Tree Goat posted:

new goon-written prose poem dropped, fellas
https://twitter.com/alloy_dr/status/1657769123852570632

The Gold Horns posted:

The Gold Horns
Adam Gottlob Oehlenschläger
Translated by George Borrow

De higer og söger
I gamle Böger,
I oplukte Höie,
Med speidende Öie,
Paa Sværd og Skjolde,
I mulne Volde,
Paa Runestene,
Blandt smuldnede Bene.

Upon the pages
Of the olden ages,
And in hills where are lying
The dead, they are prying;
On armour rusty,
In ruins musty,
On Rune-stones jumbled,
With bones long crumbled.

Oldtids Bedrifter
Anede trylle,
Men i Mulm de sig hylle,
De gamle Skrifter.
Blikket stirrer,
Sig Tanken forvirrer,
I Taage de famle.
“I gamle, gamle,
Forsvundne Dage!
Da det straalte paa Jorden,
Da Östen var i Norden,
Giver Glimt tilbage!”

Eld’s deeds, through guesses
Beheld, are delighting,
But mist possesses
The ancient writing.
The eye-ball fixed is,
The thought perplexed is;
In darkness they’re groping
Their mouths they’re op’ing:
“Ye days long past,
When the North was uplighted,
And with earth heav’n united,
A glimpse back cast.”

Skyen suser,
Natten bryser,
Gravhöien sukker,
Rosen sig lukker.
De sig möde, de sig möde,
De forklarede Höie,
Kampfarvede, röde,
Med Stjerneglands i Öie.

The clouds are bustling,
The night blasts rustling,
Sighs are breaking,
From grave-hills quaking,
The regions were under
Thunder.
Of the mighty and daring,
The ghosts there muster,
Stains of war bearing,
In their eye star lustre.

“I, som rave iblinde,
Skal finde
Et ældgammelt Minde,
Der skal komme og svinde!
Dets gyldne Sider
Skal Præget bære,
Afældste Tider.

“Ye who blind are straying,
And praying,
Shall an ag’d relic meet,
Which shall come and shall fleet,
Its red sides golden,
The stamp displaying
Of the times most olden.

Af det kan I lære,
Med andagtsfuld Ære
I vor Gave belönne!
Det skjönneste Skjönne,
En Mö
Skal Helligdommen finde!”

That shall give ye a notion
To hold in devotion
Our gift, is your duty!
A maiden, of beauty
Most rare.
Shall find the token!”

Saa sjunge de og svinde,
Lufttonerne döe.

They vanished; this spoken
Their tones die in air.

Hrymfaxe, den sorte,
Puster og dukker
Og i Havet sig begraver;
Morgenens Porte
Delling oplukker,
Og Skinfaxe traver
I straalende Lue
Paa Himmelens Bue.

Black Hrymfax, weary,
Panteth and bloweth,
And in sea himself burieth;
Belling, cheery,
Morn’s gates ope throweth;
Forth Skinfax hurrieth,
On heaven’s bridge prancing,
And with lustre glancing.

Og Fuglene synge;
Dugperler bade
Blomsterblade,
Som Vindene gynge;
Og med svævende Fjed
En Mö hendandser
Til Marken afsted.
Violer hende krandser,
Hendes Rosenkind brænder,
Hun har Liljehænder;
Let som et Hind,
Med muntert Sind
Hun svæver og smiler;
Og som hun iler
Og paa Elskov grubler,
Hun snubler—
Og stirrer og skuer
Gyldne Luer
Og rödmer og bæver
Og skjælvende hæver
Med undrende Aand
Udaf sorten Muld
Med snehvide Haand,
Det röde Guld.
En sagte Torden
Dundrer;
Hele Norden
Undrer.

The little birds quaver,
Pearls from night’s weeping;
The flowers are steeping
In the winds which waver;
To the meadows, fleet
A maiden boundeth;
Violet fillet neat
Her brows surroundeth;
Her cheeks are glowing,
Lilly hands she’s showing;
Light as a hind,
With sportive mind
She smiling frisketh.
And as on she whisketh,
And thinks on her lover,
She trips something over;
And, her eyes declining,
Beholds a shining,
And red’neth and shaketh,
And trembling uptaketh
With wondering sprite
From the dingy mould,
With hand snow-white,
The ruddy gold.
A gentle thunder
Pealeth;
The whole North wonder
Feeleth.

Og hen de stimle
I store Vrimle;
De grave, de söge
Skatten at foröge.
Men intet Guld!
Deres Haab har bedraget:
De see kun det Muld,
Hvoraf det er taget.

Forth rush with gabble
A countless rabble;
The earth they’re upturning,
For the treasure burning.
But there’s no gold!
Their hope is mistaken;
They see but the mould,
From whence it is taken.

Et Sekel svinder!

An age by rolleth.

Over Klippetinder
Det atter bruser.
Stormens Sluser
Bryde med Vælde
Over Norges Fjelde
Til Danmarks Dale.
I Skyernes Sale
De forklarede Gamle
Sig atter samle.

Again it howleth
O’er the tops of the mountains.
Of the rain the fountains
Burst with fury;
The spirits of glory
From Norge’s highlands,
To Denmark’s islands,
In the halls of ether
Again meet together.

