ooh i like this one

serious? practical?

True Love

by Wislawa Szymborska

True love. Is it normal
 is it serious, is it practical?
 What does the world get from two people
 who exist in a world of their own?

 Placed on the same pedestal for no good reason,
 drawn randomly from millions but convinced
 it had to happen this way - in reward for what?
    For nothing.
 The light descends from nowhere.
 Why on these two and not on others?
 Doesn't this outrage justice? Yes it does.
 Doesn't it disrupt our painstakingly erected principles,
 and cast the moral from the peak? Yes on both accounts.

 Look at the happy couple.
 Couldn't they at least try to hide it,
 fake a little depression for their friends' sake?
 Listen to them laughing - its an insult.
 The language they use - deceptively clear.
 And their little celebrations, rituals,
 the elaborate mutual routines -
 it's obviously a plot behind the human race's back!

 It's hard even to guess how far things might go
 if people start to follow their example.
 What could religion and poetry count on?
 What would be remembered? What renounced?
 Who'd want to stay within bounds?

 True love. Is it really necessary?
 Tact and common sense tell us to pass over it in silence,
 like a scandal in Life's highest circles.
 Perfectly good children are born without its help.
 It couldn't populate the planet in a million years,
 it comes along so rarely.

 Let the people who never find true love
 keep saying that there's no such thing.

 Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.

Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

la luna/ the moon

La luna

por Jaime Sabines

La luna se puede tomar a cucharadas
o como una cápsula cada dos horas. 
Es buena como hipnótico y sedante
y también alivia
a los que se han intoxicado de filosofía
Un pedazo de luna en el bolsillo
es el mejor amuleto que la pata de conejo: 
sirve para encontrar a quien se ama, 
y para alejar a los médicos y las clínicas. 
Se puede dar de postre a los niños
cuando no se han dormido, 
y unas gotas de luna en los ojos de los ancianos
ayudan a bien morir

Pon una hoja tierna de la luna
debajo de tu almohada
y mirarás lo que quieras ver. 
Lleva siempre un frasquito del aire de la luna 
para cuando te ahogues, 
y dale la llave de la luna 
a los presos y a los desencantados. 
Para los condenados a muerte 
y para los condenados a vida 
no hay mejor estimulante que la luna 
en dosis precisas y controladas

the undoing

the undoing

it’s psychic surgery

the common fall off a cliff

it’s this personal city of memories & presence

flipped on it’s horizon

it’s dismantling the we into two separate words

it’s my job to do and be done

it’s me calling to you *home*

yet unable to flee or sleep in

it’s calling my mom, my sister, so many

mutual friends to tell them,

telling myself repeatedly, we’ve broken records

it’s six years of rollercoasters and this is the endless drop

this is your saturn returning in libra

mercury not yet fully out of retrograde

it’s that mountain in front of me

and the whole world on the other side

it’s all the sad songs i want to put together

the mix playing slowly on a tape towards the end

it’s a box set, a series

the last thing i think at night

it’s the thoughts that make sleep such a distant shallow dream

and make waking unbearable

this is rock bottom & it keeps going

this is an aquifer of sorrow

this is a reservoir of emptiness

a quarry filled with confusion

i thought i was a water witch

i thought we were divine

you want to make this goodbye the exception

like i wanted to make all of our hellos

and still i climb your bed in search of smell

and still i count grief sheep

you are the extra bone in my body

the one that aches and helps me fly

your body is not a house but *home*,

you are the birdcage under my ribs

it’s nothing i’ve done wrong

there is nothing i can do

except cross out the partner before your name

cross out the offer in my gestures

and now the veil of dawn must lift

and now the wind in virgo turns cold

now the eyes turn to clouds & swell

the moon loosens its mooring & breaks

you eat & sleep, work & dream,

and i am lost in the stopping of this world

you take shelter in the gaze of another

as i crawl out of my mind

but there you are, all shoulders & sweetness

here you are, so unmasked & familiar

and there you go, off into your ramshackle vision

and here, in false hope, i stay and stay and

still. i am still.

