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Post by tannis on Nov 12, 2009 2:27:20 GMT
^ Thank you, Al Hymn to Beauty by Charles Baudelaire
Do you come from on high or out of the abyss, O Beauty? Godless yet divine, your gaze indifferently showers favor and shame, and therefore some have likened you to wine.
Your eyes reflect the sunset and the dawn; you scatter perfumes like a windy night; your kisses are a drug, your mouth the urn dispensing fear to heroes, fervor to boys.
Whether spawned by hell or sprung from the stars, Fate like a spaniel follows at your heel; you sow haphazard fortune and despair, ruling all things, responsible for none.
You walk on corpses, Beauty, undismayed, and Horror coruscates among your gems; Murder, one of your dearest trinkets, throbs on your shameless belly: make it dance!
Dazzled, the dayfly flutters round your wick, crackles, flares, and cries: I bless this torch! The pining lover for his lady swoons like a dying man adoring his own tomb.
Who cares if you come from paradise or hell, appalling Beauty, artless and monstrous scourge, if only your eyes, your smile or your foot reveal the Infinite I love and have never known?
Come from Satan, come from God - who cares, Angel or siren, rhythm, fragrance, light, provided you transform - O my one queen! This hideous universe, this heavy hour? Autumnal by Charles Baudelaire
Soon cold shadows will close over us and summer's transitory gold be gone; I hear them chopping firewood in our court- the dreary thud of logs on cobblestone.
Winter will come to repossess my soul with rage and outrage, horror, drudgery, and like the sun in its polar holocaust my heart will be a block of blood-red ice.
I listen trembling to that grim tattoo- build a gallows, it would sound the same. My mind becomes a tower giving way under the impact of a battering ram.
Stunned by the strokes, I seem to hear, somewhere a coffin hurriedly hammered shut - for whom? Summer was yesterday; autumn is here! Strange how that sound rings out like a farewell.Spleen by Charles Baudelaire
When skies are low and heavy as a lid over the mind tormented by disgust, and hidden in the gloom the sun pours down on us a daylight dingier than the dark;
when earth becomes a trickling dungeon where Trust like a bat keeps lunging through the air, beating tentative wings along the walls and bumping its head against the rotten beams;
when rain falls straight from unrelenting clouds, forging the bars of some enormous jail, and silent hordes of obscene spiders spin their webs across the basements of our brains;
then all at once the raging bells break loose, hurling to heaven their awful caterwaul, like homeless ghosts with no one left to haunt whimpering their endless grievances.
--And giant hearses, without dirge or drums, parade at half-step in my soul, where Hope, defeated, weeps, and the oppressor Dread plants his black flag on my assenting skull.
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Post by Al Truest on Nov 15, 2009 13:17:59 GMT
"Desert Rose"
I dream of rain I dream of gardens in the desert sand I wake in vain I dream of love as time runs through my hand
I dream of fire Those dreams are tied to a horse that will never tire And in the flames Her shadows play in the shape of a man's desire
This desert rose Each of her veils, a secret promise This desert flower No sweet perfume ever tortured me more than this
And as she turns This way she moves in the logic of all my dreams This fire burns I realize that nothing's as it seems
I dream of rain I dream of gardens in the desert sand I wake in vain I dream of love as time runs through my hand
I dream of rain I lift my gaze to empty skies above I close my eyes This rare perfume is the sweet intoxication of her love
I dream of rain I dream of gardens in the desert sand I wake in vain I dream of love as time runs through my hand
Sweet desert rose Each of her veils, a secret promise This desert flower No sweet perfume ever tortured me more than this
Sweet desert rose This memory of Eden haunts us all This desert flower This rare perfume, is the sweet intoxication of the fall
Gordon Summer
.........................
...as our two lives have been together bound; To your dire scar I would conjoin my wound, And bind with yours my fate of joys and woes. I would entwine our wills, until yours chose To be my partisan forever found; For I have gained your love, and sorrow-crowned, You have shown courage to a world of foes. Like the simoom I gather up your dust And heap on high a little pile of trust And hope and pain on pain, to call it ours; Here at the gates of an eternal rest, As all our dreams have known the self-same bowers, So shall my soul and yours have but one breast...
