Your Poetry Fix

In the End

2008-04-22T12:43:00.002-04:00

Not strictly poetry, but this very short story caught my attention.

In the End
Neil Gaiman

In the end, the Lord gave Mankind the world. All the world was Man's, save for one garden. This is my garden, said the Lord, and here you shall not enter.

There was a man and a woman who came to the garden, and their names were Earth and Breath.

They had with them a small fruit which the Man carried, and when they arrived at the gate to the garden, the Man gave the fruit to the Woman, and the Woman gave the fruit to the Serpent with the flaming sword who guarded the Eastern Gate.

And the serpent took the fruit and placed it upon a tree in the center of the garden.

Then Earth and Breath knew their clothedness, and removed their garments, one by one, until they were naked; and when the Lord walked through the garden he saw the man and the woman, who no longer knew good from evil, but were satisfied, and He saw it was good.

Then the Lord opened the gates and gave Mankind the garden, and the Serpent raised up, and it walked away proudly on four strong legs; and where it went none but the Lord can say.

And after that there was nothing but silence in the Garden, save for the occasional sound of the man taking away its name from another animal.

Tourdion

2008-04-07T11:34:00.003-04:00

More poetry from music. This is the text from a 14th Century Italian madrigal, recently performed by the Kensington Consort as part of their concert "Sacred and Profane." Obviously, this was from the profane part of the program...

Tourdion
attributed to Pierre Attaignant

When I drink light red wine, friend,
Everything goes round and round
So from now on I'll drink Anou or Arbois
Let's sing and drink and wage war on this bottle
Let's sing and drink, my friends, let's drink!

Good wine renders us merry, let's sing,
Forget our sorrows, let's sing!
While eating of a fat ham, on this bottle let us wage war!

Let us drink well, drink my friends, clink glasses,
Drink, merrily sing!
While eating of a fat ham, on this bottle let us wage war!

Verklärte Nacht

2008-02-12T11:45:00.000-05:00

Richard Dehmel
translation by Stanley Apppelbaum
set to music by Arnold Schoenberg

Two people walk through a bare, cold grove;
The moon races along with them, they look into it.
The moon races over tall oaks,
No cloud obscures the light from the sky,
Into which the black points of the boughs reach.
A woman's voice speaks:

I'm carrying a child, and not yours,
I walk in sin beside you.
I have committed a great offense against myself.
I no longer believed I could be happy
And yet I had strong yearning
For something to fill my life, for the joys of motherhood
And for duty; so I committed an effrontery,
So, shuddering, I allowed my sex
To be embraced by a strange man,
And, on top of that, I blessed myself for it.
Now life has taken its revenge:
Now I have met you, oh, you.

She walks with a clumsy gait,
She looks up; the moon is racing along.
Her dark gaze is drowned in light.
A man's voice speaks:

May the child you conceived
Be no burden to your soul;
Just see how brightly the universe is gleaming!
There's a glow around everything;
You are floating with me on a cold ocean,
But a special warmth flickers
From you into me, from me into you.
It will transfigure the strange man's child.
You will bear the child for me, as if it were mine;
You have brought the glow into me,
You have made me like a child myself.

He grasps her around her ample hips.
Their breath kisses in the breeze.
Two people walk through the lofty, bright night.

lyrics as poetry

2007-07-09T14:59:00.000-04:00

I've been falling asleep at work listening to Iron & Wine and it occured to me that these lyrics are as much poetry as anything else I put up here. As such, and in celebration of my recent engagement (yay!), here is one of the most romantic songs I've heard in a while

Fever Dream
Iron & Wine

Some days her shape in the doorway
Will speak to me
A bird’s wing on the window
Sometimes I’ll hear her when she’s sleeping
Her fever dream
A language on her face

I want your flowers like babies want God’s love
Or maybe as sure as tomorrow will come

Some days, like rain on the doorstep
She’ll cover me
With grace in all she offers
Sometimes I'd like just to ask her
What honest words
She can’t afford to say, like

I want your flowers like babies want God’s love
Or maybe as sure as tomorrow will come

Bukowski

2007-06-28T12:17:00.000-04:00

the way it is now

Charles Bukowski

I'll tell you
I've lived with some gorgeous women
and I was so bewitched by those
beautiful creatures that
my eyebrows twitched.

but I'd rather drive to New York
backwards
than to live with any of them
again.

the next classic stupidity
will be the history
of those fellows
who inherit my female
legacies.

in their case
as in mine
they will find
that madness
is caused by not
being often enough
alone.

Editor's note: I know it's a bit dark, but I just love the image of driving to New York backwards...

Mueller

2007-02-06T14:18:00.000-05:00

Why We Tell Stories
For Linda Foster

Lisel Mueller

I
Because we used to have leaves
and on damp days
our muscles feel a tug,
painful now, from when roots
pulled us into the ground

and because our children believe
they can fly, an instinct retained
from when the bones in our arms
were shaped like zithers and broke
neatly under their feathers

and because before we had lungs
we knew how far it was to the bottom
as we floated open-eyed
like painted scarves through the scenery
of dreams, and because we awakened

and learned to speak

2
We sat by the fire in our caves,
and because we were poor, we made up a tale
about a treasure mountain
that would open only for us

and because we were always defeated,
we invented impossible riddles
only we could solve,
monsters only we could kill,
women who could love no one else
and because we had survived
sisters and brothers, daughters and sons,
we discovered bones that rose
from the dark earth and sang
as white birds in the trees

3
Because the story of our life
becomes our life

Because each of us tells
the same story
but tells it differently

and none of us tells it
the same way twice

Because grandmothers looking like spiders
want to enchant the children
and grandfathers need to convince us
what happened happened because of them

and though we listen only
haphazardly, with one ear,
we will begin our story
with the word and

Great title...

2006-11-21T10:02:00.000-05:00

Another Reason Why I Don't Keep A Gun In The House

Billy Collins

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking, barking, barking,

and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.

When the record finally ends he is still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton

while the other musicians listen in respectful
silence to the famous barking dog solo,
that endless coda that first established
Beethoven as an innovative genius.

New poet - very exciting

2006-11-16T10:11:00.000-05:00

In this World

Wendell Berry

The hill pasture, an open place among the trees,
tilts into the valley. The clovers and tall grasses
are in bloom. Along the foot of the hill
dark floodwater moves down the river.
The sun sets. Ahead of nightfall the birds sing.
I have climbed up to water the horses
and now sit and rest, high on the hillside,
letting the day gather and pass. Below me
cattle graze out across the wide fields of the bottomlands,
slow and preoccupied as stars. In this world
men are making plans, wearing themselves out,
spending their lives, in order to kill each other.

Manifesto:
The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.

Listen to carrion -- put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go.

Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

Two poems by Shel Silverstein

2006-09-01T12:52:00.000-04:00

I'm following Brian Hodges' advice.
Wish me luck...