9.6.11

with eyes bigger than

with eyes bigger than

i'm familiar with exceptions,

with the unavailable.

i have many sweet teeth tucked under pillows,

(unable to leave) the last peppermints for others.

i swear, sharing comes easy to me,

except when a fucking addict is involved.

did you set up shop in my psyche

with unlocked windows, slashed screens?
you rage all night, strange halfdreams
complete with strobe lights & house music.
like a home filled with moths breeding
in the pantry, you hid for months

behind fog machines, in jars & folded sheets.

i'm regularly in love with slow humans 

who resemble caterpillars & maybe eggs, 

cocoon versions of the possible. like a biologist,

my curiosity fixates on migrations, antennae,

hypotheses. the unavailable corners of me

hide from a turn of the lens. tucked in attics,

under white coats, stacks of papers live

with words like this is a poem, sit down.

i am so in love with the idea of you,

stay. in and out you go, a breeze, a clap of

thunder, thursday. a stone

turned over and over in my hand.

you'd be as gentle as i can be
cruel, soft like something simple, a bed

of edible flowers, even your elbows,

your weak knees. outside a landlocked

bakery, i dream of elaborate pastries,

all false, a mirage on display.

sweetness has a cost and a thirst. i pace

the perimeter, take measurements

with the microscope. nothing computes

according to calculation. careful now,

dodging whispers of not enough,

my breath holds, my hand, unsatisfied, salty.

this desire grows blue & bluer.

could my eyes get any bigger, will my stomach

stop! backflips and nosedives

really, i shouldn't have swallowed

all those fancy butterfly looks. but they had

such shiny sugary wings

3.17.12

the question of calling police

the question of calling police

the neighbors are rushing hand to

fist first into an argument,

equivalent to a foreign tongue

full of slash & slang. second octave

rising upon the first floor, tracked.

we flinch back

to october, when the two lovers

were not next door, when the knob

stuck on the inside of my

parents' modest suburban

captivity. like the who-knows-why

mouth of an owl, i'd shut

open & distract. maybe catch a snake

in my claws. let the indoor lights

fail like singing flesh.

now i pull socks to knees while legs

buckle into the seat of my own

familiar lapse. we toast to new boys drinking

side by side, windows unlocked

and facing into dual dining rooms.

we look everywhere for some sort of

law against this distance, pretending

none of us can touch

gently.

november 2005

conqueror mentality

conqueror mentality

first genevieve wrote this::::

the way that you deny something to be true unless you see it yourself. the way that you exploit and excuse in the name of something greater. you make fires. you build and destroy. build and destroy. build and destroy. i am soulfully woefully sad at the way you have treated me. it is a wound to my heart, to my spirit, to my desire for community, and harmony. you have spat upon it sat upon it. you sit atop your throne of make-believe. i have to keep from hating myself for giving you my heart for so many years, for taking you seriously, for believing that you meant even one damn thing you said.  i still don't know what the lesson is in that for me. you play a mean game. you play to win.

which inspired me to write this::::

a body you nor i chose but must

go about our days in

clothed, putting on

tiered attitudes

fumbled excuses

binary is just a code

developed to advance the program

it enhances your screened performances

(the luddite has faded fast)

gotta follow the money

the maker

i'm listening to the tempo and the tone shifting

there are music videos & there are children's stories

conversations about what's real

what's revolution

you're still putting your experience

at center stage, searching

for allies, looking guarded and

blank

what happens

when someone is more

than anatomy, audience, admiring,

more than you have practiced

allowing room, allotting land for

you are territorial

preferential, who assigned you

the stage is huge, you are not

my friend. you and i,

we have brought our

conqueror selves to these plays

of power, these dictionaries

of definitions. i am cataloged

by paper cards & reduced to pulp

and burning. you pulse

and click and misfire

in the distance. offering

speed and seduction, eyestrain

& headaches, the empires

are sold and bought without melody.

here, i am running

my hand over my own skin.

this is not make believe.

i've always had a heart, a brain,

belief, belonging. never to you,

never to you. i whisper,

scream, cajole, prophesize.

no matter.

you! your prison is the worst!

it's invisible

only to

you

12.6.11 (thanks gen!!!!!!)

