| It is ALIVE |
[Dec. 25th, 2004|12:50 am]
The Still Nameless JC Poetry Club
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| [ | How does that make you feel? |
| |  accomplished | ] |
| [ | Listen! There is music playing! |
| | These Arms Are Snakes, Gadget Arms | ] |
Favorite poem I can think of in the moment. Fuck you, ITS CHRISTMAS, BY THE WAY! (and I came out to my rents.. haha, my dad wont talk to me! Im excited!)
God, I miss seeing the scuttle of Wojo le chauve in the halls. AAAAgh.
Ici:
Other Lives And Dimensions And Finally A Love Poem
Bob Hicok
My left hand will live longer than my right. The rivers
of my palms tell me so.
Never argue with rivers. Never expect your lives to finish
at the same time. I think
praying, I think clapping is how hands mourn. I think
staying up and waiting
for paintings to sigh is science. In another dimension this
is exactly what's happening,
it's what they write grants about: the chromodynamics
of mournful Whistlers,
the audible sorrow and beta decay of Old Battersea Bridge.
I like the idea of different
theres and elsewheres, an Idaho known for bluegrass,
a Bronx where people talk
like violets smell. Perhaps I am somewhere patient, somehow
kind, perhaps in the nook
of a cousin universe I've never defiled or betrayed
anyone. Here I have
two hands and they are vanishing, the hollow of your back
to rest my cheek against,
your voice and little else but my assiduous fear to cherish.
My hands are webbed
like the wind-torn work of a spider, like they squeezed
something in the womb
but couldn't hang on. One of those other worlds
or a life I felt
passing through mine, or the ocean inside my mother's belly
she had to scream out.
Here, when I say I never want to be without you,
somewhere else I am saying
I never want to be without you again. And when I touch you
in each of the places we meet,
in all of the lives we are, it's with hands that are dying
and resurrected.
When I don't touch you it's a mistake in any life,
in each place and forever. |
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| Will this work.... |
[Dec. 25th, 2004|12:44 am]
The Still Nameless JC Poetry Club
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I miss my club. Where did we go? This is a test. Tangent on a cruise through the Bermuda Triangle. |
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| The Club shall not die. |
[Aug. 26th, 2004|02:16 pm]
The Still Nameless JC Poetry Club
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| [ | Listen! There is music playing! |
| | I'm at my mom's office... She's on the phone... | ] |
| [ | How does that make you feel? |
| |  dirty | ] |
Anne Sexton. For those of you who don't know, she is good. This poem is so sad, it makes me bitter. :/ The last two lines esp. make me want to cry, but I refuse the tears absolutely.
For my Lover, Returning to his Wife
She is all there.
She was melted down carefully for you
and cast up from your childhood,
cast up from your one hundred favorite aggies.
She has always been there, my darling.
She is, in fact, exquisite.
Fireworks in the dull middle of February
and as real as a cast-iron pot.
Let's face it, I have been momentary.
A luxury. A bright red sloop in the harbor.
My hair rising like smoke from the car window.
Littleneck clams out of season.
She is more than that. She is your have to have,
has grown you your practical tropical growth.
This is not an experiment. She is all harmony.
She sees to oars and oarlocks for the dinghy,
has placed wild flowers at the window at breakfast,
sat by the potter's wheel at midday,
set forth three children under the moon,
three cherubs drawn by Michelangelo,
done this with her legs spread out
in the terrible months in the chapel.
If you glance up, the children are there
like delicate balloons resting on the ceiling.
She has also carried each one down the hall
after supper, their heads privately bent,
two legs protesting, person to person,
her face flushed with a song and their little sleep.
I give you back your heart.
I give you permission--
for the fuse inside her, throbbing
angrily in the dirt, for the bitch in her
and the burying of her wound--
for the burying of her small red wound alive--
for the pale flickering flare under her ribs,
for the drunken sailor who waits in her left pulse,
for the mother's knee, for the stockings,
for the garter belt, for the call--
the curious call
when you will burrow in arms and breasts
and tug at the orange ribbon in her hair
and answer the call, the curious call.