Boa Constrictor

Oh, I'm being eaten
By a boa constrictor,
A boa constrictor,
A boa constrictor,
I'm being eaten by a boa constrictor,
And I don't like it--one bit.
Well, what do you know?
It's nibblin' my toe.
Oh, gee,
It's up to my knee.
Oh my,
It's up to my thigh.
Oh, fiddle,
It's up to my middle.
Oh, heck,
It's up to my neck.
Oh, dread,
It's upmmmmmmmmmmffffffffff . . .

It's Dark in Here

I am writing these poems
From inside a lion,
And it's rather dark in here.
So please excuse the handwriting
Which may not be too clear.
But this afternoon by the lion's cage
I'm afraid I got too near.
And I'm writing these lines
From inside a lion,
And it's rather dark in here.

Birthday present

2006-06-01T13:41:00.000-04:00

My mother sent me a couple of poetry books for my Birthday. I finally started reading the first of them: Pictures of the Gone World by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. This is the first poem in the book. Needless to say, I'm looking forward to the rest. Unfortunately, I'm not able to recreate the layout of the poem on this platform. You will simply have to make due with the words themselves...

Away above a harborful
of caulkless houses
among the charley noble chimneypots
of a rooftop rigged with clotheslines
a woman pastes up sails
upon the wind
hanging out her morning sheets
with wooden pins
O lovely mammal
her nearly naked breasts
throw taut shadows
when she stretches up
to hang at last the last of her
so white washed sins
but it is wetly amorous
and winds itself about her
clinging to her skin
So caught with arms upraised
she tosses back her head
in voiceless laughter
and in choiceless gesture then
shakes out gold hair

while in the reachless seascape spaces

between the blown white shrouds

stand out the bright streamers

to kingdom come

New Book

2006-05-19T13:21:00.000-04:00

I just started reading a new book today and I found this passage just priceless:

from Tortilla Flat
John Steinbeck

Two gallons is a great deal of wine, even for two paisanos. Spiritually the jugs may be graduated thus: Just below the shoulder of the first bottle, serious and concentrated conversation. Two inches farther down, sweetly sad memory. Three inches more, thoughts of old and satisfactory loves. And inch, thoughts of old bitter loves. Bottom of the first jug, general and undirected sadness. Shoulder of the second jug, black, unholy despondency. Two fingers down, a song of death or longing. A thumb, every other song each one knows. The graduations stop here, for the trail splits and there is no certainty. From this point on anything can happen.

A Beautiful Poem...

2006-05-19T10:01:00.000-04:00

... and an interesting organizational technique.

Curriculum Vitae
Lisel Mueller
1992

1) I was born in a Free City, near the North Sea.

2) In the year of my birth, money was shredded into
confetti. A loaf of bread cost a million marks. Of
course I do not remember this.

3) Parents and grandparents hovered around me. The
world I lived in had a soft voice and no claws.

4) A cornucopia filled with treats took me into a building
with bells. A wide-bosomed teacher took me in.

5) At home the bookshelves connected heaven and earth.

6) On Sundays the city child waded through pinecones
and primrose marshes, a short train ride away.

7) My country was struck by history more deadly than
earthquakes or hurricanes.

8) My father was busy eluding the monsters. My mother
told me the walls had ears. I learned the burden of secrets.

9) I moved into the too bright days, the too dark nights
of adolescence.

10) Two parents, two daughters, we followed the sun
and the moon across the ocean. My grandparents stayed
behind in darkness.

11) In the new language everyone spoke too fast. Eventually
I caught up with them.

12) When I met you, the new language became the language
of love.

13) The death of the mother hurt the daughter into poetry.
The daughter became a mother of daughters.

14) Ordinary life: the plenty and thick of it. Knots tying
threads to everywhere. The past pushed away, the future left
unimagined for the sake of the glorious, difficult, passionate
present.

15) Years and years of this.

16) The children no longer children. An old man's pain, an
old man's loneliness.

17) And then my father too disappeared.

18) I tried to go home again. I stood at the door to my
childhood, but it was closed to the public.

19) One day, on a crowded elevator, everyone's face was younger
than mine.

20) So far, so good. The brilliant days and nights are
breathless in their hurry. We follow, you and I.

Long time...

2006-05-15T08:53:00.000-04:00

So it's been way too long since I've posted anything and the prospect has gotten a bit too daunting. At first, I was just busy and couldn't find time to post. After a while, it got to a point where it had been so long I wanted a really good poem to bring the blog back to life. Now I've decided to post something small simply to get the ball rolling again. In that spirit, here's something I ran into today that caught my eye:

from Forgiveness
Ioanna Carlsen

III.

THE TRICK

You would
if you could,
but what if you -

the trick is to believe
your own story,

accident is needed for some kinds of change

Hectic Week

2006-03-24T09:02:00.000-05:00

Try this on for size:

Work in the office from 8-5
1 hour for dinner
in the car by 6, heading to Winston
Symphony rehearsal 7-9:30
back in the car, heading home
back in G-boro by 10

repeat...

This has been my daily routine all week. Don't get me wrong, I love working with WSS, but it certainly makes for a very tired Noah... It is in this spirit that I chose today's poem. I think it captures the sometimes horrible, sometimes wonderful, always insane quality of everyday life, don't you?

Poem About Morning

William Meredith

Whether it's sunny or not, it's sure
To be enormously complex-
Trees or streets outdoors, indoors whoever you share,
And yourself, thirsty, hungry, washing,
An attitude towards sex.
No wonder half of you wants to stay
With your head dark and wishing
Rather than take it all on again:
Weren't you duped yesterday?
Things are not orderly here, no matter what you say.

But the clock goes off, if you have a dog
It wags, if you get up now you'll be less
Late. Life is some kind of loathsome hag
Who is forever threatening to turn beautiful.
Now she gives you a quick toothpaste kiss
And puts a glass of cold cranberry juice,
Like a big fake garnet, in you hand.
Cranberry juice! You're lucky on the whole,
But there is a great deal about it you don't understand.

Good poem

2006-03-15T09:41:00.000-05:00

Just because I thought this was a cool poem...

Black Labrodor
David Young

1.

Churchill called his bad visits from depression
a big black dog. We have reversed that, Winston.
We've named him Nemo, no one, a black hole
where light is gulped — invisible by night:
by day, when light licks everything to shine,
a black silk coat ablaze with inky shade.
He's our black lab, wherein mad scientists
concoct excessive energy. It snows,
and he bounds out, inebriate of cold.
The white flakes settle on his back and neck and nose
and make a little universe.

2.

It's best to take God backward; even sideways
He is too much to contemplate, "a deep
but dazzling darkness," as Vaughan says.
And so I let my Nemo-omen lead me
onward and on toward that deep dark I'm meant
to enter, entertain, when my time comes . . .
The day wheels past, a creaky cart. I study
the rippling anthracite that steadies me,
the tar, the glossy licorice, the sable;
and in this snowfall that I should detest,
late March and early April, I'm still rapt
to see his coat so constellated, starred, re-starred,
making a comic cosmos I can love.