“For de sjeldne Faa,
Som vor Gave forstaae,
Som ei Jordlænker binde
Men hvis Sjæle sig hæve
Til det Eviges Tinde;
Som ane det Höie
I Naturens Öie;
Som tilbedende bæve
For Guddommens Straaler
I Sole, Violer,
I det Mindste, det Störste,
Som brændende törste
Efter Livets Liv;
Som, o store Aand
For de svundne Tider!
Se dit Guddomsblik
Paa Helligdommens Sider:
For dem lyder atter vort Bliv.

“For the few there below
Who our gift’s worth know,
Who earth’s fetters spurn all,
And whose souls are soaring
To the throne of th’ Eternal;
Who in eye of Nature
Behold the Creator;
And tremble adoring,
’Fore the rays of his power
In the sun, in the flower,
In the greatest and least,
And with thirst are possest
For of life the spring;
Who, O powerful sprite
Of the times departed!
See thy look bright
From the relic’s sides darted:
For them our Be once more shall ring.

“Naturens Sön,
Ukjændt i Lön,
Men som sine Fædre
Kraftig og stor,
Dyrkende sin Jord,
Ham vil vi hædre,
Han skal atter finde!”
Saa syngende de svinde.

“Nature’s son, whose name
Is unknown to fame,
But his acre tilling,
Strong-armed and tall,
Like his forefathers all,
Him to honour we’re willing,
He shall find the second token!”
They vanished, this spoken.

Hrymfaxe, den sorte,
Puster og dukker
Og i Havet sig begraver:
Morgenens Porte
Delling oplukker;
Skinfaxe traver
I straalende Lue
Paa Himmelens Bue.

Black Hrymfax weary
Panteth and bloweth,
And in sea himself buried;
And Belling cheery
Morn’s gates ope throweth;
Forth Skinfax hurrieth,
On heaven’s bridge prancing,
And with lustre glancing.

Ved lune Skov
Öxnene traekke
Den tunge Plov
Over sorten Dække.

By the bright green shaw
The oxen striding
The heavy plough draw,
The soil dividing.

Da standser Ploven
En Gysen farer
Igjennem Skoven;
Fugleskaren
Pludsclig tier;
Hellig Taushed
Alt indvier.

The plough stops; sorest
Of shudders rushes
Right through the forest;
The bird-quire hushes
Sudden its strains;
Holy silence
O’er all reigns.

Da klinger i Muld
Det gamle Guld.

Then rings in the mould
The ancient gold.

Tvende Glimt fra Oldtidsdage
Funkle i de nye Tider;
Selsomt vendte de tilbage,
Gaadefyldt paa blanke Sider.

Glimpses two from period olden
Lo! in modern time appearing;
Strange returned those glimpses golden,
On their sides enigmas bearing.

Skjulte Helligdom omsvæver
Deres gamle Tegn og mærker;
Guddomsglorien ombæver
Evighedens Underværker.

Holiness mysterious hovers
O’er their signs, of meaning pond’rous;
Glory of the Godhead covers
These eternal works so wondrous.

Hædre dem ved Bön og Psalter;
Snart maaske er hver forsvunden.
Jesu Blod paa Herrens Alter
Fylde dem, som Blod i Lunden.

Reverence them, for nought is stable;
They may vanish, past all seeking.
Let Christ’s blood on Christ’s own table
Fill them, once with red blood reeking.

Men I see kun Guldets Lue,
Ikke de Ærværdighöie!
Sæte dem som Pragt tilskue
For et mat, nysgjerrigt Öie!

But their majesty unviewing,
And their lustre but descrying,
Them as spectacles ye’re shewing
To the silly and the prying.

Himlen sortner, Storme brage!
Visse Time, du er kommen.
Hvad de gav, de tog tilbage—
Evig bortsvandt Helligdommen.

Storm-winds bellow, blackens heaven!
Comes the hour of melancholy;
Back is taken what was given,—
Vanished is the relic holy.

Nicanor Parra, Memories Of Youth posted:

All I'm sure of is that I kept going back and forth,
Sometimes I bumped into trees,
Bumped into beggars,
I forced my way through a thicket of chairs and tables,
With my soul on a thread I watched the great leaves fall.
But the whole thing was useless,
At every turn I sank deeper into a sort of jelly;
People laughed at my fits,
The characters stirred in their armchairs like seaweed moved by the waves
And women looked at me with disgust
Dragging me up, dragging me down,
Making me cry and laugh against my will.

All this evoked in me a feeling of nausea
And a storm of incoherent sentences,
Threats, insults, pointless curses,
Also certain exhausting pelvic motions,
Macabre dances, that left me
Short of breath
Unable to raise my head for days
For nights.

I kept going back and forth, it's true,
My soul drifted through the streets
Calling for help, begging for a little tenderness,
With pencil and paper I went into cemeteries
Determined not to be fooled.
I went round and round the same fact,
I studied everything in minute detail
Or I tore out my hair in a tantrum.

And in this state I began my classroom career.
I heaved myself around literary gatherings like a man with a bullet wound.
Crossing the thresholds of private houses,
With my sharp tongue I tried to get the spectators to understand me,
They went on reading the paper
Or disappeared behind a taxi.