She is so naked and singular.
She is the sum of yourself and your dream.
Climb her like a monument, step after step.
She is solid.
As for me, I am a watercolor.
I wash off. |
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| freak freak freakkk |
[Aug. 8th, 2004|01:10 pm]
The Still Nameless JC Poetry Club
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| [ | How does that make you feel? |
| |  calm | ] |
| [ | Listen! There is music playing! |
| | Jadakiss, Why? | ] |
MOONRISE
The slow moon draws
The shadows through the leaves.
The change it weaves
Eludes design or pause.
And here we wait
In moon a little space,
And face to face
We know the hour grows late.
We turn from sleep
And hold our breath a while,
As mile on mile
The terror drifts more deep.
So we must part
In ruin utterly-
Reality
Invades the crumbling heart.
We scarce shall weep
For what no change retrieves.
The moon and leaves
Shift here and there toward sleep.
-by Yvor Winters |
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| Failing at most of my attempts... |
[Aug. 5th, 2004|02:20 am]
The Still Nameless JC Poetry Club
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| [ | Listen! There is music playing! |
| | Shai Hulud, Given Flight By Demon's Wings | ] |
| [ | How does that make you feel? |
| | restless | ] |
I was just thinking of 10th grade English and how much that class changed my mind for the better, and of course I was drawn into thoughts of Sappho, and set off to research her a little more... I learn in snipets, always. Anyway, there was one fragment/poem that I read in that class that I remembered and set out to find, and what do you know? I found it. Two different translations of it, actually. I'm sure there are more. But still, all of this makes me angry and I actually am crying because in my mind I complain constantly at reading French poetry and seeing the discrepancies in the translations and the originals and it disgusts me, and here I am sobbing over Greek words when I wouldn't be able to comprehend the originals at all. So where is Wojo with his Greek-love?? These two translations could be SO WRONG, but they do run with what I remember... even though, what I remember was just something my teacher gave me, entirely English. UGH!
Some regard cavalry and footmen
More lovely than anything existing
on the blackened earth
others ships of war, but I say it is
whatever you love.
Each and all can see it simply:
Helen herself, more beautiful
by far than all, fled the
greatest of heroes, (her husband)
Deserted him she did and forgot
daughter and parents too when
soon she fared to Troy by sea:
so deeply was she changed by Cypris...
-----
-----
Suddenly remembering Anaktoria, though
already she is far.
Her gentle steps and brilliant radiance
form and face surrounding
I preferred
to Lydian infantry
and dully gleaming wagons"
~~~~
Oh God, but you need this one too:
To me he seems like a god
as he sits facing you and
hears you near as you speak
softly and luagh
in a sweet echo that jolts
the heart in my ribs. For now
as I look at you my voice
is mpty and
can say nothing as my toungue
cracks and slender fire is quick
under my skin. My eyes are dead to light, my ears
pound, and sweat pours over me.
I convulse, greener than grass
and feel my mind slip as I
go close to death,
yet, being poor, must suffer
everything.