Solitude

2006-03-08T12:55:00.001-05:00

Happy spring break everyone! Of course, being a working man now, I don't get a break but it certainly has changed the tempo of my days. The office is beyond dead this week. It seems like it's even quieter this week than I remember summer being, though I was hired the week before Summer Music Camp so perhaps that has something to do with it...

One result of the quiet days is that I have been very lax with myself in the evenings. I've gone golfing in some context every afternoon this week. The sun stays up just long enough for me to get a round in at Barber now so I'm taking advantage. Of course, I should be practicing but I have finally decided to nix the Charlotte Symphony audition I was planning on taking (for a long list of reasons) leaving me without any terribly pressing deadlines at the moment.

I've also been spending quite a bit of time alone this week, another bi-product of spring break. In some situations this would make me terribly lonely but I'm trying to take a different outlook. In some ways this week has become a way for me to recuperate from the insanity of the past few. This leads me to the poem for today. I'm stretching a bit here, as this is more prose than poetry, though I think it sort of falls in both categories. Either way though, it speaks volumes about the healing quality of nature and the benefits of solitude

excerpts fromWalden
Henry David Thoreau

I experienced sometimes that the most sweet and tender, the most innocent and encouraging society may be found in any natural object, even for the poor misanthrope and most melancholy man. There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still. There was never yet such a storm but it was Aeolian music to a healthy and innocent ear. Nothing can rightly compel a simple and brave man to a vulgar sadness. While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me. The gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me in the house today is not dreary and melancholy, but good for me too. Though it prevents my hoeing them, it is of far more worth than my hoeing. If it should continue so long as to cause the seeds to rot in the ground and destroy the potatoes in the low lands, it would still be good for the grass on the uplands, and, being good for the grass, it would be good for me. Sometimes, when I compare myself with other men, it seems as if I were more favored by the gods than they, beyond any deserts that I am conscious of; as if I had a warrant and surety at their hands which my fellows have not, and were especially guided and guarded. I do not flatter myself, but if it be possible they flatter me. I have never felt lonesome, or in the least oppressed by a sense of solitude, but once, and that was a few weeks after I came to the woods, when, for an hour, I doubted if the near neighborhood of man was not essential to a serene and healthy life. To be alone was something unpleasant. But I was at the same time conscious of a slight insanity in my mood, and seemed to foresee my recovery. In the midst of a gentle rain while these thoughts prevailed, I was suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent society in Nature, in the very pattering of the drops, and in every sound and sight around my house, an infinite and unaccountable friendliness all at once like an atmosphere sustaining me, as made the fancied advantages of human neighborhood insignificant, and I have never thought of them since. Every little pine needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and befriended me. I was so distinctly made aware of the presence of something kindred to me, even in scenes which we are accustomed to call wild and dreary, and also that the nearest of blood to me and humanest was not a person nor a villager, that I thought no place could ever be strange to me again.

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert. The farmer can work alone in the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he is employed; but when he comes home at night he cannot sit down in a room alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but must be where he can "see the folks," and recreate, and, as he thinks, remunerate himself for his day's solitude; and hence he wonders how the student can sit alone in the house all night and most of the day without ennui and "the blues"; but he does not realize that the student, though in the house, is still at work in his field, and chopping in his woods, as the farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same recreation and society that the latter does, though it may be a more condensed form of it.

The indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature -- of sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter -- such health, such cheer, they afford forever! and such sympathy have they ever with our race, that all Nature would be affected, and the sun's brightness fade, and the winds would sigh humanely, and the clouds rain tears, and the woods shed their leaves and put on mourning in midsummer, if any man should ever for a just cause grieve. Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself?

Rough patch

2006-02-27T11:12:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure exactly what caused it or why it all happened simultaneously, but for some reason last week just sucked for so many of my closest friends. People were sick, family members passed away, well laid plans fell apart... For some reason an inordinate amount of shit hit the fan last week and everyone I know got buried in it. So, for those of you who have suffered, and for those still suffering, know that I am here for you and wish you all the best. As one of my wiser friends pointed out, "this too shall pass" and I'll be here to help you through it in whatever way I can. The poem for this week mirrors some of the sense of inevitability and loss I've felt this week. I can't take credit for tracking it down though. My former-English-teacher mother picked it out for me and while it isn't really an inspiring poem to uplift us, in my mother's words "it seems to capture something about how bloody hard life can be."

The Tragedy of the Leaves
Charles Bukowski

I awakened to dryness and the ferns were dead,
the potted plants yellow as corn.
My woman was gone and the
empty bottles like bled corpses
surrounded me with their uselessness;
the sun was still good, though,
and my landlady's note cracked in fine and
undemanding yellowness; what was needed now
was a good comedian, ancient style, a jester
with jokes upon absurd pain; pain is absurd
because it exists, nothing more;
I shaved carefully with an old razor,
the man who had once been young and
said to have genius; but
that's the tragedy of the leaves,
the dead ferns, the dead plants;
and I walked into the dark hall
where the landlady stood
execrating and final,
sending me to hell,
waving her fat sweaty arms
and screaming,
screaming for rent
because the world had failed us both.

Coming together

2006-02-20T10:30:00.000-05:00

I had a great night last night!

Short version: Cat made fondue and Joel and Erin came over to help us eat it.

Long version: Every aspect of the evening was just a blast. First, Cat and I went shopping to get everything from the food and wine to the plates we ate off of. The original plan was to eat with Cat's friend Amanda, but she had to bail at the last minute so I was frantically calling people in Target. Joel happened to be the one to call back. Now, I'm making it sound like they were an afterthought, but I had really been wanting to spend time with Joel and Erin, it just happened to work out on short notice this time. Anyway, Cat and I got back to her place and began preparing the meal. It was frantic but really fun. We had Jack Johnson and Olympic curling on in the background while we danced around each other in her tiny kitchen. Then Joel and Erin arrived and much fun was had by all. The food was excellent (and very fun) and everyone got along swimmingly (of course). Anne even made it home from her church group meeting to eat with us. It was so much fun to have my favorite people all together at the same time. Many laughs and 2 bottles of wine later we said goodnight and closed off a fantastic evening. It is so funny how a person's life can sort of divide in a way, particularly when you meet someone very special, but not yet attached to other parts of your life. My life has become a bit like that with the addition of Cat. Of course, I don't mean to make this occurrence sound like a complaint. I have been very happy with all the new aspects of my life at the moment, but I can't describe just how special it was to see some of the previously disconnected parts of me get to meet and commingle. I'm not describing this very well, but I guess it's as if all these new things become more real and permanent when they can be linked with other parts of my life. Oh well, long story short: last night was so much fun and very meaningful to me. Just thought I'd share.