palpar/ touch

palpar

por octavio paz

mis manos
abren las cortinas se tu ser
te visten con otra desnudez
descubren los cuerpos de tu cuerpo
mis manos
inventan otro cuerpo a tu cuerpo

fiery furnaces

Depression by Sonia Sanchez

Depression

1

i have gone into my eyes
bumping against sockets that sing
smelling the evening from under the sun
where waterless bones move
toward their rivers in incense.
a piece of light crawls up and down
then turns a corner.

as when drunken air molts in beds,
tumbling over blankets that cover sweat
nudging into sheets continuing dreams;
so i have settled in wheelbarrows
grotesque with wounds,
small and insistent as sleigh bells.

am i a voice delighting in the sand?
look how the masks rock on the winds
moving in tune to leave.
i shed my clothes.
am i a seed consumed by breasts
without the weasel's eye
or the spaniel teeth of a child?

2

i have cried all night
tears pouring out of my forehead
sluggish in pulse,
tears from a spinal soul
that run in silence to my birth
ayyyy! am i born? i cannot peel the flesh.
i hear the moon daring to dance these rooms.
O to become a star.
stars seek their own mercy
and sigh the quiet, like gods.


From I'VE BEEN A WOMAN (Third World Press, 1978)

wanting to dance

Nightmare Begins Responsibility by Michael S. Harper

Nightmare Begins Responsibility

I place these numbed wrists to the pane   

watching white uniforms whisk over

him in the tube-kept

prison

fear what they will do in experiment

watch my gloved stickshifting gasolined hands   

breathe boxcar-information-please infirmary tubes   

distrusting white-pink mending paperthin   

silkened end hairs, distrusting tubes

shrunk in his trunk-skincapped

shaven head, in thighs   

distrusting-white-hands-picking-baboon-light

on his son who will not make his second night   

of this wardstrewn intensive airpocket   

where his father's asthmatic

hymns of night-train, train done gone

his mother can only know that he has flown   

up into essential calm unseen corridor

going boxscarred home, mamaborn, sweetsonchild

gonedowntown into researchtestingwarehousebatteryacid

mama-son-done-gone/me telling her 'nother   

train tonight, no music, no breathstroked   

heartbeat in my infinite distrust of them:

and of my distrusting self   

white-doctor-who-breathed-for-him-all-night

say it for two sons gone,

say nightmare, say it loud

panebreaking heartmadness:

nightmare begins responsibility.

from Songlines in Michaeltree: New and Collected Poems.

i am currently obsessed with the poems of jeffrey mcdaniel, like this one.

The Benjamin Franklin of Monogamy

Reminiscing in the drizzle of Portland, I notice the ring
that's landed on your finger, a massive insect

of glitter, a chandelier shining at the end of a long tunnel.
Thirteen years ago, you hid the hurt under the blanket

of your voice, said I guess there's two kinds of women.
Those you write poems about, and those you don't. 

It's true. I never slid sonnets under the door, or served you
haiku in bed.  My idea of courtship was tapping

Jane's Addiction lyrics in Morse code on your window
at three hundred a.m., whiskey doing push-ups

on my breath. I worked within the confines of my character,
cast as the bad boy in your life, the Magellan

of your dark side. We don't have a past so much as a bunch
of electricity, power never put to good use. What 

we had together makes it sound like a virus, as if
we caught one another like a flu, and desire was merely

a symptom that could be treated with soup and lots of sex.
Gliding beside you now, I feel like the Ben Franklin

of monogamy, as if I invented it, but I'm still not immune
to your waterfall scent, haven't developed antibodies

for your smile. I don't know how long regret existed
before humans hammered a word on it, or how many

paper towels it would take to wipe up the Pacific Ocean,
or why the light of a candle being blown out

travels faster than the luminescence of one that's freshly lit,
but I do know all our huffing and puffing

into each other's throat—as if the heart was a birthday cake
covered with trick candles—didn't make the silence

any easier to navigate. I'm sorry all the kisses I scribbled
on your neck were written in disappearing ink, sorry

this poem took thirteen years to reach you. Sometimes
I thought of you so hard one of your legs would pop out

of my ear, and when I was sleeping, you'd press your face
against the porthole of my submarine.  I wish that just once,

instead of joyriding over flesh, we'd put our hands away
like chocolate to be saved for later, and deciphered

the calligraphy of each other's eyelashes, translated
a paragraph from the volumes of what couldn't be said.