Then where could I go!
At that hour the shops were shut;
I thought of a slice of onion I'd seen during dinner
And of the abyss that separates us from the other abysses.

quote:

The Small Circle

How few people there are and even fewer
Longing to reveal themselves!… They pass, they pass
They push each other away while dancing,
Intimate at play, smoothly they cheat, heartily deceive;
Not contemporaries, not close, not even friends,
Grasping hands, slobbering in tight embrace.
The depth between them boils, grows oceanic
And on its foam - they, close now - nominally!
While the world says: "They are intimates - a family circle,
Our very own!" the blue heaven binds more truly
A thousand tribes in centuries of common slaughter,
Where at least one in each honestly believes in
A common Heaven. Meanwhile they dance : bosom against bosom,
Polar-like unconscious of each other and distinct;
It's enough one lamp shines over them all
And one fashion makes them all alike.
"Our very own!" - what if someone were tracing
From on high a life-map like a map of the globe ?
Mountains and deserts would become a twinkling of an eye,
And the ocean disappear where a tiny tear-drop flows !

quote:

The Source

When I wandered in Hell of which I do not sing
Because curses have first glued my lips
Like ugly flies mad from the heat ­
And also because each time I try - I yawn;
When wandering I passed a colonnade of boredom
Long and straight - also hallways of whims
And a sandy cemetery of glimmering giants
Moving drowsily beneath cobbled stones;
When my footsteps measured ante-chambers
Of silly-nerves which constantly try on clothes
And at wedding-time are never ready ! . . .
When I crossed thresholds of misery and portals of deceit
And was now passing insolent labyrinths of crime
Plastered everywhere with sentences of the Court,
I found myself on a spot where beneath my foot the lava
Cooled - so now I walked in air
And season and light that were truly Godless ! ...
- Like wheatfields charred by volcanoes
Or seas arrested and stinking,
Sea waves standing, gazing at each other, Sphinx-like,
Amazed at the strange habit of the deep,
- While above, penguins
With open throats, parching of thirst,
And a couple of red stars which waning
Rush into the void...
...there I went (unbelievably - without rest!...,
I went there - where ?... doubting... when a tiny plant
Pale and like one clumsily embroidered
Whispered to me: "...There is a spring..." - and further in a ravine
I felt something like dampness.
From that side too
A bitter laugh and a stifled rustle reached me
And I perceived a Man with hands on his head
As when one shifts all strength
Into one's feet - he was stamping on the spring's blue vein,
As though a ribbon which had entwined his sandal
Lay soiled in the dust where his foot had pressed it.
The man's laugh was wild - his accent strange :
Resembling the drum-beat following a coffin,
Echoing with sarcasm, hoarse with hate :
"See how the Creation-Spirit cleans my shoes!..."

quote:

I

He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.

Far from his illness
The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,
The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;
By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.

But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,
An afternoon of nurses and rumours;
The provinces of his body revolted,
The squares of his mind were empty,
Silence invaded the suburbs,
The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.

Now he is scattered among a hundred cities
And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,
To find his happiness in another kind of wood
And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living.

But in the importance and noise of to-morrow
When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the bourse,
And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed
And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom
A few thousand will think of this day
As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.

What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.



II

You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:
The parish of rich women, physical decay,
Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.



III

Earth, receive an honoured guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry.

In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate;

Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.

Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice;

With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.

Tree Goat posted:

SimonChris posted:

Anyway, here is my latest poem and the first to be published in a print magazine. I think that fulfills the thread title requirements .

Jrbg posted:

In memory of wb yeats by auden

quote:

Hymn to Priapus
DH Lawrence

My love lies underground
With her face upturned to mine,
And her mouth unclosed in a last long kiss
That ended her life and mine.

I dance at the Christmas party
Under the mistletoe
Along with a ripe, slack country lass
Jostling to and fro.

The big, soft country lass,
Like a loose sheaf of wheat
Slipped through my arms on the threshing floor
At my feet.

The warm, soft country lass,
Sweet as an armful of wheat
At threshing-time broken, was broken
For me, and ah, it was sweet!

Now I am going home
Fulfilled and alone,
I see the great Orion standing
Looking down.

He’s the star of my first beloved
Love-making.
The witness of all that bitter-sweet
Heart-aching.

Now he sees this as well,
This last commission.
Nor do I get any look
Of admonition.

He can add the reckoning up
I suppose, between now and then,
Having walked himself in the thorny, difficult
Ways of men.

He has done as I have done
No doubt:
Remembered and forgotten
Turn and about.

My love lies underground
With her face upturned to mine,
And her mouth unclosed in the last long kiss
That ended her life and mine.

She fares in the stark immortal
Fields of death;
I in these goodly, frozen
Fields beneath.

Something in me remembers
And will not forget.
The stream of my life in the darkness
Deathward set!

And something in me has forgotten,
Has ceased to care.
Desire comes up, and contentment
Is debonair.

I, who am worn and careful,
How much do I care?
How is it I grin then, and chuckle
Over despair?

