| suffered somewhat of a mini-meltdown earlier this week—coming down with something combined with spending too much, indulging too much, and questioning/doubting too much kind of sent me into a tailspin. last week i had found myself doing so well with writing and all, and somehow this week had me obsessing instead over finance and career and love-life. the concerns haven't gone away, but my impulsiveness about remedying them is hopefully dying down a bit. * * * some one send me a poem that'll rock my face off. make it political. stat. |  I freaking love this Rodin. |
13 comments:
Eulogy by Brian Turner
It happens on a Monday, at 11:20 A.M.,
as tower guards eat sandwiches
and seagulls drift by on the Tigris River.
Prisoners tilt their heads to the west
though burlap sacks and duct tape blind them.
The sound reverberates down concertina coils
the way piano wire thrums when given slack.
And it happens like this, on a blue day of sun,
when Private Miller pulls the trigger
to take brass and fire into his mouth:
the sound lifts the birds up off the water,
a mongoose pauses under the orange trees,
and nothing can stop it now, no matter what
blur of motion surrounds him, no matter what voices
crackle over the radio in static confusion,
because if only for this moment the earth is stilled,
and Private Miller has found what low hush there is
down in the eucalyptus shade, there by the river.
PFC B. Miller
(1980-March 22, 2004)
and nothing can stop it now
love it.
Show and Tell
This is the wave of gravel where she let me off on the edge of my
life.
This is the gleaming edge, past agencies and scrap. This is the
edge of a blighted field where God idles his tractor.
He thinks he's a
thunderhead in drought.
You think God doesn't have a tractor?
You think he doesn't have a blighted field?
This is what he's thinking:
not yet, not yet.
Look, there's another panic button lying on the
ground.
Look, here comes another wave of gravel.
Look, here
comes night.
You think God can't give up?
—James Galvin
Witchgrass
Something
comes into the world unwelcome
calling disorder, disorder--
If you hate me so much
don't bother to give me
a name: do you need
one more slur
in your language, another
way to blame
one tribe for everything--
as we both know,
if you worship
one god, you only need
one enemy--
I'm not the enemy.
Only a ruse to ignore
what you see happening
right here in this bed,
a little paradigm
of failure. One of your precious flowers
dies here almost every day
and you can't rest until
you attack the cause, meaning
what is left, whatever
happens to be sturdier
than your personal passion--
It was not meant
to last forever in the real world.
But why admit that, when you can go on
doing what you always do,
mourning and laying blame,
always the two together.
I don't need your praise
to survive. I was here first,
before you were here, before
you ever planted a garden.
And I'll be here when only the sun and moon
are left, and the sea, and the wide field.
I will constitute the field.
-- Louise Glück
Once I knelt as mere chattel, bought cheaply
at the marketplace for the price of a thin gold finger ring
and invisible chains around my heart. (In China, feet
are bound and women trip tightly...possession
is somehow stated in stunted toe tips.)
I endured a fashionable slavery...stunned and staring
like a steer anticipating slaughter - (only not in India, where even
beef is more revered) - my heart forever measured in China feet.
I gave him nothing, keeping the secret of the Indian cow.
I took instead, his male children...and feed them milk dreams.
My sons will not grow chains which masquerade as thin gold
finger rings (my joy will be your daughters, dancing on bigger feet.)
Jubilate Agno
--with apologies to Christopher Smart
For I will consider my President George Bush.
For he is the servant of the Living Vice President and Special Interests duly and daily serving
them.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he bombs in his way.
For this is done by mispronouncing and general misuse of the English Language with elegant
quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the dollar, which is the blessing of Daddy upon his prayer.
For he rolls upon prank to work it in.
For having done Bushisms and received soft money he begins to consider himself.
For this he performs in ten degrees.
For first he takes off his toes to count to twenty.
For sencondly he kicks up dirt to sully the peace loving thoughts there.
For thirdly he works it upon naps with the calendar cleared.
For fourthly he sharpens his wit by jello.
For fifthly he praises himself.
