At Joan's
It is almost three
I sit at the marble top
sorting poems, miserable
the little lamp glows feebly
I don't glow at all
I have another cognaca
nd stare at two little paintings
of Jean-Paul's, so great
I must do so much
or did they just happen
the breeze is cool
barely a sound filters up
through my confused eyes
I am lonely for myself
I can't find a real poem
if it won't happen to me
what shall I do
Frank O'Hara
Friday, May 30, 2008
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Attack
AT dawn the ridge emerges massed and dun
In the wild purple of the glow'ring sun,
Smouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that shroud
The menacing scarred slope; and, one by one,
Tanks creep and topple forward to the wire.
The barrage roars and lifts. Then, clumsily bowed
With bombs and guns and shovels and battle-gear,
Men jostle and climb to meet the bristling fire.
Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear,
They leave their trenches, going over the top,
While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists,
And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists,
Flounders in mud. O Jesus, make it stop!
Siegfried Sassoon
AT dawn the ridge emerges massed and dun
In the wild purple of the glow'ring sun,
Smouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that shroud
The menacing scarred slope; and, one by one,
Tanks creep and topple forward to the wire.
The barrage roars and lifts. Then, clumsily bowed
With bombs and guns and shovels and battle-gear,
Men jostle and climb to meet the bristling fire.
Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear,
They leave their trenches, going over the top,
While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists,
And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists,
Flounders in mud. O Jesus, make it stop!
Siegfried Sassoon
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
POEM OF THE DAY MAY 28 2008
Black Cat
A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place
your sight can knock on, echoing; but here
within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze
will be absorbed and utterly disappear:
just as a raving madman, when nothing else
can ease him, charges into his dark night
howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels
the rage being taken in and pacified.
She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen
into her, so that, like an audience,
she can look them over, menacing and sullen,
and curl to sleep with them. But all at once
as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;
and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny,
inside the golden amber of her eyeballs
suspended, like a prehistoric fly.
Rainer Maria Rilke
A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place
your sight can knock on, echoing; but here
within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze
will be absorbed and utterly disappear:
just as a raving madman, when nothing else
can ease him, charges into his dark night
howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels
the rage being taken in and pacified.
She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen
into her, so that, like an audience,
she can look them over, menacing and sullen,
and curl to sleep with them. But all at once
as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;
and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny,
inside the golden amber of her eyeballs
suspended, like a prehistoric fly.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
POEM OF THE DAY MAY 27 2008
A Dead Boche
To you who’d read my songs of War
And only hear of blood and fame,
I’ll say (you’ve heard it said before)
”War’s Hell!” and if you doubt the same,
Today I found in Mametz Wood
A certain cure for lust of blood:
Where, propped against a shattered trunk,
In a great mess of things unclean,
Sat a dead Boche; he scowled and stunk
With clothes and face a sodden green,
Big-bellied, spectacled, crop-haired,
Dribbling black blood from nose and beard.
Robert Graves
To you who’d read my songs of War
And only hear of blood and fame,
I’ll say (you’ve heard it said before)
”War’s Hell!” and if you doubt the same,
Today I found in Mametz Wood
A certain cure for lust of blood:
Where, propped against a shattered trunk,
In a great mess of things unclean,
Sat a dead Boche; he scowled and stunk
With clothes and face a sodden green,
Big-bellied, spectacled, crop-haired,
Dribbling black blood from nose and beard.
Robert Graves
Sunday, May 25, 2008
POEM OF THE DAY MAY 26 2008
Epilogue
Those blessèd structures, plot and rhyme--
why are they no help to me now
I want to make
something imagined, not recalled?
I hear the noise of my own voice:
The painter's vision is not a lens,
it trembles to caress the light.
But sometimes everything I write
with the threadbare art of my eye
seems a snapshot,
lurid, rapid, garish, grouped,
heightened from life,
yet paralyzed by fact.
All's misalliance.
Yet why not say what happened?
Pray for the grace of accuracy
Vermeer gave to the sun's illumination
stealing like the tide across a map
to his girl solid with yearning.
We are poor passing facts,
warned by that to give
each figure in the photograph
his living name.
Robert Lowell
Those blessèd structures, plot and rhyme--
why are they no help to me now
I want to make
something imagined, not recalled?
I hear the noise of my own voice:
The painter's vision is not a lens,
it trembles to caress the light.
But sometimes everything I write
with the threadbare art of my eye
seems a snapshot,
lurid, rapid, garish, grouped,
heightened from life,
yet paralyzed by fact.