Grief, grief, I suppose and sufficient
Grief makes us free
To be faithless and faithful together
As we have to be.

quote:

Late Hymn From The Myrrh-Mountain
Wallace Stevens

Unsnack your snood, madanna, for the stars
Are shining on all brows of Neversink.

Already the green bird of summer has flown
Away. The night-flies acknowledge these planets,

Predestined to this night, this noise and the place
Of summer. Tomorrow will look like today,

Will appear like it. But it will be an appearance,
A shape left behind, with like wings spreading out,

Brightly empowered with like colors, swarmingly,
But not quite molten, not quite the fluid thing,

A little changed by tips of artifice, changed
By the glints of sound from the grass. These are not

The early constellations, from which came the first
Illustrious intimations--uncertain love,

The knowledge of being, sense without sense of time.
Take the diamonds from your hair and lay them down.

The deer-grass is thin. The timothy is brown.
The shadow of an external world comes near.

https://www.threepennyreview.com/the-committee-weighs-in/ posted:

I tell my mother
I’ve won the Nobel Prize.

Again? she says. Which
discipline this time?

It’s a little game
we play: I pretend

I’m somebody, she
pretends she isn’t dead.

—Andrea Cohen

quote:

Feather, feather, if it was a feather, feathers for fair, or to be fair, aroused. Round to be airy, feather, if it was airy, very, aviary, fairy, peacock, and to be well surrounded. Well-aired, amoving, to peacock, cared-for, share dancing inner to be among aware. Peacock around, peacock to care for dancing, an air, fairing, will he become, to stare. Peacock around, rounded, to turn the wearer, turning in air, peacock and I declare, to wear for dancing, to be among, to have become preferred. Peacock, a feather, there, found together, grounded, to bearer share turned for dancing, among them peacock a feather feather, dancing and to declare for turning, turning a feather as it were for dancing, turning for dancing, dancing being begun turning together, together to become, barely a feather being, beware, being a peacock only on the stair, staring at, only a peacock to be coming, fairly becoming for a peacock, be fair together being around in air, peacock to be becoming lastly, peacock around to be become together, peacock a very peacock to be there.

Moving and to make one the pair, to wear for asking of all there, wearing and to be one for wearing, to one by moving of all there.

Reproof, recovered, solitaire.

Grounded and being well-surrounded, so feathered that if a peacock sounded, rounded and with an air for wearing, aloof and grounded to beware.

Aloof, overt, to stare.

Will he be there, can he be there, be there?

Being a feathered peacock.

Only a feathered peacock on the stair.

quote:

There is an eye, there was a slit.
Nights walk, and confer on him fear.
The strangler tree, the dancing mouse
confound his vision; then they loosen it.
Henry widens. How did Henry House
himself ever come here?

Nights run. Tes yeux bizarres me suivent
when loth at landfall soft I leave.
The soldiers, Coleridge Rilke Poe,
shout commands I never heard.
They march about, dying & absurd.
Toddlers are taking over. O

ver! Sabbath belling. Snoods converge
on a weary-daring man.
What now can be cleard up? from the Yard the visitors urge.
Belle thro' the graves in a blast of sun
to the kirk moves the youngest witch.
Watch.

quote:

Your dust will be upon the wind
Within some certain years,
Though you be sealed in lead to-day
Amid the country’s tears.

When this idyllic churchyard
Becomes the heart of town,
The place to build garage or inn,
They’ll throw your tombstone down.

Your name so dim, so long outworn,
Your bones so near to earth,
Your sturdy kindred dead and gone,
How should men know your worth?

So read upon the runic moon
Man’s epitaph, deep-writ.
It says the world is one great grave.
For names it cares no whit.

It tells the folk to live in peace,
And still, in peace, to die.
At least, so speaks the moon to me,
The tombstone of the sky.

Nitevision posted:

Dream Song 12 "Sabbath" by John Berryman

quote:

Seventh Street
By Jean Toomer

Money burns the pocket, pocket hurts,
Bootleggers in silken shirts,
Ballooned, zooming Cadillacs,
Whizzing, whizzing down the street-car tracks.

Seventh Street is a bastard of Prohibition and the War. A crude-boned, soft-skinned wedge of friend of the family life breathing its loafer air, jazz songs and love, thrusting unconscious rhythms, black reddish blood into the white and whitewashed wood of Washington. Stale soggy wood of Washington. Wedges rust in soggy wood. . . Split it! In two! Again! Shred it! . . the sun. Wedges are brilliant in the sun; ribbons of wet wood dry and blow away. Black reddish blood. Pouring for crude-boned soft-skinned life, who set you flowing? Blood suckers of the War would spin in a frenzy of dizziness if they drank your blood. Prohibition would put a stop to it. Who set you flowing? White and whitewash disappear in blood. Who set you flowing? Flowing down the smooth asphalt of Seventh Street, in shanties, brick office buildings, theaters, drug stores, restaurants, and cabarets? Eddying on the corners? Swirling like a blood-red smoke up where the buzzards fly in heaven? God would not dare to suck black red blood. A friend of the family God! He would duck his head in shame and call for the Judgement Day. Who set you flowing?