For sixthly he rolls upon laughter.
For seventhly he tells bad jokes about himself to try and endear his detractors.
For eighthly he rubs himself against old nuclear warheads.
For ninthly he looks up for instructions.
For tenthly he goes in quest for children left behind.
For having considered God and himself he will not consider his neighbour.
For if he meets another president or prime minister he will kiss him in kindness unless he bombs
him into the stone age.
For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it a chance.
For four terrorists in five escape by his dallying.
For when his day’s work is done his true business more properly begins.
For he keeps the Vice President’s watch in the night against heart attack.
For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his sly grin and glaring eyes.
For he counteracts Education, which is foreign to him, by brisking about sincerity.
For in his morning orisons he loves the sound of his own voice and his voice loves him.
For he is of the tribe of Texas.
For the Crazy Lunatic is a term of the Texan.
For he has the subtlety and hissing of a serpent, which in guise he suppresses.
For he will do no destruction if he is well-fed, but alas, is always hungry.
For he purrs in thankfulness when Cheney tells him he’s a good boy.
For he is an instrument for the children to learn what not to be.
For every war is incomplete without him and a blessing is lacking in the spirit.
For the GOP commanded concerning the need for another son of a president to be president.
For every family has one useless son at least in th bag.
For the Florida voters are the best in America.
For he is the plainest in the use of his brain of any quadruped.
For the dexterity of his defense is an instance of the blind eye of God to him exceedingly.
For he is the quickest to his mark of any Bush.
Fo he is tenacious of his point.
For he is a mixture of puppetry and sound bites.
For he knows that Cheney is his Saviour.
For there is nothing sweeter than his pen at rest.
For there is nothing scarier than his mouth when in motion.
For he is of the Lord’s muddled and so indeed is he called by benevolence perpetually
-Poor George! poor George! the U.S. dead have bit thy throat.
For I bless the name of the Lord Jesus that George is a one term president.
For the divine spirit comes about to insure “No more Bushes."
For his tongue is exceeding slow so that it has in humor what it wants in music.
For he is docile and can learn certain things.
For he can set up with blunder which is meant to be good.
For he can fetch and carry, which is the future of his employment.
For he can jump over a stick which is patience upon proof positive.
For he can spraggle upon waggle at the word of command.
For he can jump from eminence into his master’s bosom.
For he can snort the line but never catch the cork and toss it again.
For he is hated by the peace lover and the majority of voters.
For the former is afraid of wanton destruction.
For the latter never voted for him.
For he camels his back to bear the first notion of business.
For he is good to think on, if a man would express himself neatly.
For he made a great figure in Texas for his death penalty services.
For he killed the Viet-Cong trying to invade Lubbock very perniciously by air.
For his ears are so acute they can hear conspiracy through walls and without a warrant.
For from this proceeds the passing quickness of his attention.
For by stroking of hm I have found out sycophancy.
For I perceive God’s light about him in no place.
For the Electrical Fire is the spiritual substance which God sends from heaven to sustain
the bodies both of man and beast, and he has none.
For God has blessed him in the place of lineage and legacy of George Sr.
For though he cannot read, he is an excellent clamberer.
For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadruped.
For he can wear a flight suit and imply ability.
For he can swim for life in Queen Elizabeth’s private pool.
For he can creep me out.
__________________
Mind you, I wrote this a while ago.
Politics
'In our time the destiny of man presents its meanings in political terms' - Thomas Mann
How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics?
Yet here's a travelled man that knows
What he talks about,
And there's a politician
That has read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war's alarms,
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms!
-- William Butler Yeats
(P.S.--Sorry about the delete. The site I originally downloaded this from had misspellde a feu werdz. For example, in the epigram, 'presents' was 'prevents'. Which is hilarious.)
I don't have any poems.
Direction from the Slipshod Swingers is a good thing to listen to. That gives me perspective.