All's misalliance.
Yet why not say what happened?
Pray for the grace of accuracy
Vermeer gave to the sun's illumination
stealing like the tide across a map
to his girl solid with yearning.
We are poor passing facts,
warned by that to give
each figure in the photograph
his living name.
Robert Lowell
POEM OF THE DAY MAY 25 2008
My Dog Has Died
My dog has died.
I buried him in the garden
next to a rusted old machine.
Some day I'll join him right there,
but now he's gone with his shaggy coat,
his bad manners and his cold nose,
and I, the materialist, who never believed
in any promised heaven in the sky
for any human being,
I believe in a heaven I'll never enter.
Yes, I believe in a heaven for all dogdom
where my dog waits for my arrival
waving his fan-like tail in friendship.
Ai, I'll not speak of sadness here on earth,
of having lost a companion
who was never servile.
His friendship for me, like that of a porcupine
withholding its authority,
was the friendship of a star, aloof,
with no more intimacy than was called for,
with no exaggerations:
he never climbed all over my clothes
filling me full of his hair or his mange,
he never rubbed up against my knee
like other dogs obsessed with sex.
No, my dog used to gaze at me,
paying me the attention I need,
the attention required
to make a vain person like me understand
that, being a dog, he was wasting time,
but, with those eyes so much purer than mine,
he'd keep on gazing at me
with a look that reserved for me alone
all his sweet and shaggy life,
always near me, never troubling me,
and asking nothing.
Ai, how many times have I envied his tail
as we walked together on the shores of the sea
in the lonely winter of Isla Negra
where the wintering birds filled the sky
and my hairy dog was jumping about
full of the voltage of the sea's movement:
my wandering dog, sniffing away
with his golden tail held high,
face to face with the ocean's spray.
Joyful, joyful, joyful,
as only dogs know how to be happy
with only the autonomy
of their shameless spirit.
There are no good-byes for my dog who has died,
and we don't now and never did lie to each other.
So now he's gone and I buried him,
and that's all there is to it.
Translated, from the Spanish, by Alfred Yankauer
Pablo Neruda
My dog has died.
I buried him in the garden
next to a rusted old machine.
Some day I'll join him right there,
but now he's gone with his shaggy coat,
his bad manners and his cold nose,
and I, the materialist, who never believed
in any promised heaven in the sky
for any human being,
I believe in a heaven I'll never enter.
Yes, I believe in a heaven for all dogdom
where my dog waits for my arrival
waving his fan-like tail in friendship.
Ai, I'll not speak of sadness here on earth,
of having lost a companion
who was never servile.
His friendship for me, like that of a porcupine
withholding its authority,
was the friendship of a star, aloof,
with no more intimacy than was called for,
with no exaggerations:
he never climbed all over my clothes
filling me full of his hair or his mange,
he never rubbed up against my knee
like other dogs obsessed with sex.
No, my dog used to gaze at me,
paying me the attention I need,
the attention required
to make a vain person like me understand
that, being a dog, he was wasting time,
but, with those eyes so much purer than mine,
he'd keep on gazing at me
with a look that reserved for me alone
all his sweet and shaggy life,
always near me, never troubling me,
and asking nothing.
Ai, how many times have I envied his tail
as we walked together on the shores of the sea
in the lonely winter of Isla Negra
where the wintering birds filled the sky
and my hairy dog was jumping about
full of the voltage of the sea's movement:
my wandering dog, sniffing away
with his golden tail held high,
face to face with the ocean's spray.
Joyful, joyful, joyful,
as only dogs know how to be happy
with only the autonomy
of their shameless spirit.
There are no good-byes for my dog who has died,
and we don't now and never did lie to each other.
So now he's gone and I buried him,
and that's all there is to it.
Translated, from the Spanish, by Alfred Yankauer
Pablo Neruda
Saturday, May 24, 2008
POEM OF THE DAY MAY 24 2008
Mission Tire Factory, 1969
All through lunch Peter pinched at his crotch,
And Jesús talked about his tattoos,
And I let the flies crawl my arm, undisturbed,
Thinking it was wrong, a dollar sixty five,
The wash of rubber in our lungs,
The oven we would enter, squinting---
because earlier in the day Manny fell
From his machine, and when we carried him
To the workshed (blood from
Under his shirt, in his pants)
All he could manage, in an ignorance
Outdone only by pain, was to take three bucks
From his wallet, and say:
"Buy some sandwiches.You guys saved my life."