Money burns the pocket, pocket hurts,
Bootleggers in silken shirts,
Ballooned, zooming Cadillacs,
Whizzing, whizzing down the street-car tracks.

thehoodie posted:

this one's about doing the walk of shame after a one night stand

quote:

A Strut for Roethke

Westward, hit a low note, for a roarer lost
across the Sound but north from Bremerton,
hit a way down note.
And never cadenza again of flowers, or cost.
Him who could really do that cleared his throat
and staggered on.

The bluebells, pool-shallows, saluted his over-needs,
while the clouds growled, heh-heh, & snapped & crashed.

No stunt he’ll ever unflinch once more will fail:
(O lucky fellow, eh Bones?)—drifted off upstairs,
downstairs, somewheres.
No more daily, trying to hit the head on the nail:
thirstless: without a think in his head:
back from wherever, with it said.

Hit a long high note, for a lover found
needing a lower into friendlier ground
to bug among worms no more
around our jungles where us blurt ‘What for?’
Weeds, too, he favoured as most men don’t favour men.
The Garden Master’s gone.

thehoodie posted:

been really liking jean toomer lately

sa won't preserve the formatting but you can read it here also

Nitevision posted:

Please say more if you're serious, I'm still figuring out how to read this son of a gun

quote:

There is an eye, there was a slit.

quote:

Nights walk, and confer on him fear.
The strangler tree, the dancing mouse
confound his vision; then they loosen it.

quote:

Henry widens. How did Henry House
himself ever come here?

quote:

Nights run. Tes yeux bizarres me suivent
when loth at landfall soft I leave.

quote:

The soldiers, Coleridge Rilke Poe,
shout commands I never heard.
They march about, dying & absurd.
Toddlers are taking over. O

ver! Sabbath belling. Snoods converge
on a weary-daring man.

quote:

What now can be cleard up? from the Yard the visitors urge.
Belle thro' the graves in a blast of sun
to the kirk moves the youngest witch.
Watch.

quote:

The dark blood of night-time
Foams among the ivy,
And leaps toward the lunelet
Of sea-chawn ivory,
And nowhere finds an outlet.

The wind goes fingering
His lantern. The wind goes
In his glistening oil-cape
Knocking at the windows,
Slouching round the landscape.

Sinisterly bend and dip
Those hulks of cloud canvas,
Probing through the elm-trees,
Past the house; and then pass
To a larger emptiness.

SimonChris posted:

Andrea Cohen posted:

Action Origami

How much can you do
with one piece of paper—
creasing, tearing, adding
volume with air? You can
make a mythic sea
monster toppling a tall
ship in high, high seas, as
my seatmate in 30C did
in sixteen hours. He was
from Saipan, an island
advertised as a pearl
arrived at by sea or air. This
should have been a six-
hour trip from Boston
to San Francisco, but mostly
we sat on the tarmac, iced
in, waiting, as I did in a similar
but different blizzard in ’83,
on a People's Express flight
from Logan to JFK. I was going
to Park Ave to see a specialist in
what I had. We called it homosexuality
then, or my parents did, and my father
was convinced it was his fault, on
account of his queer cousin in Augusta,
and his schizophrenic brother. I was
going to the specialist for them, was
going to die in the plane crash
for them, and wouldn’t they
feel like hell? Well, I didn’t
die then, but learned to call
all we didn’t comprehend
gaps in understanding, becoming,
as those with fortune do, more
of who I was. No one is more
than one sheet thrown to the wind,
folded and refolded, becoming what
the person beside her might never
believe possible. The man from Saipan
has a window seat, he has clouds
and a stack of boarding passes
fastened with a rubber band, like
an out-sized deck of playing cards,
evidence of all the flights he’s taken
this year. It’s the end of December.
Flights are different from places.
Places are different from people.
In half a million miles, he’s seen
mostly the inside of planes
and terminals. He says, I like
being in the air, without saying
what happened on the ground, but
it must have been something, don’t
you think, something makes a man
crave to be in transit, to swill
chocolate milk and vodka from a paper
cup, to count passage in hundreds
of thousands of miles, to squeeze
himself into a metal tube the way
my grandparents, tumbling into
each other at the department store
where they worked, in Pittsburgh, in
1926, tucked love letters into pneumatic
tubes from ladies’ hats to men’s attire.
People ought to be love
letters, we ought to get sent
at Mach speeds to someone who,
tenderly, will tear us open, will
reread us constantly and continuously,
and the man from Saipan hands me
the sea and the ship and the sea
monster ready to make everything
veer off course, and I ask him
to sign it, and he does, with
xx, the way a man who can’t
write does, or like one
signaling, via shorthand—
with love.

Buddy Wakefield posted:

On the face of her phone
Wileen programs a message to herself
So that when the alarm clock rings
The screen flashes
Every day is one day less
Every day is one day less

Jordan tattoos the words
"Forgive me"
In thick black letters
Down the inside of his arm
So that when he looks at his wrist
He will remember not to hate himself so much
What they both keep forgetting
Is there is life after survival

After Dave left
Mary started sticking her face
Between the film projector
And the movie screen
So that when the credits roll
She still gets to be somebody

When Tara’s past comes back
She mashes chalk into the sidewalk
Until her knuckles bleed
She scribbles and scrapes
and scribbles and scrapes
Until the words take shape
And this is what they say
I wanna die motherfuckers
Die die motherfuckers.
Hold tight if I love ya
Cause it might not last long
Y’all, we’re all gonna die
That’s the exciting part
It’s learning how to live for a living
There’s the tricky bitch
Just ask Denise
Whose family taught her when she came into this world
That family equals love
So Denise took that poo poo seriously
But after a lifetime of craving acceptance from their cruelty
She now finds herself jamming Polaroid pictures of these people into a typewriter
And pounding out the last letter of the word mercy
over and over again
She strikes the key Y.
Y? Y? Y? Y? Y?!