(translated and modified by jhm)
........................
...heart had withered up like a flower of the desert that feels the simoom coming from afar" (James Joyce)...
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Post by tannis on Nov 15, 2009 17:27:10 GMT
Allegory Of The Cave by Stephen Dunn, 1991
He climbed toward the blinding light and when his eyes adjusted he looked down and could see
his fellow prisoners captivated by shadows; everything he had believed was false. And he was suddenly
in the 20th century, in the sunlight and violence of history, encumbered by knowledge. Only a hero
would dare return with the truth. So from the cave's upper reaches, removed from harm, he called out
the disturbing news. What lovely echoes, the prisoners said, what a fine musical place to live.
He spelled it out, then, in clear prose on paper scraps, which he floated down. But in the semi-dark they read his words
with the indulgence of those who seldom read: It's about my father's death, one of them said. No, said the others, it's a joke.
By this time he no longer was sure of what he'd seen. Wasn't sunlight a shadow too? Wasn't there always a source
behind a source? He just stood there, confused, a man who had moved to larger errors, without a prayer.
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Post by Al Truest on Nov 15, 2009 18:00:36 GMT
^ Thanks Tannis. I am reminded of my first foray into writing poetry. As a budding second year philosophy major; I had adapted Plato's allegory of the cave to verse. Several of the Sisters (nuns) liked what I wrote. It started out: 'To where the shadows lift their guise from echoed voices of the wise...' It went downhill from there. My creative writing prof said it was good albeit sophomoric. I reminded him that I was a sophomore. What I learned nonetheless was to think and write with passion. Even if it is cringe-worthy, nevertheless it is truth in the moment. And without pain there is no growth. So I am often foolish. But I try to remain fearless.
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Post by tannis on Nov 15, 2009 20:27:22 GMT
What I learned nonetheless was to think and write with passion. Even if it is cringe-worthy, nevertheless it is truth in the moment. And without pain there is no growth. So I am often foolish. But I try to remain fearless. Wise words, Al, and thank you for sharing your recollection... "Work like you don’t need money Love like you’ve never been hurt Dance like no one is watching Sing like no one is listening and Live like it’s heaven on earth" (Anon).
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Post by Al Truest on Nov 23, 2009 3:26:07 GMT
IF thy sad heart, pining for human love, In its earth solitude grew dark with fear, Lest the high Sun of Heaven itself should prove Powerless to save from that phantasmal sphere Wherein thy spirit wandered, -- if the flowers That pressed around thy feet, seemed but to bloom In lone Gethsemanes, through starless hours, When all who loved had left thee to thy doom,-- Oh, yet believe that in that hollow vale Where thy soul lingers, waiting to attain So much of Heaven's sweet grace as shall avail To lift its burden of remorseful pain, My soul shall meet thee, and its Heaven forego Till God's great love, on both, one hope, one Heaven bestow.
...TO EDGAR ALLAN POE
by: Sarah Helen Whitman (1803-1878)
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Post by tannis on Nov 25, 2009 21:27:10 GMT
The Foreboding By Robert Graves
Looking by chance in at the open window I saw my own self seated in his chair With gaze abstracted, furrowed forehead, Unkempt hair.
I thought that I had suddenly come to die, That to a cold corpse this was my farewell, Until the pen moved slowly on the paper And tears fell.
He had written a name, yours, in printed letters One word on which bemusedly to pore: No protest, no desire, your naked name, Nothing more.
Would it be tomorrow, would it be next year? But the vision was not false, this much I knew; And I turned angrily from the open window Aghast at you.
Why never a warning, either by speech or look, That the love you cruelly gave me could not last? Already it was too late: the bait swallowed, The hook fast.David Sylvian Upon This Earth 1986www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFmnLwRENlIUpon This Earth contains a reading of the Robert Graves poem The Foreboding which can be found in any selected edition of the poetry or in his collected poems (cassell p,95). The reading is by Robert himself and is taken from an album of his readings on a label called Argo, long since passed.
