poetry thread
 

I don't consider writing a quiet, closet act.
I consider it a real physical act.
When I'm home writing on the typewriter, I go crazy.
I move like a monkey.
I've wet myself, I've come in my pants writing.

Patti Smith

Dylan Thomas: The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How my clay is made the hangman's lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

Thomas VAughan (1622-1666), not so well known for poetry as his brother Henry, wrote my favourite short poem, Dawn:

Now had the night spent her black stage, and all
Her beautheous, twinkling flames grew sick and pale,
Her scene of shades and silence fled; and day
Dressed the young east in roses, where each ray
Falling on sables, made the sun and night
Kiss in a chequer of mixed clouds and light.

Gerard Manley Hopkins - The Windhover
I caught this morning morning's minion, king -
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, - the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

this man is (was) a genius.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpmBu_kFBzU

--

The Applicant

First, are you our sort of a person?
Do you wear
A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
A brace or a hook,
Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch,

Stitches to show something's missing? No, no? Then
How can we give you a thing?
Stop crying.
Open your hand.
Empty? Empty. Here is a hand
To fill it and willing
To bring teacups and roll away headaches
And do whatever you tell it.
Will you marry it?
It is guaranteed
To thumb shut your eyes at the end
And dissolve of sorrow.
We make new stock from the salt.
I notice you are stark naked.
How about this suit -
Black and stiff, but not a bad fit.
Will you marry it?
It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof
Against fire and bombs through the roof.
Believe me, they'll bury you in it.
Now your head, excuse me, is empty.
I have the ticket for that.
Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.
Well, what do you think of that?
Naked as paper to start
But in twenty-five years she'll be silver,
In fifty, gold.
A living doll, everywhere you look.
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk, talk.
It works, there is nothing wrong with it.
You have a hole, it's a poultice.
You have an eye, it's an image.
My boy, it's your last resort.
Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.









Lady Lazarus

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it----

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
0 my enemy.
Do I terrify?----

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else,
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart----
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash ---
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there----

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.


both by Sylvia Plath


--



e.e cummings

Oh! I almost forgot about my favorite e.e. cummings:


my sweet old etcetera
aunt lucy during the recent

war could and what
is more did tell you just
what everybody was fighting

for,
my sister

isabel created hundreds
(and
hundreds)of socks not to
mention shirts fleaproof earwarmers

etcetera wristers etcetera, my
mother hoped that

i would die etcetera
bravely of course my father used
to become hoarse talking about how it was
a privilege and if only he
could meanwhile my

self etcetera lay quietly
in the deep mud et

cetera
(dreaming,
et
cetera, of
Your smile
eyes knees and of your Etcetera)

"Out of the Dust"
by Julie Cook

I found
Jesus
in Grandma's backyard
stepped on him actually,
all tarnished and caked
with dirt and dog shit.
No one else noticed him
hiding among the pebbles,
lying below the blades of grass.

Me,
I saved Jesus,
picked the dirt off him with a stick
and put him in my pocket,
saving him
for later
when
I clutched him
in my grimsy six-year-old fist
and handed him over
to Grandma
and her silver polish.

Jesus,
soon shone again.
Through him,
for me,
Grandma put a purple ribbon,
and I wore Jesus
around my neck
for weeks.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats 5
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question … 10
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, 15
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, 20
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; 25
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate; 30
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go 35
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair— 40
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare 45
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, 50
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all— 55
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? 60
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
It is perfume from a dress 65
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
. . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets 70
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
. . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! 75
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? 80
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, 85
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while, 90
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”— 95
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while, 100
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: 105
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
. . . . . 110
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use, 115
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old … 120
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me. 125

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown 130
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

T.S. Elliot.

translated from Rimbaud's french by yours truly:

they promised us they were going to
bury in the shadow
the tree of good and evil,
get rid of tyrannical honesty,
so that we could set up
our own purest love.

it began just a bit disgusting
and it ended -
since we couldn't
seize on the field of this eternity -
it ended in a stampede of fragrences


some two bit hack who got a book published translated this same passage as


So now that we're really digging this badass
let's come out and demand action
on that hyped-up promise
they made our souls and bodies
in their famous long ago:
their mind-blow -

Elegance, Violence, and Science!
They were going to do some pruning
on the tree of good and evil, right?
it began just a bit disgusting
and it ended -
since we weren't quite quick enough
to clinch our fabulous beat -
it ended in the smells of stampede


Rimbaud's original french:

On nous a promis
d'enterrer dans l'ombre
l'arbre du bien et du mal,
de deporter les honnetetes tyranniques,
afin que nous amenions notre tres pur amour.

cela commence par quelques degouts
et cela finit, -
ne pouvant nous saisir sur-loe-champ de cette eternite -
cela finti par une debandade de parfums.