The White Garden
There is a white garden thriving here that frightens me. It isn't white with lilies or crocus or snowstar tulips. There is no heady scent of jasmine or violet wafting through the air; there are no orchids. This garden isn't fragrant at all, actually. Neither is it knit with beauty, colorless from snowfall or moonbeams, or anything rooted in nature or poetry. What it is is corpse white, nuclear holocaust white, whites-of-the-eyes white. Bloodcurdlingly white.
You can walk in this garden, though it's overgrown and people have gone missing in its ratty maze, disappeared completely. White knuckled weeds choke out all that once lived and bloomed, leaching all goodness from the soil until it's white, too, like dry, caking clay, embalmed earth. Still, people go, though the Why of that becomes more a mystery as time passes. Maybe they don't believe it's as bad as it looks or as they've heard. Maybe they think there's still hope, that they'll find a four-leaf clover--something, anything green and rich and alive--hidden beneath the unnatural blanket. Then they'd hold it up and cheer and everyone would nod and say, "See! See!" I think maybe their retinas are burned out by the glare of it all; a decent excuse for blindness. What other excuse is there for missing the point entirely?
The gardeners are fanged and greedy beasts. Hang them, or put a stake through their hearts. They rarely appear, having moved on to better flowing arteries than this; certainly, I've never seen them tending to their plot of despair, though I've seen them in it from time to time, gazing with potted cheerfulness at their surroundings for the masses, ignoring the crunch-crackle of some formerly living matter beneath their feet--dry stalk or bone; no matter; inconsequential. "Isn't it purdy," one might say to the rest and pluck at a white smear and call it a bloom. He'd breathe in its unfragrance and sigh, the great puppeteered idiot, even while the vast fiction disintegrates in his hand. White ashes drift up and stipple his nose, and still the others nod and call it beautiful.
thank you all.
Wrong Poem
Not this poem, your poem, your poem is the one,
not this poem, this is not what you want,
though it seemed refreshing for a second
this poem will not feed you but only
increase your hunger. Already you don’t quite like it
and this trend will only intensify.
Is intensify the right verb?
Is hunger the right metaphor?
Neither feels quite right to you, of course not, because
the poem you need is yours. Stop reading this
now before the frustration turns sticky and black
like tar on your shoes. That’s a simile
you wouldn’t have chosen and it chews on you
like a drooling gerbil, because it spoils the tone
or the momentum or the focus, naturally, since
the focus for you is on another page. Discard this
now if not before, discard seems to tame a verb,
you got the point anyway much earlier, why do I
in my brutal moist gerbil avarice persist in filling
up your world with my unwanted repetitious tropes?
Trope is not as funny a word as it used to be and filling
up s an atrocious line break. Well then, if that’s
how you feel then quit already!
You owe me nothing
and if
we meet
you can easily pretend to have read the whole thing
and I probably won’t test whether you noticed certain lively images
near the end, dark pantry tall brunette short skirt warm
tongue which you would sternly judge gratuitous in any case.
This is not what you want,
wet little adventures of my heart
--heart is such a cheap overused word even among sophisticates
but it’s yours that counts, isn’t it, yours, your heart
so very unique (gauche phrase) yet always hunting,
it’s sad, hunting insatiably for some mythic deep-bonded
compadre, as if anyone could make your poem
save lonely old you.
Mark Halliday
Thomas McGrath
War Resisters' Song
(c. 1985)
Come live with me and be my love
And we will all the pleasures prove--
Or such as presidents may spare
Within the decorum of Total War.
By bosky glades, by babbling streams
(Babbling of Fission, His remains)
We discover happiness' isotope
And live the half-life of our hope.
While Geiger counters sweetly click
In concentration camps we'll fuck.
Called traitors? That's but sticks and stones
We've Strontium 90 in our bones!
And thus, adjusted to our lot,
Our kisses will be doubly hot--
Fornicating (like good machines)
We'll try the chances of our genes.
So (if Insufficient Grace
Hath not fouled thy secret place
Nor fall-out burnt my balls away)
Who knows? but we may get a boy--
Some paragon with but one head
And no more brains than is allowed;
And between his legs, where once was love,
Monsters to pack the future with.
Post a Comment