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Post by Al Truest on Dec 23, 2009 20:01:19 GMT
Ode To a Chestnut on the Ground
From bristly foliage you fell complete, polished wood, gleaming mahogany, as perfect as a violin newly born of the treetops, that falling offers its sealed-in gifts, the hidden sweetness that grew in secret amid birds and leaves, a model of form, kin to wood and flour, an oval instrument that holds within it intact delight, an edible rose. In the heights you abandoned the sea-urchin burr that parted its spines in the light of the chestnut tree; through that slit you glimpsed the world, birds bursting with syllables, starry dew below, the heads of boys and girls, grasses stirring restlessly, smoke rising, rising. You made your decision, chestnut, and leaped to earth, burnished and ready, firm and smooth as the small breasts of the islands of America. You fell, you struck the ground, but nothing happened, the grass still stirred, the old chestnut sighed with the mouths of a forest of trees, a red leaf of autumn fell, resolutely, the hours marched on across the earth. Because you are only a seed, chestnut tree, autumn, earth, water, heights, silence prepared the germ, the floury density, the maternal eyelids that buried will again open toward the heights the simple majesty of foliage, the dark damp plan of new roots, the ancient but new dimensions of another chestnut tree in the earth.
pablo neruda ********** Wakening from the dreaming forest there, the hazel-sprig sang under my tongue, its drifting fragrance climbed up through my conscious mind as if suddenly the roots I had left behind cried out to me, the land I had lost with my childhood - and I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent. - Pablo Neruda ********** If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason. - Jack Handey
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Adena
Moving
This time around we dance - we're chosen ones
Posts: 611
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Post by Adena on Dec 24, 2009 12:09:56 GMT
Mermaid Siren
Through waves and rocky channels blue and white she pulled and pushed the tides and taught the fishes how to speak to planets silver green with magic running from her spirit into skins of kelp and shells of snails a twisting of her tail and hands she sent her songs to run on pin-tipped legs about the sands and now and now the strangest pause for years and years she hasn't moved her eyes
(inscribed by MJQ)
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Adena
Moving
This time around we dance - we're chosen ones
Posts: 611
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Post by Adena on Dec 26, 2009 11:47:02 GMT
To A Fish
You strange, astonished-looking, angle-faced, Dreary-mouthed, gaping wretches of the sea, Gulping salt-water everlastingly, Cold-blooded, though with red your blood be graced, And mute, though dwellers in the roaring waste; And you, all shapes beside, that fishy be,-- Some round, some flat, some long, all devilry, Legless, unloving, infamously chaste:--
O scaly, slippery, wet, swift, staring wights, What is't ye do? What life lead? eh, dull goggles? How do ye vary your vile days and nights? How pass your Sundays? Are ye still but joggles In ceaseless wash? Still nought but gapes, and bites, And drinks, and stares, diversified with boggles?
A Fish Answers
Amazing monster! that, for aught I know, With the first sight of thee didst make our race For ever stare! O flat and shocking face, Grimly divided from the breast below! Thou that on dry land horribly dost go With a split body and most ridiculous pace, Prong after prong, disgracer of all grace, Long-useless-finned, haired, upright, unwet, slow!
O breather of unbreathable, sword-sharp air, How canst exist? How bear thyself, thou dry And dreary sloth? What particle canst share Of the only blessed life, the watery? I sometimes see of ye an actual pair Go by! linked fin by fin! most odiously.
~James Henry Leigh Hunt
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Post by tannis on Dec 27, 2009 23:27:14 GMT
^ Adena, I stumbled across this poem on google sometime back, though can't remember the context. It's a great poem, isn't it! And thank you for posting...
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Post by tannis on Jan 2, 2010 19:27:10 GMT
Plath's 'You're', written two months before the birth of her first child, portrays a growing foetus, as does Sexton's 'Little Girl, My Stringbean, My Lovely Woman' written much after the birth [July 14, 1964]. Both convey, arguably, no special mother's knowledge. They do bespeak, however, a special attentiveness to the experience of pregnancy that had rarely been paid in poetry — an attentiveness born both of experience and of the knowledge that this material could supply not just good images, but a powerful new field of poetry. 'Little Girl' works to imagine a better world for the daughter, a world in which the body does not shame (Gill, 2006; p.40).You're
Clownlike, happiest on your hands, Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled, Gilled like a fish. A common-sense Thumbs-down on the dodo's mode. Wrapped up in yourself like a spool, Trawling your dark as owls do. Mute as a turnip from the Fourth Of July to All Fool's Day, O high-riser, my little loaf.
