seems that you have played the vandal, child]
    [Rash neophytes propound bold panacea]
    [The ruler lies laconic in a sprawl]


Reunion
    [We that bear psychic wounds]
    [Wounded we are; and wounds]
    [Harms suffered we repeat]
    [Love, I your hate deserve]
    [Heinous barbarity]
    [Jesus, I fail thee, fail]


How to Praise +
    [Within the mirror I saw a ghost]
    [Heavenly sadness, I am thine]
    [They wage a battle for some gains]
    ["The creeks they are a-rising"—so]
    [Beat into shore the ocean's waves]
    [The dissident in prison cast]
    [Lovely she was, and lovely he]


Debating Mammon +
    [I greet the daily obstacles]
    [Another glass of wine—if not]
    [Dystopia seems the net result]
    [I need no drink, no beverage]
    [Others would bend me to their form]
    [I will not be browbeaten down]
    [Yet, ’tis not poverty, but rather]
    [Barbarians may be at the gates]


Fabricant Desire +
    [It is thy will that I be barred]
    [Heavenly Lord, my dreams are big]
    [To have a minor cup to drink]
    [Lord, poverty is not a new]
    [I blanch upon the shore, beneath]
    [My dreams were never overbig]
    [Truth is, I lie exhausted in]


The Utility of Dreams +
    [The love you gave had been unvirgined]
    [Beautiful girl, in thine undress]
    [Yet, thou disrobed, so I may love]
    [Who is to say, which is more real]
    [“In dreams begin reality”]
    [It is most horrible, and does]
    [I have been hit with “bait and switch"]


Small Poems +
    The Disillusioned
    This Sea of Incompetents
    Suburban Sprawl
    “And a Rogue Is Married to a…”
    The Infrastructure Crumbles
    The General’s Wine
    The General is Well-Bred
    Yet Lives the Spirit of Zengler?
    Captain Kopeikin
    How Cheaply Came That Kiss
    Free Speech Is Like
    The Neocons
    Eternity Beyond
    Which One Are You?
    A Joke
    The Ballad of the Man He Killed
    The Veep’s Deferral(s)
    Prisoners
    The Waterboarder
    Thank You, Sir Peter
    American P.R. Like Gold Leaf
    PTSD


The Recusal
    [It is the worst thing I had ever done]
    [The bottom of it all remains mere money]
    [Let be confirmed today all the reports]
    [I followed her because she did entice]
    [I couldn't sleep a wink but now am groggy]
    [Like as the waves make toward the pebbled shore]
    [If I were selling polyurethane foam]
    [An architect is fond of his erection]


The Rip of Gales +
    Reflection
    Frantisek
    Poetic Mourning
    Grief's Paradox
    Words After Longfellow
    A Prayer for Walking Back
    The Ground
    My Fiend
    My Teacher's More Famous Student
    Words After a Quote By Pope Francis


Other and Sundry +
    In Memoriam Daniel Pearl
    On a Critic of My Verses
    Shipwreck
    On the Archeological Find of a Cup Used by Pericles
    Be Still, My Soul
    Indifference (An Inaugural Poem)
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    Hail to Our Departing Chief