And the answer?
The answer comes in the form of a hand written letter from the moon
That says this
This is brutally beautiful
So are we
This is endless
So are we
We can heal this
Signed,
Crater Face
P.S. See me for who I am
We’ve got work to do
But my father
He didn't read moon
He didn't speak moon
And he didn't write moon
So there was no note left next to his body
When he chose to leave this world on purpose
Without telling us where he was goin' or why
There are still days you can catch me
Tape recording eternal silence
And playing it backwards for an empty room
Just so I can listen to his dying wish-shhhhhhhh

Yes,
It’s true,
And the apple
It doesn't fall too far from the tree
But thank goodness my family tree
Was in an orchard on a hill
That rolled me to the river
And that river ripped me through the rapids
And those rapids
Rushed me into this moment
Right here right now
With you
At the mouth
This it's my church
And if church is a house of healing
Hallelujah welcome
Come on in as you are
Have a look around
Stay out of my porn.
There are massive stacks of bad choices in my backyard
Clearly I have not yet reached enlightenment beyond a few fleeting moments
But I'm trying
And I found something here I want ya to have
It ain't much
Just a story
But it’s all I've got
So take it
It’s called Dillon

Dillon’s drug of choice was more
So he took more
And more
Until the day he woke up
Babbling in a pool of his own traffic jam
Realizing he is killing off the best parts of himself
And claiming he could read people's skin
When he looked down at his heart flap
It read Boy, "go find your spine and ride it outta here"
Wileen's gut said Day 1
Jordan's arms, fully forgiven
Mary's face, the endless.
Tara's knuckles: Healing.
Denise's fingertip said C?
C.C.C.C.C!
And Dillon said my smile it said fix it
So I came back here to the mouth of the river
To look at my own reflection under the moonlight
And see what it says for myself
Where down my whole body
It is written
P.S.
See me for who I am
We've got work to do

As for Crater Face,
I can’t speak for that guy
His skin
Brutally beautiful
Handwritten letter
From the sun.

quote:

Maximus, to Gloucester, Sunday, July 19

pre:

                  and they stopped before that bad sculpture of a fisherman 

                          –"as if one were to talk to a man's house,
                          knowing not what gods or heroes are"–

                          not knowing what a fisherman is
                          instead of going straight to the Bridge
                          and doing no more than–saying no more than–
                          in the Charybdises of the
                          Cut waters the flowers tear off the wreathes

the flowers
turn
the character of the sea      The sea jumps
the fate of the flower      The drowned men are undrowned
in the eddies

                          of the eyes
                          of the flowers
                          opening
                          the sea's eyes

The disaster
is undone
What was received as alien
–the flower
on the water, that a man drowns
that he dies in water as he dies on earth, the impossible
              that this gross fact can return to us
                                                       in this upset
on a summer day
of a particular tide

that the sensation is true,

that the transformations of fire are, first of all, sea–
                           "as gold for wares wares for gold"
     
                           Let them be told who stopped first
                           by a bronze idol

                           A fisherman is not a successful man
                           he is not a famous man he is not a man
                           of power, these are the damned by God

II

whose surface bubbles
with these gimlets
which screw-in like

potholes, caustic
caked earth of painted
pools, Yellowstone

Park of holes
is death the diseased 
presence on us, the spilling lesion

of the brilliance
it is to be alive: to walk onto it,
as Jim Bridger the first into it,

it is more true a scabious 
field that it is a pretty
meadow

                           When a man's coffin is the sea 
                           the whole of creation shall come to his funeral,

                           it turns out; the globe
                           is below, all lapis

                           and its blue surface golded
                           by what happened

                           this afternoon: there are eyes
                           in this water

the flowers 
from the shore,

awakened
the sea

                            Men are so sure they know very many things,
                            they don't even know night and day are one

                            A fisherman works without reference to
                            that difference. It is possible he also

                            by lying there when he does lie, jowl
                            to the sea, has another advantage: it is said,

"You rectify what can be rectified," and when a man's heart
cannot see this, the door of his divine intelligence is shut
 
                            let you who paraded to the Cut today
                            to hold memorial services to all fishermen
                            who have been lost at sea in a year
                            when for the first time not one life was lost

                                                          radar sonar radio telephone good engines
                                                          bed-check seaplanes goodness over and under us

                            no difference
                            when men come back

The Emperor of Ice-Cream By Wallace Stevens posted:

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Hart Crane posted:

For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen

“And so we may arrive by Talmud skill
And profane Greek to raise the building up
Of Helen’s house against the Ismaelite,
King of Thogarma, and his habergeons
Brimstony, blue and fiery; and the force
Of King Abaddon, and the beast of Cittim;
Which Rabbi David Kimchi, Onkelos,
And Aben Ezra do interpret Rome.”
—THE ALCHEMIST.

