January 2009
41 posts
The Problem of Describing Color
If I said- remembering in summer, The cardinal’s sudden smudge of red In the bare gray winter woods— If I said, red ribbon on the cocked straw hat Of the girl with the pooched-out lips Dangling a wiry lapdog In the painting by Renoir— If I said fire, if I said blood welling from a cut— Or flecks of poppy in the tar-grass scented summer air On a wind-struck hillside outside...
Caetano Veloso - Maria Bethânia
When You Wake Tomorrow
I will give you a poem when you wake tomorrow. It will be a peaceful poem. It won’t make you sad. It won’t make you miserable. It will simply be a poem to give you When you wake tomorrow. It was not written by myself alone. I cannot lay claim to it. I found it in your body. In your smile I found it. Will you recognise it? You will find it under your pillow. When you open the cupboard it will be...
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Bad Moon Rising
Rondeau After a Transatlantic Phone Call
Love, it was good to talk to you tonight. You lather me like summer though. I light up, sip smoke. Insistent through walls comes the downstairs neighbor’s double-bass. It thrums like toothache. I will shower away the sweat, smoke, summer, sound. Slick, soapy, dripping wet, I scrub the sharp edge off my appetite. I want: crisp toast, cold wine prickling my gums, love. It was good imagining...
A Vast Confusion
Long long I lay in the sands Sounds of trains in the surf in subways of the sea And an even greater undersound of a vast confusion in the universe a rumbling and a roaring as of some enormous creature turning under sea and earth a billion sotto voices murmuring a vast muttering a swelling stuttering in ocean’s speakers world’s voice-box heard with ear to sand a shocked echoing a...
“There is no blue without yellow and without orange”
– Vincent Van Gogh
A Poem Written by a Bear
let me go eat some salmon why are there coke cans in the river what if i wore a bullet proof vest during hunting season i’m a bear; i walk in the forest and look at the river and the river is cold i saw campers today and they ran away and i was alone and i destroyed their tent let me go scratch my paw on a tree let me go eat a salmon last night i cried onto my salmon the salmon was sad but it...
Trying to control the world? I see you won’t succeed. The world is a spiritual vessel And cannot be controlled. Those who control, fail. Those who grasp, lose. Some go forth, some are led, Some weep, some blow flutes, Some become strong, some superfluous, Some oppress, some are destroyed. Therefore the Sage Casts off extremes, Casts off excess, Casts off extravagance.
- Lao-Tzu
Fable
Then I looked down and saw the world I was entering, that would be my home. And I turned to my companion, and I said Where are we? And he replied Nirvana. And I said again But the light will give us no peace.
- Louise Gluck
Like This
If anyone asks you how the perfect satisfaction of all our sexual wanting will look, lift your face and say, Like this.
When someone mentions the gracefulness of the nightsky, climb up on the roof and dance and say, Like this?
If anyone wants to know what “spirit” is, or what “God’s fragrance” means, lean your head toward him or her. Keep your face there...
Spaces
1. In this room I was born. And I knew I was in the wrong place: the world. I knew pain was to come. I knew it by the persistence of the blade that cut me out. I knew it as every baby born to the world knows it: I came here to die. 2. Somewhere a beautiful woman in a story I do not understand is crying. If I strain hard enough I will hear a song in the background. She is holding a letter. She is...
I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, not Day
I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day. What hours, O what black hoürs we have spent This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went! And more must, in yet longer light’s delay. With witness I speak this. But where I say Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent To dearest him that lives alas! away. I am gall, I am...
Bob Dylan - I Want You
The Lover Speaks of Natural History
When all America has passed when all the gas stations have turned to delis they will speak of my love for you. And your reality has slowed and I used to think of death as something one practiced and the Buddha had the simple trick of it, but your hand is in mine, and I kiss your mouth and it has slowed for me as well and there is no dying here in this place inside of a time when the...
Stream
For what reason do you act that way? Staying on alone by the stream when green grass shoots push their way up when wavelets ruffle up in the spring wind, I think over your promise, that going away is not really going. Each day coming out to sit by the inlet, I keep turning it over in my mind. Going away is not really going. Isn’t that your asking me not to forget? - Kim Sowol