Sappho, friends. Haha, I am crying. Whatta fool. Where is Wojo? Do you think he would help the Greek-quest? Heh. |
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| lyrics are doable, no? |
[Aug. 3rd, 2004|07:57 pm]
The Still Nameless JC Poetry Club
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| [ | How does that make you feel? |
| |  weird | ] |
I may have been gazing out too late at night
I see a deeper window into my eyes
Every day they screech outside my window,
The crashing cars never seem to collide
Sometimes when I'm staring out my window
To catch the stars, I watch as they go by
I've been getting messages from outer space
They expire light in the window in the sky
There goes my mind
If we dare walk onto my window
I could hear them if I open my eyes
Sometimes flashing lights seem soulful in the window
You may have seen them circle me at night
I keep sending signals into outer space
They expire by your window in the sky
There goes my mind
Every day when restlessness takes over me
I can't see it as I'm closing my eyes
I keep sending signals into outer space
They expire light in the window in the sky
Sometimes when I'm staring out my window
To catch the stars, I watch as they go by
I've been getting messages from outer space
They expire light in the window in the sky
By your window in the sky
"Deeper into Movies"~Yo la Tengo
I love the words. And the song in general. :)
<3 |
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| To come around. |
[Jul. 30th, 2004|12:24 am]
The Still Nameless JC Poetry Club
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| [ | How does that make you feel? |
| |  cynical | ] |
| [ | Listen! There is music playing! |
| | Wilco, Spiders (Kidsmoke) | ] |
the lesson of the moth
Don Marquis
i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric light bulb
and fry himself on the wires
why do you fellows
pull this stunt i asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been an uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would
now be a small unsightly cinder
have you no sense
plenty of it he answered
but at times we get tired
of using it
we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
so we wad all our life up
into one little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for
it is better to be a part of beauty
for one instant and then cease to
exist than to exist forever
and never be a part of beauty
our attitude toward life
is come easy go easy
we are like human beings
used to be before they became
too civilized to enjoy themselves
and before i could argue him
out of his philosophy
he went and immolated himself on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him
myself i would rather have
half the happiness and twice
the longevity
but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself |
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| sapphosapphosapphoooo mmmmmm |
[Jul. 28th, 2004|04:26 pm]
The Still Nameless JC Poetry Club
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| [ | Listen! There is music playing! |
| | Taking BackSunday, I am Fred Astaire | ] |
| [ | How does that make you feel? |
| |  confused | ] |
Uhm. Read:
Although they are
only breath, words
which I command
are immortal.
--Sappho
In case that wasn't enough for today:
( Read more...Collapse )
Damn, if my room isn't messy. :-/ |
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| Nervous Wreck. |
[Jul. 26th, 2004|08:43 pm]
The Still Nameless JC Poetry Club
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| [ | Listen! There is music playing! |
| | Bright Eyes, Drunk Kid Catholic | ] |
| [ | How does that make you feel? |
| |  worried | ] |
I have found myself liking this man. Levertov and Roethke, that is much of my obsessions lately. And lots of lots of nerves, bouncing nerves. I thought today was Tuesday until Allie took me out of my house. I need poems. I need to read poems. Who wants to throw a poem reading party?? You bring the drinks, I'll bring the fun... or I'll bring the flan, if you're Craig.
In a Dark Time
Theodore Roethke
In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood--
A lord of nature weeping to a tree,
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.
What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,
That place among the rocks--is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.
A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is--
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.
Dark,dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind. |
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| "A word after a word after a word is power." |
[Jul. 25th, 2004|07:20 pm]
The Still Nameless JC Poetry Club
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| [ | Listen! There is music playing! |
| | Bright Eyes, Method Acting | ] |
| [ | How does that make you feel? |
| | anxious | ] |
I read this in 10th grade, it was in our literature text book. I remember liking it, and there it was--sitting so lightly in this poetry community I read from daily and I only had to read the title and it all reminded me of something better.
The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter
While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.
At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.
At fifteen I stopped scowling.
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the look out?
At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-yen, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.
You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-fu-Sa.
-Rihaku (8th century A.D.)
translated by Ezra Pound (in Cathay, 1915) |
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| My Francophilia SPEAKS! |
[Jul. 25th, 2004|12:28 am]
The Still Nameless JC Poetry Club
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| [ | How does that make you feel? |
| | devious | ] |
| [ | Listen! There is music playing! |
| | Rainer Maria, Long Knives | ] |
Rachel. Loves. French. Shit.
Specifically poetry. Rimbaud. Verlaine. Baudelaire.
From Les Fleurs Du Mal:
Horreur Sympathique
Charles Baudelaire
De ce ciel bizarre et livide,
Tourmenté comme ton destin,
Quels pensers dans ton âme vide
Descendent? Réponds, libertin.
—Insatiablement avide
De l'obscur et de l'incertain,
Je ne geindrai pas comme Ovide
Chassé du paradis latin.