Vague as fog and looked for like mail. Farther off than Australia. Bent-backed Atlas, our travelled prawn. Snug as a bud and at home Like a sprat in a pickle jug. A creel of eels, all ripples. Jumpy as a Mexican bean. Right, like a well-done sum. A clean slate, with your own face on.
Little Girl, My Stringbean, My Lovely Woman
My daughter, at eleven (almost twelve), is like a garden.
Oh, darling! Born in that sweet birthday suit and having owned it and known it for so long, now you must watch high noon enter — noon, that ghost hour. Oh, funny little girl — this one under a blueberry sky, this one! How can I say that I've known just what you know and just where you are?
It's not a strange place, this odd home where your face sits in my hand so full of distance, so full of its immediate fever. The summer has seized you, as when, last month in Amalfi, I saw lemons as large as your desk-side globe — that miniature map of the world — and I could mention, too, the market stalls of mushrooms and garlic buds all engorged. Or I think even of the orchard next door, where the berries are done and the apples are beginning to swell. And once, with our first backyard, I remember I planted an acre of yellow beans we couldn't eat.
Oh, little girl, my stringbean, how do you grow? You grow this way. You are too many to eat.
I hear as in a dream the conversation of the old wives speaking of womanhood. I remember that I heard nothing myself. I was alone. I waited like a target.
Let high noon enter — the hour of the ghosts. Once the Romans believed that noon was the ghost hour, and I can believe it, too, under that startling sun, and someday they will come to you, someday, men bare to the waist, young Romans at noon where they belong, with ladders and hammers while no one sleeps.
But before they enter I will have said, Your bones are lovely, and before their strange hands there was always this hand that formed.
Oh, darling, let your body in, let it tie you in, in comfort. What I want to say, Linda, is that women are born twice.
If I could have watched you grow as a magical mother might, if I could have seen through my magical transparent belly, there would have been such ripening within: your embryo, the seed taking on its own, life clapping the bedpost, bones from the pond, thumbs and two mysterious eyes, the awfully human head, the heart jumping like a puppy, the important lungs, the becoming — while it becomes! as it does now, a world of its own, a delicate place.
I say hello to such shakes and knockings and high jinks, such music, such sprouts, such dancing-mad-bears of music, such necessary sugar, such goings-on!
Oh, little girl, my stringbean, how do you grow? You grow this way. You are too many to eat.
What I want so say, Linda, is that there is nothing in your body that lies. All that is new is telling the truth. I'm here, that somebody else, an old tree in the background.
Darling, stand still at your door, sure of yourself, a white stone, a good stone — as exceptional as laughter you will strike fire, that new thing!Bertie by Kate Bushwww.youtube.com/watch?v=oPTifdOtpcs
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Post by Al Truest on Jan 19, 2010 0:10:04 GMT
A Song Of Despair by Pablo Neruda
The memory of you emerges from the night around me. The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.
Deserted like the dwarves at dawn. It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!
Cold flower heads are raining over my heart. Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.
In you the wars and the flights accumulated. From you the wings of the song birds rose.
You swallowed everything, like distance. Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!
It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss. The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.
Pilot's dread, fury of blind driver, turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!
In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded. Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!
You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire, sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!
I made the wall of shadow draw back, beyond desire and act, I walked on.
Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost, I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.
Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness. and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.
There was the black solitude of the islands, and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.
There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit. There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle.
Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!
How terrible and brief my desire was to you! How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.
Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs, still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.
Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs, oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.
Oh the mad coupling of hope and force in which we merged and despaired.
And the tenderness, light as water and as flour. And the word scarcely begun on the lips.
This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing, and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!
Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you, what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned!
From billow to billow you still called and sang. Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.
You still flowered in songs, you still brike the currents. Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well.
Pale blind diver, luckless slinger, lost discoverer, in you everything sank!
It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour which the night fastens to all the timetables.
The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore. Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate.
Deserted like the wharves at dawn. Only tremulous shadow twists in my hands.
Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything.
It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one!