Daaaaamn right [/Chuck D].

dream song 14 by john berryman

life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
after all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) ‘ever to confess you’re bored
means you have no inner resources.’ i conclude now i have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as achilles, who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.

from Riding the A by May Swenson

Wheels
and rails
in their prime
collide,
make love in a glide
of slickness
and friction.
It is an elation
I wish to pro-
long.
The station
is reached
too soon.

Queenie was a blonde, and her age stood still,
and she danced twice a day in vaudeville.
grey eyes.
lips like coals aglow.
her face was tinted mask of snow.
what hips -
what shoulders -
what a back she had!
her legs were built to drive men mad.
and she did.
she would skid.
but sooner or later they bored her:
sixteen a year was her order.

they might be blackguards;
they might be curs;
they might be actors; sports; chauffeurs -
she never inquired
of the men she desired
about their social status, or wealth:
she was only concerned about their health.
true:
she knew:
there was little she hadn't been through.
and she liked her lovers violent, and vicious:
Queenie was sexually ambitious.
so:
now you know.
a fascinating woman, as they go.








from The Wild Party by Joseph Moncure March


"The Wild Party? ...It's the book that made me want to be a writer."
-william burroughs

"O poppy-buds, that in the golden air
Wave heavy hanging censers of delight,
Give me an anodyne for my despair;
O crimson poppy-blooms, O golden blight,
O careless drunken heavy poppy-flowers,
Make that the day for me be as the night.
Give me to lie down in your drowsy bowers,
That having breathed of your rich perfume,
My soul may have all-rest through all the hours;
So shall I lie within my little room.
While the poor tyrants of the world go by,
Restfully shrouded in your velvet gloom,
Beneath the wide face of the cloudless sky."
Paul Barnitz

I'm giving this a bump as I've just fallen in love with Dylan Thomas. Well done everything.

jico diarreah mouth;
slippery fingers
post quick reply; go advanced
delete button lingers

screen-cap repost;
quote in a box
fuck a horse; hubba hubba
masturbate into socks

fish sticks golden;
rod yellow and blue
candied green dandylions
go shit in a shoe

wormy equivocator;
fish in the butt
green fecal trails of slime!
glice is a slut.

"A tram full of Americans embarasses....confessions of a red-faced defector (part IV)."
-spacerock floatingslowly

thats beauty.

Agreed !

I wrote this a week or so ago. I have no idea what it's about.



And it's such a lovely sight!
The accusitional jarrs at my being,
do make me feel alright!

And over the heels and far away,
ye lass has not far to go.
If only my trees were bendable now!
Oh santa claus, what do you show
to the elves
to make them work so hard?
Are they frightened by your giant
failure of a genital region?
Or are they shoutin' TREASON, TREASON at the bee's that aren't in season, because when I like to dust my hair,
I don't find it very pleasin'!

Drag me across the floor, please.
So I can be covered in paint
and splash me with the water I shan't cry out to make
And with this dish, I crucify myself
yes, crucifixtion still exists.
When I see your pregnancy
surely,
I'll faint!
Or else your abortion grows!

Grows all over the floor with the leaking placenta
placental feetal fish fishies like betas but
GIANT and with human heads and feelers! Set your alarm
yeah, I set my alarm
so I'n only pay for a MUTT

Just we dance there,
just we dance there!
Lest leave it alone for the day.
But if I am right,
and I always am,
Elton John and Ellen are GAY.

Everest, Entering, Every, Enmo
Elmo enmo enya! She likes to jog up and down hills to make her breastesses be affected by CHILLS and the nipp
les, they harden! Hardon, you say?
I have one, twice, yes, today, tank you.

I was staring out the van window
my friends were there
we had just had a great show
and we were totally psyched

kind of an upper, i don't get why poetry has to be so depressing most of the time :-)

dirt.

4:16 am
broken mirror
love magic
sweaty palm
smudge glitter
fragment shine
hardwood scrape
she (s)creams
bloody
ceramic trust
violation
stained boy-cuts

Sway
2010

LOL

that's what she said when she saw my peener.

hahaha, sort of reminds me of the kinks "all my friends were there", except much more condensed and no sad parts