Gary Soto
All through lunch Peter pinched at his crotch,
And Jesús talked about his tattoos,
And I let the flies crawl my arm, undisturbed,
Thinking it was wrong, a dollar sixty five,
The wash of rubber in our lungs,
The oven we would enter, squinting---
because earlier in the day Manny fell
From his machine, and when we carried him
To the workshed (blood from
Under his shirt, in his pants)
All he could manage, in an ignorance
Outdone only by pain, was to take three bucks
From his wallet, and say:
"Buy some sandwiches.You guys saved my life."
Gary Soto
Friday, May 23, 2008
POEM OF THE DAY MAY 23 2008
A Meeting With Despair
AS evening shaped I found me on a moor
Which sight could scarce sustain:
The black lean land, of featureless contour,
Was like a tract in pain.
"This scene, like my own life," I said, "is one
Where many glooms abide;
Toned by its fortune to a deadly dun--
Lightless on every side.
I glanced aloft and halted, pleasure-caught
To see the contrast there:
The ray-lit clouds gleamed glory; and I thought,
"There's solace everywhere!"
Then bitter self-reproaches as I stood
I dealt me silently
As one perverse--misrepresenting Good
In graceless mutiny.
Against the horizon's dim-descernèd wheel
A form rose, strange of mould:
That he was hideous, hopeless, I could feel
Rather than could behold."
'Tis a dead spot, where even the light lies spent
To darkness!" croaked the Thing.
"Not if you look aloft!" said I, intent
On my new reasoning.
"Yea--but await awhile!" he cried. "Ho-ho!--
Look now aloft and see!"I
looked. There, too, sat night: Heaven's radiant show
Had gone. Then chuckled he.
Thomas Hardy
AS evening shaped I found me on a moor
Which sight could scarce sustain:
The black lean land, of featureless contour,
Was like a tract in pain.
"This scene, like my own life," I said, "is one
Where many glooms abide;
Toned by its fortune to a deadly dun--
Lightless on every side.
I glanced aloft and halted, pleasure-caught
To see the contrast there:
The ray-lit clouds gleamed glory; and I thought,
"There's solace everywhere!"
Then bitter self-reproaches as I stood
I dealt me silently
As one perverse--misrepresenting Good
In graceless mutiny.
Against the horizon's dim-descernèd wheel
A form rose, strange of mould:
That he was hideous, hopeless, I could feel
Rather than could behold."
'Tis a dead spot, where even the light lies spent
To darkness!" croaked the Thing.
"Not if you look aloft!" said I, intent
On my new reasoning.
"Yea--but await awhile!" he cried. "Ho-ho!--
Look now aloft and see!"I
looked. There, too, sat night: Heaven's radiant show
Had gone. Then chuckled he.
Thomas Hardy
Thursday, May 22, 2008
POEM OF THE DAY MAY 22 2008
Again and Again
Again and again, however we know the landscape of love
and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names,
and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others
fall: again and again the two of us walk out together
under the ancient trees, lie down again and again
among the flowers, face to face with the sky.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Again and again, however we know the landscape of love
and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names,
and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others
fall: again and again the two of us walk out together
under the ancient trees, lie down again and again
among the flowers, face to face with the sky.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
POEM OF THE DAY--MAY 21 2008
November Rain
November rain
washed away my guilt
November rain
washed away my pain
November rain -
so tired I felt
November rain
was not just any rain
Long I longed
with deep torment
For so long
my body waited
November rain, , , ,
Oh, sweet friend
November rain-
slowly I faded.
November rain-
I cried within
Steady and slowly,
it kept on pouring
November rain,
watered my skin
And deep inside,
I heard my roaring.
November rain,
it refused to quit
November rain
kept on pouring
And alone outside,
in the streets
I wept-dripping...
dripping and falling.
Amy Phillip
November rain
washed away my guilt
November rain
washed away my pain
November rain -
so tired I felt
November rain
was not just any rain
Long I longed
with deep torment
For so long
my body waited
November rain, , , ,
Oh, sweet friend
November rain-
slowly I faded.
November rain-
I cried within
Steady and slowly,
it kept on pouring
November rain,
watered my skin
And deep inside,
I heard my roaring.
November rain,
it refused to quit
November rain
kept on pouring
And alone outside,
in the streets
I wept-dripping...
dripping and falling.
Amy Phillip
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
POEM OF THE DAY-- MAY 20 2008
8 Count
from my bed
I watch
3 birds
on a telephone
wire.one flies off.then
another.one is left,then
it too
Is gone.
my typewriter is
tombstone still.
and I am
reduced to birdwatching.
just thought I'd
let you
know, fucker.