Romantics
Johannes Brahms and Clara Schumann
Lisel Mueller

The modern biographers worry
"how far it went," their tender friendship.
They wonder just what it means
when he writes he thinks of her constantly,
his guardian angel, beloved friend.
The modern biographers ask
the rude, irrelevant question
of our age, as if the event
of two bodies meshing together
establishes the degree of love,
forgetting how softly Eros walked
in the nineteenth century, how a hand
held overlong or a gaze anchored
in someone's eyes could unseat a heart,
and nuances of address not known
in our egalitarian language
could make the redolent air
tremble and shiver with the heat
of possibility. Each time I hear
the Intermezzi, sad
and lavish in their tenderness,
I imagine the two of them
sitting in a garden
among the late-blooming roses
and dark cascades of leaves,
letting the landscape speak for them,
leaving us nothing to overhear.

In support of the ill

2006-02-16T10:03:00.000-05:00

Is it just me is everyone getting sick? There are two people laid out from the office alone today and it seems like I keep hearing about another unfortunate soul taken down by this vicious bug. So far I've managed to steer clear of the ravenous beast (thanks to my daily vitamin C, zinc, and echinachea) but I'm starting to get a bit worried. It may just about be time to seal myself in a plastic bubble until it all blows over! However, until then here's a poem in honor of my fallen comrades. I hope you all feel better soon and stay the heck away from me until you do!

Common Cold
Ogden Nash

Go hang yourself, you old M.D,!
You shall not sneer at me.
Pick up your hat and stethoscope,
Go wash your mouth with laundry soap;
I contemplate a joy exquisite
In not paying you for your visit.
I did not call you to be told
My malady is a common cold.

By pounding brow and swollen lip;
By fever's hot and scaly grip;
By those two red redundant eyes
That weep like woeful April skies;
By racking snuffle, snort, and sniff;
By handkerchief after handkerchief;
This cold you wave away as naught
Is the damnedest cold man ever caught!

Give ear, you scientific fossil!
Here is the genuine Cold Colossal;
The Cold of which researchers dream,
The Perfect Cold, the Cold Supreme.
This honored system humbly holds
The Super-cold to end all colds;
The Cold Crusading for Democracy;
The Führer of the Streptocracy.

Bacilli swarm within my portals
Such as were ne'er conceived by mortals,
But bred by scientists wise and hoary
In some Olympic laboratory;
Bacteria as large as mice,
With feet of fire and heads of ice
Who never interrupt for slumber
Their stamping elephantine rumba.

A common cold, gadzooks, forsooth!
Ah, yes. And Lincoln was jostled by Booth;
Don Juan was a budding gallant,
And Shakespeare's plays show signs of talent;
The Arctic winter is fairly coolish,
And your diagnosis is fairly foolish.
Oh what a derision history holds
For the man who belittled the Cold of Colds!

Valentine Afterglow

2006-02-15T08:43:00.000-05:00

Here's to a good dinner, a good concert, and an amazing woman.

The Love Cook
Ron Padgett

Let me cook for you some dinner.
Sit down and take off your shoes
and socks and in fact the rest
of your clothes, have a daquiri,
turn on some music and dance
around the house, inside and out,
it's night and the neighbors
are sleeping, those dolts, and
the stars are shining bright,
and I've got the burners lit
for you, you hungry thing.

smile

2006-02-08T12:21:00.000-05:00

I'm feeling romantic today, but I'll let Neruda's words speak for me...

Every Day You Play
Pablo Neruda

Every day you play with the light of the universe.
Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water.
You are more than this white head that I hold tightly
as a cluster of fruit, every day, between my hands.

You are like nobody since I love you.
Let me spread you out among yellow garlands.
Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south?
Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.

Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window.
The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish.
Here all the winds let go sooner or later, all of them.
The rain takes off her clothes.

The birds go by, fleeing.
The wind. The wind.
I can contend only against the power of men.
The storm whirls dark leaves
and turns loose all the boats that were moored last night to the sky.

You are here. Oh, you do not run away.
You will answer me to the last cry.
Cling to me as though you were frightened.
Even so, at one time a strange shadow ran through your eyes.

Now, now too, little one, you bring me honeysuckle,
and even your breasts smell of it.
While the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies
I love you, and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth.

How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,
my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.
So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,
and over our heads the grey light unwind in turning fans.

My words rained over you, stroking you.
A long time I have loved the sunned mother-or-pearl of your body.
I go so far as to think that you own the universe.
I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells,
dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.
I want
to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.

Early morning optimism

2006-02-03T09:08:00.000-05:00

Boy was it hard to get up this morning. I have to be at work at 8 every morning so I'm usually up and ready to go by 7:30. This gives me time to grab a bite to eat, watch a bit of the news, and generally prepare myself for the day both physically and mentally. For some reason I was just moving slow this morning because by the time I dragged myself out of bed and through the shower it was 7:50, leaving me just enough time to throw some shoes on, quickly brush my teeth, and head out the door. It's going to be a long day.

But enough griping. I thought since the last poem I posted, though beautiful, was a bit of a downer, I'd give y'all something a bit more optimistic this morning. This is a short little piece I found in an anthology that basically sums up my everyday outlook on life. Or at least, the outlook I try to maintain and occasionally succeed at upholding...

Sometimes
Sheenagh Pugh

Sometimes things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail,
sometimes a man aims high. and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man; decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we are meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.

(my favorite line: "Some men become what they were born for." Here's hoping)

Howl

2006-02-02T15:10:00.000-05:00

I wasn't planning on posting another long poem for a while but this poem has to be a part of this list of mine. Howl, by Alan Ginsberg was one of the first poems I really loved. My mother introduced it to me years ago; it was the first time I read poetry that had an edge to it. In spite of its length, Howl remains fast paced and intense. Some of the images put forth are not pretty (see the first two lines) but they are true. Plus the writing is just phenomenal. In the interest of space I will just post part I (of three sections) here. However, I encourage all of you to go find the rest of the poem and check it out!

