A Fantasy
I'll tell you something: every day
people are dying. And that's just the beginning.
Every day, in funeral homes new widows are born,
new orphans. They sit with their hands folded,
trying to decide about this new life.
Then they're in the cemetery, some of them
for the first time. They're frightened of crying,
sometimes of not crying. Someone leans over,
tells them what to do next, which might mean
saying a few words, sometimes
throwing dirt in the open grave.
And after that, everyone goes back to the house,
which is suddenly full of visitors.
The widow sits on the couch, very stately,
so people line up to approach her,
sometimes take her hand, sometimes embrace her.
She finds something to say to everbody,
thanks them, thanks them for coming.
In her heart, she wants them to go away.
She wants to be back in the cemetery,
back in the sickroom, the hospital. She knows
it isn't possible. But it's her only hope,
the wish to move backward. And just a little,
not so far as the marriage, the first kiss.
Louise Gluck
Thursday, November 05, 2009
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Loud Music
My stepdaughter and I circle round and round.
You see, I like the music loud, the speakers
throbbing, jam-packing the room with sound whether
Bach or rock and roll, the volume cranked up so
each bass notes is like a hand smacking the gut.
But my stepdaughter disagrees. She is four
and likes the music decorous, pitched below
her own voice-that tenuous projection of self.
With music blasting, she feels she disappears,
is lost within the blare, which in fact I like.
But at four what she wants is self-location
and uses her voice as a porpoise uses
its sonar: to find herself in all this space.
If she had a sort of box with a peephole
and looked inside, what she’d like to see would be
herself standing there in her red pants, jacket,
yellow plastic lunch box: a proper subject
for serious study. But me, if I raised
the same box to my eye, I would wish to find
the ocean on one of those days when wind
and thick cloud make the water gray and restless
as if some creature brooded underneath,
a rocky coast with a road along the shore
where someone like me was walking and has gone.
Loud music does this, it wipes out the ego,
leaving turbulent water and winding road,
a landscape stripped of people and language-
how clear the air becomes, how sharp the colors.
- Stephen Dobyns
My stepdaughter and I circle round and round.
You see, I like the music loud, the speakers
throbbing, jam-packing the room with sound whether
Bach or rock and roll, the volume cranked up so
each bass notes is like a hand smacking the gut.
But my stepdaughter disagrees. She is four
and likes the music decorous, pitched below
her own voice-that tenuous projection of self.
With music blasting, she feels she disappears,
is lost within the blare, which in fact I like.
But at four what she wants is self-location
and uses her voice as a porpoise uses
its sonar: to find herself in all this space.
If she had a sort of box with a peephole
and looked inside, what she’d like to see would be
herself standing there in her red pants, jacket,
yellow plastic lunch box: a proper subject
for serious study. But me, if I raised
the same box to my eye, I would wish to find
the ocean on one of those days when wind
and thick cloud make the water gray and restless
as if some creature brooded underneath,
a rocky coast with a road along the shore
where someone like me was walking and has gone.
Loud music does this, it wipes out the ego,
leaving turbulent water and winding road,
a landscape stripped of people and language-
how clear the air becomes, how sharp the colors.
- Stephen Dobyns
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Bookworm
A worm ate words. I thought that wonderfully
Strange -- a miracle -- when they told me a
crawling
Insect had swallowed noble songs,
A night-time thief had stolen writing
So famous, so weighty. But the bug was foolish
Still, though its belly was full of thought.
- by an anonymous poet from the 10th Century, translated from Old English by Michael Alexander
A worm ate words. I thought that wonderfully
Strange -- a miracle -- when they told me a
crawling
Insect had swallowed noble songs,
A night-time thief had stolen writing
So famous, so weighty. But the bug was foolish
Still, though its belly was full of thought.
- by an anonymous poet from the 10th Century, translated from Old English by Michael Alexander
The Cinnamon Peeler
If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust
on your pillow.
Your breasts and shoulders would reek
you could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under rain gutters, monsoon.
Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbor to your hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.
You will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler's wife.
I could hardly glance at you
before marriage
never touch you
-- your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
I buried my hands
in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers...
When we swam once
I touched you in water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
You climbed the bank and said
this is how you touch other women
the grasscutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.
And you searched your arms
for the missing perfume.
and knew
what good is it
to be the lime burner's daughter
left with no trace
as if not spoken to in an act of love
as if wounded without the pleasure of scar.
You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
peeler's wife. Smell me.
- Michael Ondaatje
If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust
on your pillow.
Your breasts and shoulders would reek
you could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under rain gutters, monsoon.
Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbor to your hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.
You will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler's wife.
I could hardly glance at you
before marriage
never touch you
-- your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
I buried my hands
in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers...
When we swam once
I touched you in water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
You climbed the bank and said
this is how you touch other women
the grasscutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.
And you searched your arms
for the missing perfume.
and knew
what good is it
to be the lime burner's daughter
left with no trace
as if not spoken to in an act of love
as if wounded without the pleasure of scar.
You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
peeler's wife. Smell me.
- Michael Ondaatje
Friday, August 21, 2009
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Monday, August 10, 2009
Shot Glass
I'll never forget the day, this beautiful woman
right out in the office said I was "sneaky":
I didn't know I was sneaky: I didn't feel
sneaky: but there are mechanisms below our
mechanisms, so I assume the lady was right:
living with that has not helped my progress
in the world, if there is any such thing,
progress, I mean: also it has hurt my image
of myself: I have used up so much fellow-
feeling on the general --- all of which I have
forgotten specifically about, as have the
fellows --- no offices, no clear images or
demonstrations --- I don't understand why that
one remark holds its place ungivingly in me:
and now to talk about it, admit to the world
(my reading public, as it happens) that I am
scarred by an old, old wound about to heal and
about to bleed: this may do confessional good
but I will no longer appear perfect to others:
conceivably, that could be a good thing:
others may be scarred, too, but who wants to
be like them: one should: perhaps I really
do, because lonely splendor is devastatingly
shiny but basically hard and cold, marble
walls and glistening floors: one comfort,
which I am reluctant to relish, is that the
lady is now dead --- surely, I am sorry about that,
she was a person of intelligence and
discernment, which is one reason she hurt me
so bad --- well, but I mean, she won't hurt
anybody else: she probably did enough good
in her life that the Lord will forgive her:
I am trying to forgive her myself: after all
she left me some room for improvement and
a sense of what to work on...
- A.R. Ammons
I'll never forget the day, this beautiful woman
right out in the office said I was "sneaky":
I didn't know I was sneaky: I didn't feel
sneaky: but there are mechanisms below our
mechanisms, so I assume the lady was right:
living with that has not helped my progress
in the world, if there is any such thing,
progress, I mean: also it has hurt my image
of myself: I have used up so much fellow-
feeling on the general --- all of which I have
forgotten specifically about, as have the
fellows --- no offices, no clear images or
demonstrations --- I don't understand why that
one remark holds its place ungivingly in me:
and now to talk about it, admit to the world
(my reading public, as it happens) that I am
scarred by an old, old wound about to heal and
about to bleed: this may do confessional good
but I will no longer appear perfect to others:
conceivably, that could be a good thing:
others may be scarred, too, but who wants to
be like them: one should: perhaps I really
do, because lonely splendor is devastatingly
shiny but basically hard and cold, marble
walls and glistening floors: one comfort,
which I am reluctant to relish, is that the
lady is now dead --- surely, I am sorry about that,
she was a person of intelligence and
discernment, which is one reason she hurt me
so bad --- well, but I mean, she won't hurt
anybody else: she probably did enough good
in her life that the Lord will forgive her:
I am trying to forgive her myself: after all
she left me some room for improvement and
a sense of what to work on...