Cieux déchirés comme des grèves,
En vous se mire mon orgueil,
Vos vastes nuages en deuil
Sont les corbillards de mes rêves,
Et vos lueurs sont le reflet
De l'Enfer où mon cœur se plaît.
Translation: by Richard Howard, mixed around by ME!
(like any translation, it keeps the theme and changes almost all of the words... :-/)
( Read more...Collapse )
Hehe, I love translating this stuff. :D |
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| Ezra Pound's version of "The Seafarer" |
[Jul. 24th, 2004|11:42 pm]
The Still Nameless JC Poetry Club
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May I for my own self song's truth reckon,
Journey's jargon, how I in harsh days
Hardship endured oft.
Bitter breast-cares have I abided,
Known on my keel many a care's hold,
And dire sea-surge, and there I oft spent
Narrow nightwatch nigh the ship's head
While she tossed close to cliffs. Coldly afflicted,
My feet were by frost benumbed.
Chill its chains are; chafing sighs
Hew my heart round and hunger begot
Mere-weary mood. Lest man know not
That he on dry land loveliest liveth,
List how I, care-wretched, on ice-cold sea,
Weathered the winter, wretched outcast
Deprived of my kinsmen;
Hung with hard ice-flakes, where hail-scur flew,
There I heard naught save the harsh sea
And ice-cold wave, at whiles the swan cries,
Did for my games the gannet's clamour,
Sea-fowls, loudness was for me laughter,
The mews' singing all my mead-drink.
Storms, on the stone-cliffs beaten, fell on the stern
In icy feathers; full oft the eagle screamed
With spray on his pinion.
Not any protector
May make merry man faring needy.
This he little believes, who aye in winsome life
Abides 'mid burghers some heavy business,
Wealthy and wine-flushed, how I weary oft
Must bide above brine.
Neareth nightshade, snoweth from north,
Frost froze the land, hail fell on earth then
Corn of the coldest. Nathless there knocketh now
The heart's thought that I on high streams
The salt-wavy tumult traverse alone.
Moaneth alway my mind's lust
That I fare forth, that I afar hence
Seek out a foreign fastness.
For this there's no mood-lofty man over earth's midst,
Not though he be given his good, but will have in his youth greed;
Nor his deed to the daring, nor his king to the faithful
But shall have his sorrow for sea-fare
Whatever his lord will.
He hath not heart for harping, nor in ring-having
Nor winsomeness to wife, nor world's delight
Nor any whit else save the wave's slash,
Yet longing comes upon him to fare forth on the water.
Bosque taketh blossom, cometh beauty of berries,
Fields to fairness, land fares brisker,
All this admonisheth man eager of mood,
The heart turns to travel so that he then thinks
On flood-ways to be far departing.
Cuckoo calleth with gloomy crying,
He singeth summerward, bodeth sorrow,
The bitter heart's blood. Burgher knows not --
He the prosperous man -- what some perform
Where wandering them widest draweth.
So that but now my heart burst from my breast-lock,
My mood 'mid the mere-flood,
Over the whale's acre, would wander wide.
On earth's shelter cometh oft to me,
Eager and ready, the crying lone-flyer,
Whets for the whale-path the heart irresistibly,
O'er tracks of ocean; seeing that anyhow
My lord deems to me this dead life
On loan and on land, I believe not
That any earth-weal eternal standeth
Save there be somewhat calamitous
That, ere a man's tide go, turn it to twain.
Disease or oldness or sword-hate
Beats out the breath from doom-gripped body.
And for this, every earl whatever, for those speaking after --
Laud of the living, boasteth some last word,
That he will work ere he pass onward,
Frame on the fair earth 'gainst foes his malice,
Daring ado, ...
So that all men shall honour him after
And his laud beyond them remain 'mid the English,
Aye, for ever, a lasting life's-blast,
Delight mid the doughty.
Days little durable,
And all arrogance of earthen riches,
There come now no kings nor Cæsars
Nor gold-giving lords like those gone.
Howe'er in mirth most magnified,
Whoe'er lived in life most lordliest,
Drear all this excellence, delights undurable!
Waneth the watch, but the world holdeth.