Howl

For Carl Solomon

I

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,

who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,

who passed through universities with radiant eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,

who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,

who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,

who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,

who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night

with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls,

incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping towards poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the motionless world of Time between,

Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,

who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo,

who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's floated out and sat through the stale beer afternoon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,

who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge,

a lost batallion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon

yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,

whose intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the Synagogue cast on the pavement,

who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall,

suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grindings and migraines of China under junk-withdrawal in Newark's bleak furnished room,

who wandered around and around at midnight in the railway yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts,

who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow toward lonesome farms in grandfather night,

who studied Plotinus Poe St John of the Cross telepathy and bop kabbalah because the universe instinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,

who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary indian angels who were visionary indian angels,

who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,

who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Oklahoma on the impulse of winter midnight streetlight smalltown rain,

who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa,

who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving nothing behind but the shadow of dungarees and the larva and ash of poetry scattered in fireplace Chicago,

who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the FBI in beards and shorts with big pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incomprehensible leaflets,

who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism, who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed,

who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons,

who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication,

who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts,

who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy,

who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love,

who balled in the morning in the evenings in rosegardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whomever come who may,

who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath when the blond & naked angel came to pierce them with a sword,

who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman's loom,

who copulated ecstatic and insatiate and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,

who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning but were prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sunrise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake,

who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these poems, cocksman and Adonis of DenverÂjoy to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses' rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too,

who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hungover with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices,

who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the East River to open full of steamheat and opium,

who created great suicidal dramas on the appartment cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall be crowned with laurel in oblivion,

who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of the Bowery,

who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music,

who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts, who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology,

who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish,

who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom,

who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg,

who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for an Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade,

who cut their wrists three times successfully unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried,

who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,

who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,

who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the subway window, jumped in the filthy Passaic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street, danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed phonograph records of nostalgic European 1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears and the blast of colossal steamwhistles,

who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to each other's hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch Birmingham jazz incarnation,

who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity,

who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,

who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other's salvation and light and breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair for a second,

who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals with golden heads and the charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet blues to Alcatraz,

who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave,

who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hypnotism & were left with their insanity & their hands & a hung jury,

who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturerson Dadaism and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with the shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy,

and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational therapy pingpong & amnesia,

who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia,

returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible madman doom of the wards of the madtowns of the East,

Pilgrim State's Rockland's and Greystone's foetid halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, rocking and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a nightmare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon,

with mother finally *****, and the last fantastic book flung out of the tenement window, and the last door closed at 4 A.M. and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger on the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucinationÂ

ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you're really in the total animal soup of timeÂ

and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the vibrating plane,

who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soulbetween 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus

to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head,

the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come after death,

and rose incarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America's naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio

with the absolute heart of the poem butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.
- Alan Ginsberg

The State of the Union

2006-02-01T14:40:00.000-05:00

So how many of you watched the speech last night? That is if you can call it a speech. Putting politics aside for a moment, I was just flat unimpressed by the speech itself. It was clumsily written and even more clumsily presented. I'm used to watching the State of the Union and being inspired, even if I'm inspired to hate the President more than before. This time I just felt bored most of the time. Granted, I did have to yell at the TV a couple of times ("Activist courts" was the big one!) but for the most part if seemed dull to me. Anyway, in honor of the speech, I thought I'd leave you with a more politically bent poem. Many of you may not agree with some of the sentiments but I think it speaks to a number of the problems I see in the way the country is run at the moment and wraps the whole thing up in the context of a small family setting; the kind of people who are most effected but least considered:

Board Book & the Costume of a Whooping Crane
David Wojahn

Two new words a day & sometimes three Â— cup & doll, yesterday throat
& hot, hot hot,
the T extended, hot-uh, fingers drumming the radiator. He's thirteen months,
hand to the windowsill,

head tilted up to glimpse a squirrel. Freshly changed, he squeals
as inches from his face
the squirrel stares toward him, its eyes a shrouded planet, cloud cover
seen from space,

monsoon roiling the Pacific. Then his brother, laughing, tackles him,
squirrel leaping down to snow.
If learning is delight, then gnosis asks unshroudings more laborious,
the hard unspooling,

the rended gauze. & everywhere the shrouds & everywhere
the shrouds to come.
The President's rodent eye pulses out from CNN, darting & glazed,
squinting for the next thing

to lift to the mouth, for he must eat & eat. As the boys sit down
to sift through board books,
the grim hand jitters up from the podium, class ring
in a dazzle of pixels.

Today he will entertain no questions, impatient for the killings to begin,
executions to roll
on his tongue like acorns, berries purpling the gaping mouth.
Already he can taste them.

Now the cutaway to ordnance & acronym, F-16s snarling up
from a carrier, the MOAB
& its 21,000 pounds of murder. But here Â— a board book of cranes,
open & aflutter in Luke's hands.

& now Jake joining him. Touch & feel, so his fingers stroke a tuft
of feathers, orange rubbery
hieroglyphic of a foot. Sandhill Crane, Demoiselle Crane,
Black-Crowned, Gray-Crowned,

Wattled & Blue, Sarus, Siberian, Hooded & White-Necked,
Eurasian, Red-Crowned,
Australian & Eastern Sarus, & Grus americana Â— Whooping Crane,
almost extinct for a century,

numbers dwindled by DDT, by power line & coyote, drought & poachers
selling ground-up bills
to Beijing and Macao Â— an antidote for hair loss Â— until scarcely
a hundred remain, hatched

& fledged in captivity. Also here, the photo I've tacked above my desk,
a zoo attendant
in the costume of a whooping crane, cumbersome in bird mask,
a parachute gathered

to make a kind of overall. He's bending to a nest of fledglings,
beaks agape & waiting.
Released to the wild, few of them survive for long. The boys
sift the pages, hands

brailling yellow beaks. The President hisses on, martial music
seeping from marine band horns,
the snow in thickening spirals. I am suiting up, the costume
clumsy as a spacesuit,

white silk billowing, the lemon-colored boots ridiculous clowns' feet.
& the mask pasted tight
with sweat & the ache of my ascending. I sprout Ovidian claws,
my eyes look down

on miles of stratosphere, the piston work of wing-beat
& outstretched glide,
the long wail echoing from the throat, the fish within my jaws,
struggling still, the circling,

the gyres diminishing to touchdown & my gangling
stagger toward them
who will lavishly outlive me. & from my mouth this rainbow,
wet & silvering.

Storypeople

2006-01-30T09:28:00.000-05:00

Poetry can come in all shapes and sizes and while today's post may not look quite the same as some of the poems I've posted so far but I think they remain poetic all the same. How many of y'all have heard of the Storypeople? They are a group of artist/writers that manage this website (www.storypeople.com) containing hundreds of little sayings and observations. The words can be happy or sad, inspiring or just hilarious. Many have artwork to accompany them but the words remain just as powerful without. I've been compiling a list of some of my favorites. They are in pretty random order, but that's sort of the point...

the Storypeople

Ever since I found out I was schizophrenic, he said, I've been making up songs
that are easy to harmonize with. I really like a good sing-a-long.

This is an invitation to an amazing future & I can guarantee it because most futures
are & even if they aren't there are better things to do than blaming me about it

I'm feeling overdressed, she said & he held her close & said as far as he was concerned
she was always that way & her eyes glowed softly in the light of his desire

You're the strangest person I ever met, she said & I said you too &
we decided we'd know each other a long time.

Why do they treat us like children?
they said & I said why do you treat them like adults?
& their eyes opened wide & they began to laugh
& talk all at once & suddenly everything looked possible again.

I think I'm having a heart attack, she said, but it's dragging on for hours.
I told her not to worry. That's how most people who work a full day feel, I said.