Charles Bukowski
from my bed
I watch
3 birds
on a telephone
wire.one flies off.then
another.one is left,then
it too
Is gone.
my typewriter is
tombstone still.
and I am
reduced to birdwatching.
just thought I'd
let you
know, fucker.
Charles Bukowski
Monday, May 19, 2008
POEM OF THE DAY:
Epitaph On A Tyrant
Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter.
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.
WH Auden
Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter.
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.
WH Auden
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Courtship
The Courtship
At first I thouight it was a coyote
for being so tall.
I rode closer on the mower.
Rusty hair, long stick legs
Ruinously skinny--like a derelict.
I sat and watched him for a while
poking at something in the grass
then looking up in my direction
and poking the grass again.
I opened the throttle and rushed him.
Useless.
He almost leasurely--I want to say disgustedly--
poked again and ran off toward the park
with something hanging from his mouth.
What struck me
was how he carried the what? chipmunk?
Baby rabbit?
Carried it like a mother cat
carries a newborn kitten
and yes, I remember now
how, when he ran across the sun,
the thing suddenly glistened...
sparkled!
like a new wife's hand.
At first I thouight it was a coyote
for being so tall.
I rode closer on the mower.
Rusty hair, long stick legs
Ruinously skinny--like a derelict.
I sat and watched him for a while
poking at something in the grass
then looking up in my direction
and poking the grass again.
I opened the throttle and rushed him.
Useless.
He almost leasurely--I want to say disgustedly--
poked again and ran off toward the park
with something hanging from his mouth.
What struck me
was how he carried the what? chipmunk?
Baby rabbit?
Carried it like a mother cat
carries a newborn kitten
and yes, I remember now
how, when he ran across the sun,
the thing suddenly glistened...
sparkled!
like a new wife's hand.
Fox
I want to write a poem this morning.
Need a subject--
you know, something to blame it on.
Only thing comes to mind is the fox.
At first I thouight it was a coyote
for being so big.
I rode closer on the mower.
Rusty hair, long stick legs
Ruinously skinny--like a derelict.
I sat and watched him for a while
poking at something in the grass
then looking up in my direction
and poking the grass again.
I opened the throttle and rushed him.
Useless.
He almost leasurely--I want to say disgustedly--
poked again
and ran off toward the park
with something hanging from his mouth.
Doesn't satisfy.
Needs something.
The only other thing I remember
was how he carried the what? chipmunk?
Baby rabbit?
Carried it like a mother cat
carries a newborn kitten
and I recall how when he ran across the sun
the prey suddenly glistened...
sparkled!
like it was wet.
Need a subject--
you know, something to blame it on.
Only thing comes to mind is the fox.
At first I thouight it was a coyote
for being so big.
I rode closer on the mower.
Rusty hair, long stick legs
Ruinously skinny--like a derelict.
I sat and watched him for a while
poking at something in the grass
then looking up in my direction
and poking the grass again.
I opened the throttle and rushed him.
Useless.
He almost leasurely--I want to say disgustedly--
poked again
and ran off toward the park
with something hanging from his mouth.
Doesn't satisfy.
Needs something.
The only other thing I remember
was how he carried the what? chipmunk?
Baby rabbit?
Carried it like a mother cat
carries a newborn kitten
and I recall how when he ran across the sun
the prey suddenly glistened...
sparkled!
like it was wet.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Visiting Famous Photos
Been reading lots of poets
three, four years now
most of them
don't have anything to say
just want to prove
they're hot stuff
how they're hell on wheels
with women
how sick they are
of having so many men
or they start jacking off their feelings
making a three ring tradgedy
of a dead cat
a memory of granny
how they lost their faith
(which they never had anyway)
how they're so fucking sensitive
they can't cut the lawn
for crying over the wounded grass
how holy their guru is
or how horney (for them, of course)
how Paris ain't nothing
after what they saw in Cairo
You know:
memememe
Hey, Marilyn
just because your skirt
is blown up
over your freshly laundered pink panties
doesn't mean your're
falling
falling among the pieces
of a collapsed fire escape
with a six year old girl above you
falling too
with her arms spread
like a crucifix
like hopeless wings
three, four years now
most of them
don't have anything to say
just want to prove
they're hot stuff
how they're hell on wheels
with women
how sick they are
of having so many men
or they start jacking off their feelings
making a three ring tradgedy
of a dead cat
a memory of granny
how they lost their faith
(which they never had anyway)
how they're so fucking sensitive
they can't cut the lawn
for crying over the wounded grass
how holy their guru is
or how horney (for them, of course)
how Paris ain't nothing
after what they saw in Cairo
You know:
memememe
Hey, Marilyn
just because your skirt
is blown up
over your freshly laundered pink panties
doesn't mean your're
falling
falling among the pieces
of a collapsed fire escape
with a six year old girl above you
falling too
with her arms spread
like a crucifix
like hopeless wings
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Saudade
Our language hasn't a word
for what I felt standing on shore
day after day
waiting for your little boat
to climb over the edge of the world
When it came at last
(O, language!)