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Adena
Moving
This time around we dance - we're chosen ones
Posts: 611
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Post by Adena on Jan 21, 2010 14:59:00 GMT
For Words
Thank you for the words I read Thank you for the words I need Thank you for the words so great Thanks for words that raise debate, Thanks for the words on my bookshelf Thanx for the words I make myself Thank you for words that make me cry And words that leave me feeling dry.
Thanks for words that do inspire And those words that burn like fire Thanks for all the words I note Thank you for the all the words I quote, I thank you for the words like me Thanks for words that set me free And I thank you for words like you I always need a word or two
Thanks for words that make things plain And words that help me to overcome, Thanks for words that make me rap Thanks for words that make me clap Thanks for words that make me smile Thanks for words with grace and style
Thanks for all those words that sing Thanks for words are everything Thanks for all the words like this And a little sloppy words like kiss, Thanks for words like hip-hooray And those cool words I like to say Thanks for words that reach and touch Thank you very, very much.
~Benjamin Zephaniah
Cold and Broken Hallelujah.... He stood at the tracks, watching that golden flame of the setting sun, slash to that bloody red.
The whistle sounded in the distance.
Lost souls scream in the fleeting stop it takes, bumping his toes.
The tracks stood and he was lost in the steam.
Swept away.
His soul wept and cried with the others...hallelujah.
Not bound for heaven, nor for hell. That gleaming light can never tell... your lost and carried away... broken soul.....
Hallelujah.
Fighting now to power the train,
you wish to leave,
yet you remain.
That's all you did in life.......regret....
But now As if it is no more,
You hung your neck in the door.
They scream they cry,
He is dead..but why
they never knew he wanted to die...?
Now he sings that cold and broken
Hallelujah....
~Samantha Bush
Goodness
The goodness holds ye fleeting light She cannot ken the dark of night And yet her rope still quoth the thirst Of strangers living fit tae burst She cannot fathom modern speak.
She sings a lashing rolling creek She looks so far ahead of ye She only sees a ghost of thee.
~Julia Mira Bella
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Post by tannis on Feb 28, 2010 2:27:31 GMT
THE SERMON OF THE TWELVE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS by Anne Sexton
January? The month is dumb. It is fraudulent. It does not cleanse itself. The hens lay blood-stained eggs. Do not lend your bread to anyone lest it never rise. Do not eat lentils or your hair will fall out.
Do not rely on February except when your cat has kittens, throbbing into the snow. Do not use knives and forks unless there is a thaw, like the yawn of a baby. The sun in this month begets a headache like an angel slapping you in the face.
Earthquakes mean March. The dragon will move, and the earth will open like a wound. There will be great rain or snow so have some coal for your uncle. The sun of this month cures all. Therefore, old women say: Let the sun of March shine on my daughter, but let the sun of February shine on my daughter-in-law. However, if you go to a party dressed as the anti-Christ you will be frozen to death by morning.
During the rainstorms of April the oyster rises from the sea and opens its shell — rain enters it — when it sinks the raindrops become the pearl. So take a picnic, open your body, and give birth to pearls.
June and July? These are the months we call Boiling Water. There is sweat on the cat but the grape marries herself to the sun.
Hesitate in August. Be shy. Let your toes tremble in their sandals. However, pick the grape and eat with confidence. The grape is the blood of God. Watch out when holding a knife or you will behead St. John the Baptist.
Touch the Cross in September, knock on it three times and say aloud the name of the Lord. Put seven bowls of salt on the roof overnight and the next morning the damp one will foretell the month of rain. Do not faint in September or you will wake up in a dead city.
If someone dies in October do not sweep the house for three days or the rest of you will go. Also do not step on a boy's head for the devil will enter your ears like music.
November? Shave, whether you have hair or not. Hair is not good, nothing is allowed to grow, all is allowed to die. Because nothing grows you may be tempted to count the stars but beware, in November counting the stars gives you boils. Beware the tall people, they will go mad. Don't harm the turtle dove because he is a great shoe that has swallowed Christ's blood.
December? On December fourth water spurts out of the mouse. Put herbs in its eyes and boil corn and put the corn away for the night so that the Lord may trample on it and bring you luck. For many days the Lord has been shut up in the oven. After that He is boiled, but He never dies, never dies.
~ from The Awful Rowing Toward God (1975).
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