Tries not to anthropomorphize everything he runs into but it all seems
friendlier when he knows the world on a first name basis.

My aunt had a poodle she dressed in little red sweaters with little dangly
ball things & I don't think it was any wonder that dog was so vicious.

I don't think of it as working for world peace, he said.
I think of it as just trying to get along in a really big strange family.

The clock is a conspiracy & a crime against humanity
& I would not own one except I miss appointments without it.

I'm not sure if the world's all that serious, she said,
or if it just has a really dark way of having a good time.

possibly my favorite:
He loved her for almost everything she was & she decided that was enough to let him stay for a very long time.

On the precipice

2006-01-27T19:24:00.000-05:00

This weekend I stand poised on the brink. The next two weeks are going to be just nuts! On Sunday we begin rehearsals for the Fibonacci Chamber Orchestra, a small group put together by a good friend. The concert is the following Sunday. Immediately after that I begin week of nightly rehearsals in Winston for the Symphony concerts the weekend after that. And of course, somewhere in there I actually have to learn all of that music... yikes. But tonight I am taking time to catch my breath and prepare, meaning rather than sitting in a practice room right now, I'm updating my blog. Tomorrow will be soon enough to take life seriously again; for now I'm content being lazy and a bit silly. On that note, I have a rather silly but beautifully put together poem for you...

Any prince to any princess

Adrian Henri

August is coming
and the goose, I'm afraid,
is getting fat.
There have been
no golden eggs for some months now.
Straw has fallen well below market price
despite my frantic spinning
and the sedge is,
as you rightly point out,
withered.

I can't imagine how the pea
got under your mattress. I apologize
humbly. The chambermaid has, of course,
been sacked. As has the frog footman.
I understand that, during my recent fact-finding tour of the
Golden River,
despite your nightly unavailing efforts,
he remained obstinately
froggish.

I hope that the Three Wishes granted by the General
Assembly
will go some way towards redressing
this unfortunate recent sequence of events.
The fall in output from the shoe-factory, for example:
no one could have foreseen the work-to-rule
by the National Union of Elves. Not to mention the fact
that the court has been fast asleep
for the last six and a half years.

The matter of the poisoned apple has been taken up
by the Board of Trade: I think I can assure you
the incident will not be
repeated.

I can quite understand, in the circumstances,
your reluctance to let down
your golden tresses. However
I feel I must point out
that the weather isn't getting any better
and I already have a nasty chill
from waiting at the base
of the White Tower. You must see the absurdity of the
situation.
Some of the courtiers are beginning to talk,
not to mention the humble villagers.
It's been three weeks now, and not even
a word.

Princess,
a cold, black wind
howls through our empty palace.
Dead leaves litter the bedchamber;
the mirror on the wall hasn't said a thing
since you left. I can only ask,
bearing all this in mind,
that you think again,

let down your hair,

reconsider.

Go Deacs!

2006-01-25T08:27:00.000-05:00

I experienced my first ACC basketball game in person last night, and even though Wake lost I had a blast. Cat managed to sneak me into the student "Screamin' Deamons" section with her. I went incognito dressed in the gold and black tie-dye and spent the entire game on my feet screaming at the (idiot) refs and booing FSU. I am a bit hoarse this morning but it was all worthwhile. After the game, we met a friend of Cat's for coffee. It was a lot of fun to tread through her former Wake days. I felt honored to be invited along.

I didn't have too much time to come up with a poem to match last night's experience. If anyone has a favorite that comes to mind send it to me and I'll post it tomorrow. In the meantime, I ran into this one by a poet I'd never heard of before. If you aren't reading this in a library or something, try reading it aloud. All the alliteration is tantalizing for the tongue.

White on White
Hailey Leithauser

Rug dropped sugar,
fresh, wet iris on marble dresser,
the chopping of combers under cold sun,
rain-faded boards of proud, paint-
poor churches, great

dumb snows hiding
inside clouds hidden inside sky. Bring
two together and we see the old lot
of language to ledger tint
from tone, hint from

whisper (not quite
sauterne, closer to crisper champagne);
to cite complement, how as a snail stains
a cement path, the pearled trace
kindles in light.

Whitman

2006-01-24T09:23:00.000-05:00

My friend and fellow blogger Darth Larry mentioned watching "Dead Poets Society" recently, which got me thinking about Walt Whitman (prominently featured in the above film...). I ended up digging up this poem and re-reading it. This one is a bit longer than the others I've posted, but I promise it is worth the time. Whitman's writing has such excitement in it. You can almost see him getting worked up just trying to write the poem. I'm also a big fan of the sentiment of the poem: that the body itself is just as divine as the soul, and so much of life can be wasted seeking what cannot be seen in lieu of the innumerable beauties all around us. Given that, it is not too surprising that this poem was extremely controversial when it was first written (in 1900), kind of an interesting thing to consider given the writing.

I Sing the Body Electric
- Walt Whitman

1

I sing the body electric,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.

Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves?
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul? And if the body
were not the soul, what is the soul?

2

The love of the body of man or woman balks account, the body itself
balks account,
That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.

The expression of the face balks account,
But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face,
It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of
his hips and wrists,
It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist
and knees, dress does not hide him,
The strong sweet quality he has strikes through the cotton and broadcloth,
To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more,
You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side.

The sprawl and fullness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women, the
folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the street, the
contour of their shape downwards,
The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through
the transparent green-shine, or lies with his face up and rolls
silently to and from the heave of the water,
The bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats, the
horse-man in his saddle,
Girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their performances,
The group of laborers seated at noon-time with their open
dinner-kettles, and their wives waiting,
The female soothing a child, the farmer's daughter in the garden or
cow-yard,
The young fellow hosing corn, the sleigh-driver driving his six
horses through the crowd,
The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite grown, lusty,
good-natured, native-born, out on the vacant lot at sundown
after work,
The coats and caps thrown down, the embrace of love and resistance,
The upper-hold and under-hold, the hair rumpled over and blinding the eyes;
The march of firemen in their own costumes, the play of masculine
muscle through clean-setting trowsers and waist-straps,
The slow return from the fire, the pause when the bell strikes
suddenly again, and the listening on the alert,
The natural, perfect, varied attitudes, the bent head, the curv'd
neck and the counting;
Such-like I love--I loosen myself, pass freely, am at the mother's
breast with the little child,
Swim with the swimmers, wrestle with wrestlers, march in line with
the firemen, and pause, listen, count.

3

I knew a man, a common farmer, the father of five sons,
And in them the fathers of sons, and in them the fathers of sons.