- A.R. Ammons
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
Monday, July 27, 2009
Miracle in Katipunan Avenue
a dead snail
squashed by shoe
starts to pray for Karma
and Godzilla
Faith Manifest(o)
I will never die on the cross
or under a tank or sprawled
on a tarmac. I will never make peace
with the heaviness in my hands
and the enemy that dies from it.
I will never chant the name of a country
like an open prayer. I will never sing
about anything more than my small pain.
I will never see the world in its entirety.
I will never take aliens to my leader and
they will never take me to theirs. I will never
be torn by the jaws of a tyrannosaurus rex.
I will never tire of free beer and Saturday
nights and jeepney rides through the squalor.
I will never pull my penis out from a beautiful
woman and exclaim Oh! I will never be Scarlet
Johansson nor would I wish to be except
when she's singing karaoke with Bill Murray.
I will never meet God although I have rehearsed
my lines. I will never be a cockroach with wings
built to outlast an atomic bomb at least until
the next life.
a dead snail
squashed by shoe
starts to pray for Karma
and Godzilla
Faith Manifest(o)
I will never die on the cross
or under a tank or sprawled
on a tarmac. I will never make peace
with the heaviness in my hands
and the enemy that dies from it.
I will never chant the name of a country
like an open prayer. I will never sing
about anything more than my small pain.
I will never see the world in its entirety.
I will never take aliens to my leader and
they will never take me to theirs. I will never
be torn by the jaws of a tyrannosaurus rex.
I will never tire of free beer and Saturday
nights and jeepney rides through the squalor.
I will never pull my penis out from a beautiful
woman and exclaim Oh! I will never be Scarlet
Johansson nor would I wish to be except
when she's singing karaoke with Bill Murray.
I will never meet God although I have rehearsed
my lines. I will never be a cockroach with wings
built to outlast an atomic bomb at least until
the next life.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
The Plan
I will pack the few things I have
earned through living and go to X.
I will hail a taxi and brave
Manila traffic. I will make it
in time for my flight. The driver
will not mutter under his breath
when I give him the exact fare.
I will get a window seat, stare
at the clouds, and wonder idly
about the sad work of water,
hauling itself off the earth.
I will have time to wonder.
My boss will not be there to look
through the glass of his office.
I will look below and wave goodbye
to nothing. I will sleep for hours.
I will wake up to a new smell
as the plane touches down
on the island whose natives,
with skin browner than mine,
will welcome me with a dance
to music I will not understand.
I will sit on the sand and watch
the rain crashing into the sea.
I will never leave.
I will never leave.
I will pack the few things I have
earned through living and go to X.
I will hail a taxi and brave
Manila traffic. I will make it
in time for my flight. The driver
will not mutter under his breath
when I give him the exact fare.
I will get a window seat, stare
at the clouds, and wonder idly
about the sad work of water,
hauling itself off the earth.
I will have time to wonder.
My boss will not be there to look
through the glass of his office.
I will look below and wave goodbye
to nothing. I will sleep for hours.
I will wake up to a new smell
as the plane touches down
on the island whose natives,
with skin browner than mine,
will welcome me with a dance
to music I will not understand.
I will sit on the sand and watch
the rain crashing into the sea.
I will never leave.
I will never leave.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Maundy Thursday
(môn'dē) [Lat. mandatum, word in the ceremony], traditional English name for Thursday of Holy Week, so named because it is considered the anniversary of the institution of the Eucharist by Jesus at the Last Supper (that is, the mandatum novum or “new commandment”). In some churches, Jesus's washing of the disciples' feet is symbolically reenacted. In Great Britain there is a survival in the distribution by the sovereign of special “maundy money” to certain of the poor at Westminster Abbey. In the Roman Catholic Church, Maundy Thursday is a general communion day; a single Mass is sung, in the evening, and a Host, consecrated for the morrow, is placed in a specially adorned chapel of repose. The altars are stripped bare until the Easter vigil mass.