Tomb hideth trouble. The blade is layed low.
Earthly glory ageth and seareth.
No man at all going the earth's gait,
But age fares against him, his face paleth,
Grey-haired he groaneth, knows gone companions,
Lordly men are to earth o'ergiven,
Nor may he then the flesh-cover, whose life ceaseth,
Nor eat the sweet nor feel the sorry,
Nor stir hand nor think in mid heart,
And though he strew the grave with gold,
His born brothers, their buried bodies
Be an unlikely treasure hoard. |
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| For those I love and miss-- |
[Jul. 23rd, 2004|07:56 pm]
The Still Nameless JC Poetry Club
|
| [ | Listen! There is music playing! |
| | Bright Eyes, Let's Not Shit Ourselves (To Love and Be Loved) | ] |
| [ | How does that make you feel? |
| | lonely | ] |
Wah. I find some pretty werds. I'm sweepy.
Ici:
Hugo Williams
Bar Italia
How beautiful it would be to wait for you again
in the usual place,
not looking at the door,
keeping a lookout in the long mirror,
knowing that if you are late
it will not be too late,
knowing that all I have to do
is wait a little longer
and you will be pushing through the other customers,
out of breath, apologetic.
Where have you been, for God's sake?
I was starting to worry.
How long did we say we would wait
if one of us was held up?
It's been so long and still no sign of you.
As time goes by, I search other faces in the bar,
rearranging their features
until they are monstrous versions of you,
their heads wobbling from side to side
like heads on sticks.
Your absence inches forward
until it is standing next to me.
Now it has taken a seat I was saving.
Now we are face to face in the long mirror.
I'm going to the place where the sun sets on the sea in 20 days. :D |
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| short poem |
[Jul. 22nd, 2004|09:39 am]
The Still Nameless JC Poetry Club
|
| [ | How does that make you feel? |
| |  creative | ] |
here is a short little poem by emily dickinson. (a.k.a one of the best female poets EVER)
To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie -
True Poems flee - |
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| doors Close, doors Open |
[Jul. 21st, 2004|09:15 pm]
The Still Nameless JC Poetry Club
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| [ | How does that make you feel? |
| | mischievous | ] |
| [ | Listen! There is music playing! |
| | Rufus Wainwright, April Fools | ] |
Did you know that if you take it literally, Bonjour is French for Good Day and not Hello? Yeah. Well, I'm right. Nah.
Other than that, I've been writing, but I want other people's opinions on whether we should keep this thing going as it is, with other poet's poems, or whether we should make anything else. I like it as it is, just us, too. No Wojo, so I don't feel inadequate, and just pretty poems. But I want feedback. Just a little, I suppose. Whatever you'd like.
But this a good poem. It makes me think of how Wojo told me to avoid dialogue, but doesn't this one work well?? I don't know. I like it.
Zeroing In
"I am a landscape," he said,
"a landscape and a person walking in that landscape.
There are daunting cliffs there,
and plains glad in their way
of brown monotony. But especially
there are sinkholes, places
of sudden terror, of small circumference
and malevolent depths."
"I know," she said. "When I set forth
to walk in myself, as it might be
on a fine afternoon, forgetting,
sooner or later I come to where sedge
and clumps of white flowers, rue perhaps,
mark the bogland, and I know
there are quagmires there that can pull you
down, and sink you in bubbling mud."
"We had an old dog," he told her, "when I was a boy,
a good dog, friendly. But there was an injured spot
on his head, if you happened
just to touch it he'd jump up yelping
and bite you. He bit a young child,
they had to take him to the vet's and destroy him."
"No one knows where it is," she said,
"and even by accident no one touches it:
It's inside my landscape, and only I, making my way
preoccupied through my life, crossing my hills,
sleeping on green moss of my own woods,
I myself without warning touch it,
and leap up at myself--"
"--or flinch back
just in time."
"Yes, we learn that
It's not terror, it's pain we're talking about:
those places in us, like your dog's bruised head,
that are bruised forever, that time
never assuages, never."
-- Denise Levertov |
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