This man was a wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person,
The shape of his head, the pale yellow and white of his hair and
beard, the immeasurable meaning of his black eyes, the richness
and breadth of his manners,
These I used to go and visit him to see, he was wise also,
He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old, his sons were
massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome,
They and his daughters loved him, all who saw him loved him,
They did not love him by allowance, they loved him with personal
love,
He drank water only, the blood show'd like scarlet through the
clear-brown skin of his face,
He was a frequent gunner and fisher, he sail'd his boat himself, he
had a fine one presented to him by a ship-joiner, he had
fowling-pieces presented to him by men that loved him,
When he went with his five sons and many grand-sons to hunt or fish,
you would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of
the gang,
You would wish long and long to be with him, you would wish to sit
by him in the boat that you and he might touch each other.

4

I have perceiv'd that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,
To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round
his or her neck for a moment, what is this then?
I do not ask any more delight, I
swim in it as in a sea.
There is something in staying close to men and women and looking on them,
and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well,
All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.

5

This is the female form,
A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,
I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor,
all falls aside but myself and it,
Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, and what
was expected of heaven or fear'd of hell, are now consumed,
Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it, the response
likewise ungovernable,
Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands all
diffused, mine too diffused,
Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb, love-flesh swelling
and deliciously aching,
Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of
love, white-blow and delirious nice,
Bridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the
prostrate dawn,
Undulating into the willing and yielding day,
Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh'd day.

This the nucleus--after the child is born of woman, man is born
of woman,
This the bath of birth, this the merge of small and large, and the
outlet again.

Be not ashamed women, your privilege encloses the rest, and is the
exit of the rest,
You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul.

The female contains all qualities and tempers them,
She is in her place and moves with perfect balance,
She is all things duly veil'd, she is both passive and active,
She is to conceive daughters as well as sons, and sons as well as
daughters.

As I see my soul reflected in Nature,
As I see through a mist, One with inexpressible completeness,
sanity, beauty,
See the bent head and arms folded over the breast, the Female I see.

6

The male is not less the soul nor more, he too is in his place,
He too is all qualities, he is action and power,
The flush of the known universe is in him,
Scorn becomes him well, and appetite and defiance become him well,
The wildest largest passions, bliss that is utmost, sorrow that is
utmost become him well, pride is for him,
The full-spread pride of man is calming and excellent to the soul,
Knowledge becomes him, he likes it always, he brings every thing to
the test of himself,
Whatever the survey, whatever the sea and the sail he strikes
soundings at last only here,
(Where else does he strike soundings except here?)

The man's body is sacred and the woman's body is sacred,
No matter who it is, it is sacred--is it the meanest one in the
laborers' gang?
Is it one of the dull-faced immigrants just landed on the wharf?
Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the well-off, just as
much as you,
Each has his or her place in the procession.

(All is a procession,
The universe is a procession with measured and perfect motion.)

Do you know so much yourself that you call the meanest ignorant?
Do you suppose you have a right to a good sight, and he or she has
no right to a sight?
Do you think matter has cohered together from its diffuse float, and
the soil is on the surface, and water runs and vegetation sprouts,
For you only, and not for him and her?

7

A man's body at auction,
(For before the war I often go to the slave-mart and watch the sale,)
I help the auctioneer, the sloven does not half know his business.

Gentlemen look on this wonder,
Whatever the bids of the bidders they cannot be high enough for it,
For it the globe lay preparing quintillions of years without one animal or plant,
For it the revolving cycles truly and steadily roll'd.

In this head the all-baffling brain,
In it and below it the makings of heroes.

Examine these limbs, red, black, or white, they are cunning in tendon and nerve,
They shall be stript that you may see them.
Exquisite senses, life-lit eyes, pluck, volition,
Flakes of breast-muscle, pliant backbone and neck, flesh not flabby, good-sized
arms and legs,
And wonders within there yet.

Within there runs blood,
The same old blood! the same red-running blood!
There swells and jets a heart, there all passions, desires, reachings,
aspirations,
(Do you think they are not there because they are not express'd in
parlors and lecture-rooms?)

This is not only one man, this the father of those who shall be fathers
in their turns,
In him the start of populous states and rich republics,
Of him countless immortal lives with countless embodiments and enjoyments.

How do you know who shall come from the offspring of his offspring
through the centuries?
(Who might you find you have come from yourself, if you could trace
back through the centuries?)

8

A woman's body at auction,
She too is not only herself, she is the teeming mother of mothers,
She is the bearer of them that shall grow and be mates to the mothers.

Have you ever loved the body of a woman?
Have you ever loved the body of a man?
Do you not see that these are exactly the same to all in all nations and
times all over the earth?

If any thing is sacred the human body is sacred,
And the glory and sweet of a man is the token of manhood untainted,
And in man or woman a clean, strong, firm-fibred body, is more beautiful
than the most beautiful face.
Have you seen the fool that corrupted his own live body? or the fool
that corrupted her own live body?
For they do not conceal themselves, and cannot conceal themselves.

9

O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women,
nor the likes of the parts of you,
I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of the
soul, (and that they are the soul,)
I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems, and
that they are my poems,
Man's, woman's, child, youth's, wife's, husband's, mother's,
father's, young man's, young woman's poems,
Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears,
Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eyebrows, and the waking or
sleeping of the lids,
Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the
jaw-hinges,
Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition,
Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck, neck-slue,
Strong shoulders, manly beard, scapula, hind-shoulders, and the
ample side-round of the chest,
Upper-arm, armpit, elbow-socket, lower-arm, arm-sinews, arm-bones,
Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, forefinger,
finger-joints, finger-nails,
Broad breast-front, curling hair of the breast, breast-bone, breast-side,
Ribs, belly, backbone, joints of the backbone,
Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and outward round, man-balls, man-root,
Strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk above,
Leg-fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg, under-leg,
Ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the heel;
All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings of my or your body
or of any one's body, male or female,
The lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, the bowels sweet and clean,
The brain in its folds inside the skull-frame,
Sympathies, heart-valves, palate-valves, sexuality, maternity,
Womanhood, and all that is a woman, and the man that comes from woman,
The womb, the teats, nipples, breast-milk, tears, laughter, weeping,
love-looks, love-perturbations and risings,
The voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud,
Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming,
Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving and
tightening,
The continual changes of the flex of the mouth, and around the eyes,
The skin, the sunburnt shade, freckles, hair,
The curious sympathy one feels when feeling with the hand the naked
meat of the body,
The circling rivers the breath, and breathing it in and out,
The beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence downward
toward the knees,
The thin red jellies within you or within me, the bones and the
marrow in the bones,
The exquisite realization of health;
O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of
the soul,
O I say now these are the soul!

Bukowski

2006-01-23T09:56:00.000-05:00

Alright, This blog's been up nearly two weeks and I haven't posted any Bukowski yet. Something is wrong. This guy has got to be my favorite new poet (well not really new... but new to me). I love his down-to-earth, tell-it-like-it-is style. Plus he has such great imagery. This poem is a great example, and while it doesn't accurately depict my mood at the moment at ALL, it remains awesome and will be posted appropriately:

the way it is now

I'll tell you
I've lived with some gorgeous women
and I was so bewitched by those
beautiful creatures that
my eyebrows twitched.

but I'd rather drive to New York
backwards
than to live with any of them
again.

the next classic stupidity
will be the history
of those fellows
who inherit my female
legacies.

in their case
as in mine
they will find
that madness
is caused by not
being often enough
alone.