from The Splinter Factory, published by Manic D Press in 2002

i kept noticing your low voice

i kept noticing your low voice

and i didn't even imagine a cocoon

but there it wrapped around

a bench, two bodies, past

my eyelashes, yellow birds darted

with quail but the air was

warm & wet & i had to look away

to listen

all i could think of was cheap

words like sparkles or magic

and did i start moving closer?

my body steps ahead of the rest

then from chest to belly

my heart sunk in a highly specific way i

wanted (incredibly) to run, losing

focus

and faith

i bear

the baggage

of forlorn boundaries how could you

be both/and, not either/or

i'm so humyn i'm so

hidden and disguised

this is too many nerves firing

too distracting too

you/i

unable to back away and still

looking sideways it was not

peripheral in my mind it was

the tropical trees but i couldn't

exactly describe them i was

touching everything with

ears and voice and body, floating

i had to close my eyes i had to

enter your story it had a violin

and smells of perfume i kept

noticing your long voice

how it spoke even allegories

in silences and asked questions

like why are you

like me in all my favorite ways?

1.22.12

Flash Cards by Rita Dove

Flash Cards
 
In math I was the whiz kid, keeper
of oranges and apples. What you don’t understand,
master, my father said; the faster
I answered, the faster they came.

I could see one bud on the teacher’s geranium,
one clear bee sputtering at the wet pane.
The tulip tree always dragged after heavy rain
so I tucked my head as my boots slapped home.

My father put up his feet after work
and relaxed with a highball and The Life of Lincoln.
After supper we drilled and I climbed the dark

before sleep, before a thin voice hissed
numbers as I spun on a wheel. I had to guess.
Ten, I kept saying, I’m only ten.

cold horse

cold horse

“but how do i know what she needs? maybe simply

to spin herself a house within a house, on her own terms

in cold, in silence” –adrienne rich

being born,

the bitterness of one winter

has forgotten how to

freeze.  i want

the weight of this past year to catch

up with the race. sprinting,

like an emotional genius, it is almost

six months. no

finish line, many fences,

multiple leaps.

image popping into a head.

you, and distant.

a small blue box with a small blue lid.

the view gets elbowed into periphery.

shrinking.

an era. not an error.

and all gone.

bitterness won't always translate

into sepia. face it, there is wistful, complicated,

lost, loved, blankets.  a pasture.

that thin veneer thickens to a pane

of glass. the threads braid themselves

into the mane of my best horse,

all for show.  you never knew me in my

power or in my poems. these

limbs and symbols, these full

exhalations. you were sighing,

i was working, you were working,

and there i went, over-

committed, stressed, saddled. 

sometimes carrots,

sometimes apples.

weight gathered under eyes

with blinders, metal bit 

between teeth, roaring 

in ears.  muck.  sweat.

you. i'm not even thinking of.

i'm not.

even.

this is a house and

it is thinking of

me, built of me.

cobwebs and haylofts.

safe, like fur,

like frozen.

february 2012

the tropics, the muse

i was made of leaves.  and rock.

only i had forgotten how to look.  how

 to use my eyes and skin?  the edge

is aglow with definitions,

 fuzzy like young compositions and footsteps

 through slips.  succulence,

scary in its sudden certainty,

 then fog, then feathery wings.  turn

on the lights, it's warm like the orchids

which need no sleep.  like fire

crackling on the backs of winter coats

i am teased by cacti of winter,

flourishing.  make a roof of the permeable, 

let the melted bird perch.  not a simple nest

of illusion, this is a shadow, a reflection, a character

of hunger.  it resembles death under certain

lights, it looks like deliverance.

but where we are wounded, go there.

let the moss storm whisper strength

let the hidden spider gather secrets

sshhhhhhh

it's perfect, you snuck up, you caught it.

i saw it dropping like gilded stars,

a gliding stream of fallen thirst

begging to be seen, changed, contextualized.

 is the infinite path of chaos itself

seen in the infinitesimal pattern of movement?  what then?

to shift from far away to upclose, to leave oneself and enter.

the air, the colors, the ground.  to surround.

*listening to rachel's selenography on headphones

feb/march 2012