Time Rations

Description: 1991, Poetry, 64 pages.
Susan Howe comments: "Benjamin Friedlander remembers what wounds of World War he was born after. Days can’t cover words at the fact gate. Lines to the end of myth begin at the middle. This is intelligent, passionate writing. The poems in Time Rations are fragments, splinters, and pilgrim staves."

WORK SONG

Hauled into a back seat

cauldron weighted down

propulsion,

fate is winded now

& I, mapped & laundered,

go.

Sure I was happy. Ten

minutes out of work

& needing to pee. Such

are the measures

of many an odd thing

that now, out of bed,

derisive laughter

please me

laying low in the morning

ah– laying low in the morning

WHAT GOOD IS THE DAWN

Bastion morn

chose us, by compass,

the yawn

of heroes tearing

day away, a mouth of suds...

sore belt wither’d

thigh – that fame wd

e’er give way to – oh

perfumed cab back

seat o’ reason

"for I have the warmth

of the sun

within me at night"