("I'd rather drive to New York backwards"... How great a picture is that, and I know you've all felt that way at some point in your life. Admit it.)

Anonymous

2006-01-20T09:28:00.000-05:00

This is for all you skeptics out there. Real poetry does exist in the real world. It's all around you. It's inside you. All you have to do is let it out, and here's the proof:

Excerpt from an email dated 1/19/06:

just wanted to say
thank you, again, just for being you
and for not backing down at the first signs of my
insecurities
and for knowing when words are too much,
when silence is the best medicine,
and for letting me take my sweet time,
bitter as it may seem on the other side.
you make me laugh
you make me cry
you make me dream
you make me forget
so i guess, in a way, everything i want in life
is already here.
don't give up on me yet, i'm still almost blind
but you're holding the brightest light i see.
and in case i forgot to make my point,
thank you, again, just for being you.

Poetry Daily

2006-01-19T10:27:00.000-05:00

I just found a website with a daily poem. This was today's. The first line nearly made me laugh out loud.

Fourteener 279
(Please help me get this pig, dear Lord, into my truck)
Douglas Woody Woodsum

Please help me get this pig, dear Lord, into my truck.
Like Jesus, he senses the coming end; unlike Him,
The pig's exhausted us both with flailing. My hands bleed
From the scrap-wood ramp and sides of the truck bed.
The rope leash burns my flesh. My plan, God, was food
For family and fold, the head and feet for the poor. But Satan,
It seems, is breathing hot stink at me. The pig braces,
Digs four hooves in, and stares. I'd gotten him half wayup,
Tied him, then put my shoulder to him. He kicked my tooth
Loose, Lord. My eyes watered. Blasphemy had its way
With me. Now, covered with muck, almost broken, I pray:
Help those who suffer most first. I'll wait, catch my breath.
Then, please forgive me, and grant one small miracle
Father: Get this pig in my truck to take to slaughter.

2006-01-18T09:19:00.000-05:00

I don't have anything new to report since yesterday, but here's a good poem anyway. The first time I read this one I was amazed. Usually, a poem speaks to me because it mirrors something in my life or values. This one really doesn't relate significantly to anything I've experienced, but the writing was so beautiful I was immediately drawn in. Hope you like it.

Calling him back from layoff
Bob Hicok

I called a man today. After he said
hello and I said hello came a pause
during which it would have been

confusing to say hello again so I said
how are you doing and guess what, he said
fine and wondered aloud how I was

and it turns out I'm OK. He
was on the couch watching cars
painted with ads for Budweiser follow cars

painted with ads for Tide around an oval
that's a metaphor for life because
most of us run out of gas and settle

for getting drunk in the stands
and shouting at someone in a t-shirt
we want kraut on our dog. I said

he could have his job back and during
the pause that followed his whiskers
scrubbed the mouthpiece clean

and his breath passed in and out
in the tidal fashion popular
with mammals until he broke through

with the words how soon thank you
ohmyGod which crossed his lips and drove
through the wires on the backs of ions

as one long word as one hard prayer
of relief meant to be heard
by the sky. When he began to cry I tried

with the shape of my silence to say
I understood but each confession
of fear and poverty was more awkward

than what you learn in the shower.
After he hung up I went outside and sat
with one hand in the bower of the other

and thought if I turn my head to the left
it changes the song of the oriole
and if I give a job to one stomach other
forks are naked and if tonight a steak
sizzles in his kitchen do the seven
other people staring at their phones

hear?

Happy Martin Luther King Day to me!

2006-01-17T10:00:00.000-05:00

So yesterday was one of those exciting days where everything seems to work out. There were two big events in my day. First, I took Cat out golfing for the first time. She had a blast (hooked another one)! We were grinning and laughing through the entire round. To top it off, I threw an ace! Being only the second time this has happened to me, it's needless to say that I was pretty excited. Definitely a memorable trip to the golf course.

Then, just to round out the day, I bought a car!

I'll give that a moment to sink in. Yes indeed, late last night I purchased a 2003 Mini Cooper. It's midnight blue with a white top and yes, it is awesome. The car is so much fun to drive. I get a giddy feeling in my gut just thinking about it. For those of you with access to facebook, I'll be posting pictures of it up there soon so be on the lookout. I'm also taking suggestions for a name so put your thinking caps on.

In honor of my exciting day yesterday, I chose a poem with an automotive theme. Enjoy!

she being Brand
ee cummings

-new;and you
know consequently a
little stiff i was
careful of her and(having

thoroughly oiled the universal
joint tested my gas felt of
her radiator made sure her springs were O.

K.)i went right to it flooded-the-carburetor cranked her

up,slipped the
clutch(and then somehow got into reverse she
kicked what
the hell)next
minute i was back in neutral tried and

again slo-wly;bare,ly nudg. ing(my

lev-er Right-
oh and her gears being in
A 1 shape passed
from low through
second-in-to-high like
greasedlightning)just as we turned the corner of Divinity

avenue i touched the accelerator and give

her the juice,good

(it

was the first ride and believe i we was
happy to see how nice she acted right up to
the last minute coming back down by the Public
Gardens i slammed on

the
internalexpanding
&
externalcontracting
brakes Bothatonce and

brought allofher tremB
-ling
to a:dead.

stand-
;Still)

Poem #1

2006-01-13T13:26:00.000-05:00

I started my other blog for the purpose of bitching about my life. Of course, shortly after I started documenting the bitching, I stopped having reasons to bitch... As such, I decided to begin another blog. This will still be a place for me to post random musings about my life, but with a slightly higher purpose added: I plan to regularly post some of the good poetry I run across. Just what you always wanted right? A single convenient location to keep tabs on your favorite NC violist, and fill that little void in your life that only good poetry can truly fill. Enjoy!

Mending Wall
Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

(personal note: The World would be a better place if there weren't so many walls everywhere, whether physical, emotional, or political. By maintaining the artificial boundaries in out lives all we do is fuel misunderstanding an hatred. To quote Pink Floyd, "Tear Down The Wall!")

Your Poetry Fix

In the End

Tourdion

Verklärte Nacht

lyrics as poetry

Bukowski

Mueller

Great title...

New poet - very exciting

Two poems by Shel Silverstein

Birthday present

New Book

A Beautiful Poem...

Long time...

Hectic Week

Good poem

Solitude

Rough patch

Coming together

In support of the ill

Valentine Afterglow

*smile*

Early morning optimism

Howl

The State of the Union

Storypeople

On the precipice

Go Deacs!

Whitman

Bukowski

Anonymous

Poetry Daily

Happy Martin Luther King Day to me!

Poem #1

smile