I

The mind has shown itself at times
Too much the baked and labeled dough
Divided by accepted multitudes.
Across the stacked partitions of the day—
Across the memoranda, baseball scores,
The stenographic smiles and stock quotations
Smutty wings flash out equivocations.

The mind is brushed by sparrow wings;
Numbers, rebuffed by asphalt, crowd
The margins of the day, accent the curbs,
Convoying divers dawns on every corner
To druggist, barber and tobacconist,
Until the graduate opacities of evening
Take them away as suddenly to somewhere
Virginal perhaps, less fragmentary, cool.

There is the world dimensional for
those untwisted by the love of things
irreconcilable ...

And yet, suppose some evening I forgot
The fare and transfer, yet got by that way
Without recall,—lost yet poised in traffic.
Then I might find your eyes across an aisle,
Still flickering with those prefigurations—
Prodigal, yet uncontested now,
Half-riant before the jerky window frame.

There is some way, I think, to touch
Those hands of yours that count the nights
Stippled with pink and green advertisements.
And now, before its arteries turn dark
I would have you meet this bartered blood.
Imminent in his dream, none better knows
The white wafer cheek of love, or offers words
Lightly as moonlight on the eaves meets snow.

Reflective conversion of all things
At your deep blush, when ecstasies thread
The limbs and belly, when rainbows spread
Impinging on the throat and sides ...
Inevitable, the body of the world
Weeps in inventive dust for the hiatus
That winks above it, bluet in your breasts.

The earth may glide diaphanous to death;
But if I lift my arms it is to bend
To you who turned away once, Helen, knowing
The press of troubled hands, too alternate
With steel and soil to hold you endlessly.
I meet you, therefore, in that eventual flame
You found in final chains, no captive then—
Beyond their million brittle, bloodshot eyes;
White, through white cities passed on to assume
That world which comes to each of us alone.
Accept a lone eye riveted to your plane,
Bent axle of devotion along companion ways
That beat, continuous, to hourless days—
One inconspicuous, glowing orb of praise.


II

Brazen hypnotics glitter here;
Glee shifts from foot to foot,
Magnetic to their tremulo.
This crashing opera bouffe,
Blest excursion! this ricochet
From roof to roof—
Know, Olympians, we are breathless
While friend of the family cupids scour the stars!

A thousand light shrugs balance us
Through snarling hails of melody.
White shadows slip across the floor
Splayed like cards from a loose hand;
Rhythmic ellipses lead into canters
Until somewhere a rooster banters.

Greet naively—yet intrepidly
New soothings, new amazements
That cornets introduce at every turn—
And you may fall downstairs with me
With perfect grace and equanimity.
Or, plaintively scud past shores
Where, by strange harmonic laws
All relatives, serene and cool,
Sit rocked in patent armchairs.

O,I have known metallic paradises
Where cuckoos clucked to finches
Above the deft catastrophes of drums.
While titters hailed the groans of death
Beneath gyrating awnings I have seen
The incunabula of the divine grotesque.
This music has a reassuring way.

The siren of the springs of guilty song—
Let us take her on the incandescent wax
Striated with nuances, nervosities
That we are heir to: she is still so young,
We cannot frown upon her as she smiles,
Dipping here in this cultivated storm
Among slim skaters of the gardened skies.


III

Capped arbiter of beauty in this street
That narrows darkly into motor dawn,—
You, here beside me, delicate ambassador
Of intricate slain numbers that arise
In whispers, naked of steel;
religious gunman!
Who faithfully, yourself, will fall too soon,
And in other ways than as the wind settles
On the sixteen thrifty bridges of the city:
Let us unbind our throats of fear and pity.

We even,
Who drove speediest destruction
In corymbulous formations of mechanics,—
Who hurried the hill breezes, spouting malice
Plangent over meadows, and looked down
On rifts of torn and empty houses
Like old women with teeth unjubilant
That waited faintly, briefly and in vain:

We know, eternal gunman, our flesh remembers
The tensile boughs, the nimble blue plateaus,
The mounted, yielding cities of the air!

That saddled sky that shook down vertical
Repeated play of fire—no hypogeum
Of wave or rock was good against one hour.
We did not ask for that, but have survived,
And will persist to speak again before
All stubble streets that have not curved
To memory, or known the ominous lifted arm
That lowers down the arc of Helen’s brow
To saturate with blessing and dismay.

A goose, tobacco and cologne
Three winged and gold-shod prophecies of heaven,
The lavish heart shall always have to leaven
And spread with bells and voices, and atone
The abating shadows of our conscript dust.

Anchises’ navel, dripping of the sea,—
The hands Erasmus dipped in gleaming tides,
Gathered the voltage of blown blood and vine;
Delve upward for the new and scattered wine,
O brother-thief of time, that we recall.
Laugh out the meager penance of their days
Who dare not share with us the breath released,
The substance drilled and spent beyond repair
For golden, or the shadow of gold hair.

Distinctly praise the years, whose volatile
Blamed bleeding hands extend and thresh the height
The imagination spans beyond despair,
Outpacing bargain, vocable and prayer.