it had three decks
and a loud party going on
for what I felt standing on shore
day after day
waiting for your little boat
to climb over the edge of the world
When it came at last
(O, language!)
it had three decks
and a loud party going on
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Fado
you say love
and I see
one on one
for you
that sound
is a holiday
you say friend
and I see
certain restrictions
you see
different rooms
sudden swervings
your words
have been like sunny streets
full of ambushes
My dear
I've been so stupid
listening only for notes
from an instrument
whose overtones
are so weird
and I see
one on one
for you
that sound
is a holiday
you say friend
and I see
certain restrictions
you see
different rooms
sudden swervings
your words
have been like sunny streets
full of ambushes
My dear
I've been so stupid
listening only for notes
from an instrument
whose overtones
are so weird
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Karma
I shot the squirrels
as they jumped from the patio walls
jumped from the potting table
from the hose reel
onto my three-decked birdfeeder--
shot them like skeet.
And so
a tiny squirrel--
a squirrel that could pass
through a needle's eye--
leapt onto the tail
of my spine,
began to climb
vertebra by vertebra
up my skinny back.
Now and then I can feel
the scratching of its careful feet
now and then it shyly nips me
just to test its teeth.
I slap at it
and cannot hit it
I roll on my back
like a dog
and cannot crush it
I dance and carry on
and cannot shake it off.
It is climbing
to the place where
the feeder of the heart
hangs in the ribtree--
hangs very still
and wonders what this one
fathered by Ten Loud Bangs
whose mother's name is
Bloody Holes
has in store
for it.
as they jumped from the patio walls
jumped from the potting table
from the hose reel
onto my three-decked birdfeeder--
shot them like skeet.
And so
a tiny squirrel--
a squirrel that could pass
through a needle's eye--
leapt onto the tail
of my spine,
began to climb
vertebra by vertebra
up my skinny back.
Now and then I can feel
the scratching of its careful feet
now and then it shyly nips me
just to test its teeth.
I slap at it
and cannot hit it
I roll on my back
like a dog
and cannot crush it
I dance and carry on
and cannot shake it off.
It is climbing
to the place where
the feeder of the heart
hangs in the ribtree--
hangs very still
and wonders what this one
fathered by Ten Loud Bangs
whose mother's name is
Bloody Holes
has in store
for it.
Friday, May 2, 2008
Read The News Today, Oh Boy
A guy in Austria
raped his 19 year old daughter
and thereafter
locked her in a basement
and had 7 kids with her
and locked the kids
in the basement too--
this went on
for 24 years.
They have been asking him
why why why?
As though the poor shitface
knows any better
than anybody else
what slammed into him
and kept slamming.
It reminds me of what
Paramahansa yogananda once said:
"If I didn't know
that God had made the world
I would think
it had been made
by a mad man."
Me, it just scares me.
What if the god
who made the world
is a mad man
too?
raped his 19 year old daughter
and thereafter
locked her in a basement
and had 7 kids with her
and locked the kids
in the basement too--
this went on
for 24 years.
They have been asking him
why why why?
As though the poor shitface
knows any better
than anybody else
what slammed into him
and kept slamming.
It reminds me of what
Paramahansa yogananda once said:
"If I didn't know
that God had made the world
I would think
it had been made
by a mad man."
Me, it just scares me.
What if the god
who made the world
is a mad man
too?
Thursday, May 1, 2008
The Godfather
Michaelangelo painted God
wearing a forked white beard
and wrapped with a pink sheet
in whose voluminous folds
babies, winged and naked
hover and smile.
They are wonderfully plump
with wavy blond hair.
Angelo's God is built
like a stevedore
and though his hair is white
you get the feeling
that when he was young
it was black
and nothing
could plaster it down
wearing a forked white beard
and wrapped with a pink sheet
in whose voluminous folds
babies, winged and naked
hover and smile.
They are wonderfully plump
with wavy blond hair.
Angelo's God is built
like a stevedore
and though his hair is white
you get the feeling
that when he was young
it was black
and nothing
could plaster it down
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