- the word according to Columbia Encyclopedia as seen at Answers.com (http://www.answers.com/topic/maundy-thursday)
There are enough problems now without sin. Also I have no understanding of it. I have no understanding of it and I am not sure that I believe in it.
"Ay," he said...There is no translation for this word and perhaps it is just a noise a man might make, involuntarily, feeling the nail go through his hands into the wood.
- a coupla lines from Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea
It's all this water making me think of sharks and Jesus Christ. And Transformers. Off to the cinema then come hell or high water. Or this:
Wasakman.
- the word according to Columbia Encyclopedia as seen at Answers.com (http://www.answers.com/topic/maundy-thursday)
There are enough problems now without sin. Also I have no understanding of it. I have no understanding of it and I am not sure that I believe in it.
"Ay," he said...There is no translation for this word and perhaps it is just a noise a man might make, involuntarily, feeling the nail go through his hands into the wood.
- a coupla lines from Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea
It's all this water making me think of sharks and Jesus Christ. And Transformers. Off to the cinema then come hell or high water. Or this:
Wasakman.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
The River Of Bees
In a dream I returned to the river of bees
Five orange trees by the bridge and
Beside two mills my house
Into whose courtyard a blind man followed
The goats and stood singing
Of what was older
Soon it will be fifteen years
He was old he will have fallen into his eyes
I took my eyes
A long way to the calendars
Room after room asking how shall I live
One of the ends is made of streets
One man processions carry through it
Empty bottles their
Images of hope
It was offered to me by name
Once once and once
In the same city I was born
Asking what shall I say
He will have fallen into his mouth
Men think they are better than grass
I return to his voice rising like a forkful of hay
He was old he is not real nothing is real
Nor the noise of death drawing water
We are the echo of the future
On the door it says what to do to survive
But we were not born to survive
Only to live
- W.S. Merwin
In a dream I returned to the river of bees
Five orange trees by the bridge and
Beside two mills my house
Into whose courtyard a blind man followed
The goats and stood singing
Of what was older
Soon it will be fifteen years
He was old he will have fallen into his eyes
I took my eyes
A long way to the calendars
Room after room asking how shall I live
One of the ends is made of streets
One man processions carry through it
Empty bottles their
Images of hope
It was offered to me by name
Once once and once
In the same city I was born
Asking what shall I say
He will have fallen into his mouth
Men think they are better than grass
I return to his voice rising like a forkful of hay
He was old he is not real nothing is real
Nor the noise of death drawing water
We are the echo of the future
On the door it says what to do to survive
But we were not born to survive
Only to live
- W.S. Merwin
Monday, June 08, 2009
last of summer
keep your cheeks dry, beach bums, summer ain't over yet - because it never began. yep, the universe pounded over its roof which is also itself (to horribly paraphrase Amado Bajarias' storm of a poem Happiness in Other Planets) the past coupla months. if you ask me, am all for this erratic weather; at least it makes things interesting, even fashion. imagine girls in bikinis and rain boots. or guys in leather jackets over tank tops ala 70s/80s action stars. sexxxay.
this is really just formalizing it but lemme begin this brooding-in-your-bed season with an old one by Cake. pour on, universe.
We know of an ancient radiation
That haunts dismembered constellations
A faintly glimmering radio station
While Frank Sinatra sings "Stormy Weather"
The flies and spiders get along together
Cobwebs fall on an old, skipping record
Beyond the suns that guard this roof
Beyond your flowers of flaming truths
Beyond your latest ad campaigns
An old man sits collecting stamps
In a room all filled with Chinese lamps
He saves what others throw away
He says that he'll be rich someday
We know of an ancient radiation
That haunts dismembered constellations
A faintly glimmering radio station
While Frank Sinatra sings "Stormy Weather"
The flies and spiders get along together
Cobwebs fall on an old skipping record
this is really just formalizing it but lemme begin this brooding-in-your-bed season with an old one by Cake. pour on, universe.