Oliver Wendell Holmes posted:

The Deacon's Masterpiece, or The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay

Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay,
That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day,
And then, of a sudden, it — ah, but stay,
I’ll tell you what happened without delay,
Scaring the parson into fits,
Frightening people out of their wits, —
Have you ever heard of that, I say?

Seventeen hundred and fifty-five.
Georgius Secundus was then alive, —
Snuffy old drone from the German hive.
That was the year when Lisbon-town
Saw the earth open and gulp her down,
And Braddock’s army was done so brown,
Left without a scalp to its crown.
It was on the terrible Earthquake-day
That the Deacon finished the one-hoss shay.

Now in building of chaises, I tell you what,
There is always somewhere a weakest spot, —
In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill,
In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill,
In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace, — lurking still,
Find it somewhere you must and will, —
Above or below, or within or without, —
And that’s the reason, beyond a doubt,
A chaise breaks down, but doesn’t wear out.

But the Deacon swore (as Deacons do,
With an “I dew vum,” or an “I tell yeou”)
He would build one shay to beat the taown
’N’ the keounty ’n’ all the kentry raoun’;
It should be so built that it couldn’ break daown:
“Fur,” said the Deacon, “’tis mighty plain
Thut the weakes’ place mus’ stan’ the strain;
’N’ the way t’ fix it, uz I maintain,
Is only jest
T’ make that place uz strong uz the rest.”

So the Deacon inquired of the village folk
Where he could find the strongest oak,
That couldn’t be split nor bent nor broke, —
That was for spokes and floor and sills;
He sent for lancewood to make the thills;
The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees,
The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese,
But lasts like iron for things like these;
The hubs of logs from the “Settler’s ellum,” —
Last of its timber, — they couldn’t sell ’em,
Never an axe had seen their chips,
And the wedges flew from between their lips,
Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips;
Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw,
Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too,
Steel of the finest, bright and blue;
Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide;
Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide
Found in the pit when the tanner died.
That was the way he “put her through.”
“There!” said the Deacon, “naow she’ll dew!”

Do! I tell you, I rather guess
She was a wonder, and nothing less!
Colts grew horses, beards turned gray,
Deacon and deaconess dropped away,
Children and grandchildren — where were they?
But there stood the stout old one-hoss shay
As fresh as on Lisbon-earthquake-day!

EIGHTEEN HUNDRED; — it came and found
The Deacon’s masterpiece strong and sound.
Eighteen hundred increased by ten; —
“Hahnsum kerridge” they called it then.
Eighteen hundred and twenty came; —
Running as usual; much the same.
Thirty and forty at last arrive,
And then come fifty, and FIFTY-FIVE.

Little of all we value here
Wakes on the morn of its hundreth year
Without both feeling and looking queer.
In fact, there’s nothing that keeps its youth,
So far as I know, but a tree and truth.
(This is a moral that runs at large;
Take it. — You’re welcome. — No extra charge.)

FIRST OF NOVEMBER, — the Earthquake-day, —
There are traces of age in the one-hoss shay,
A general flavor of mild decay,
But nothing local, as one may say.
There couldn’t be, — for the Deacon’s art
Had made it so like in every part
That there wasn’t a chance for one to start.
For the wheels were just as strong as the thills,
And the floor was just as strong as the sills,
And the panels just as strong as the floor,
And the whipple-tree neither less nor more,
And the back crossbar as strong as the fore,
And spring and axle and hub encore.
And yet, as a whole, it is past a doubt
In another hour it will be worn out!

First of November, ’Fifty-five!
This morning the parson takes a drive.
Now, small boys, get out of the way!
Here comes the wonderful one-hoss shay,
Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay.
“Huddup!” said the parson. — Off went they.
The parson was working his Sunday’s text, —
Had got to fifthly, and stopped perplexed
At what the — Moses — was coming next.
All at once the horse stood still,
Close by the meet’n’-house on the hill.
First a shiver, and then a thrill,
Then something decidedly like a spill, —
And the parson was sitting upon a rock,
At half past nine by the meet’n-house clock, —
Just the hour of the Earthquake shock!
What do you think the parson found,
When he got up and stared around?
The poor old chaise in a heap or mound,
As if it had been to the mill and ground!
You see, of course, if you’re not a dunce,
How it went to pieces all at once, —
All at once, and nothing first, —
Just as bubbles do when they burst.

End of the wonderful one-hoss shay.
Logic is logic. That’s all I say.

Vermeer by Szymborska posted:

So long as that woman from the Rijksmuseum
in painted quiet and concentration
keeps pouring milk day after day
from the pitcher to the bowl
the World hasn’t earned
the world’s end.

Lobster Henry posted:

Wallace Stevens is the absolute GOAT.

Other essential Crane poems include Voyages, To Brooklyn Bridge, At Melville's Tomb and Atlantis.

quote:

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is Man.
Plac’d on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic’s pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast;
In doubt his Mind or Body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reas’ning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little, or too much:
Chaos of Thought and Passion, all confused;
Stil by himself abused, or disabused;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of al things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of Truth, in endless Error hurled:
The glory, jest and riddle of the world!