We know of an ancient radiation
That haunts dismembered constellations
A faintly glimmering radio station
While Frank Sinatra sings "Stormy Weather"
The flies and spiders get along together
Cobwebs fall on an old, skipping record
Beyond the suns that guard this roof
Beyond your flowers of flaming truths
Beyond your latest ad campaigns
An old man sits collecting stamps
In a room all filled with Chinese lamps
He saves what others throw away
He says that he'll be rich someday
We know of an ancient radiation
That haunts dismembered constellations
A faintly glimmering radio station
While Frank Sinatra sings "Stormy Weather"
The flies and spiders get along together
Cobwebs fall on an old skipping record
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Track of our Lives
By this guy who splices scenes from old movies and pastes them together into music videos. Check him out at http://www.youtube.com/user/matthiasheuermann.
Laughter
In the beginning was laughter,
the Lord’s, and in the end…
We could claim we began with
laughter, but that would be a lie.
Our kind can only start with sorrow.
Laughter is as varied as the weather
and as predictable: patter of fingers
on a baby’s belly, beam of TV
on the faces of late night lovers,
warming drinks held by the lonely
and willing. Laughter can be carefree
or nervous, or dangerous at times.
Laughter is contagious and
laughter is the best medicine.
Laughter is the sound we make to
drown out the heart’s monotones.
Let us all laugh, then, all the way
to the bank and beyond, to that place
without laughter. The world has never
laughed with me enough, or maybe it has --
silently, all along. Laughter, to you I offer
this humble tummy. Laughter, have mercy.
In the beginning was laughter,
the Lord’s, and in the end…
We could claim we began with
laughter, but that would be a lie.
Our kind can only start with sorrow.
Laughter is as varied as the weather
and as predictable: patter of fingers
on a baby’s belly, beam of TV
on the faces of late night lovers,
warming drinks held by the lonely
and willing. Laughter can be carefree
or nervous, or dangerous at times.
Laughter is contagious and
laughter is the best medicine.
Laughter is the sound we make to
drown out the heart’s monotones.
Let us all laugh, then, all the way
to the bank and beyond, to that place
without laughter. The world has never
laughed with me enough, or maybe it has --
silently, all along. Laughter, to you I offer
this humble tummy. Laughter, have mercy.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Stranger
Today a stranger
in my bed.
These arms are easy to open.
This heart does not promise
violence. Who are you?
Today you are my master
or I am yours. Let us take turns
shaking this head.
Today the wings of a maya
stop beating over rooftops
and it is let down. Today it starts
wandering without a sound
because it has no ears. This
has nothing to do with us
or everything. If you are
wrinkling away, then take
me with you. The woman
loved one of us last night.
Let us hear her some more.
Today oh stranger, yes.
Today a stranger
in my bed.
These arms are easy to open.
This heart does not promise
violence. Who are you?
Today you are my master
or I am yours. Let us take turns
shaking this head.
Today the wings of a maya
stop beating over rooftops
and it is let down. Today it starts
wandering without a sound
because it has no ears. This
has nothing to do with us
or everything. If you are
wrinkling away, then take
me with you. The woman
loved one of us last night.
Let us hear her some more.
Today oh stranger, yes.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
I wish Bunuel was still alive. He made this film about nothing in particular. The title itself is a nonsense. With my stupid, pseudo-scholar, naive, enthusiast, avant-garde-ish, amateurish way to watch 'Un Chien Andalou' (twice), I thought: 'Yeah, I will make a song about it.'
- Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV a.k.a. Frank Black
got me a movie
i want you to know
slicing up eyeballs
i want you to know
girlie so groovy
i want you to know
don't know about you
but i am un chien andalusia
wanna grow
up to be
be a debaser, debaser
got me a movie
ha ha ha ho
slicing up eyeballs
ha ha ha ho
girlie so groovie
ha ha ha ho
don't know about you
but i am un chien andalusia
debaser
Thanks to this Pixies site (http://dag.wieers.com/debaser/debaser.php) for the quote and extreme S&M photo.
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