Poetry

[Mickey]

Poetry sucks

[Jorge]

A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London
Dylan Thomas

Never until the mankind making

Bird beast and flower

Fathering and all humbling darkness

Tells with silence the last light breaking

And the still hour

Is come of the sea tumbling in harness

And I must enter again the round

Zion of the water bead

And the synagogue of the ear of corn

Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound

Or sow my salt seed

In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn

The majesty and burning of the child’s death.

I shall not murder

The mankind of her going with a grave truth

Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath

With any further

Elegy of innocence and youth.

Deep with the first dead lies London’s daughter,

Robed in the long friends,

The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,

Secret by the unmourning water

Of the riding Thames.

After the first death, there is no other.

[Jorge]

The strings, as if they knew
the lovers are about to meet, begin
to soar, and when he marches in the door
they soar some more—half ecstasy, half pain,
the musical equivalent of rain—
while children who have grown up with one stare
steal further looks across a crowded room,
as goners tend to do.

My father loved it too,
warned me at dinner that he’d be a wreck
long before the final trio came
(Ja, ja, she sighed, and gave him up forever);
he found his Sophie better late than never
and took the fifth about his silent tears
but like him I’m a softie, with a massive
gift for feeling blue.

I went with others, threw
bouquets and caution to the whirling wind,
believing that the rhapsody on stage
would waft its wonders up to our cheap seats;
but mirrors can be beautiful fierce cheats,
delusions of an over-smitten mind;
I relished trouser roles until I had
no petals left to strew.

Up, down the avenue
I wandered like a ghost, I wondered why
a miracle is always a mirage,
then plodded home and set back all the clocks,
spent hard-won funds installing strong new locks,
telling myself if violence like this
could never sound like violins, I would
to art, not life, be true.

And I am trying to
fathom the way I got from there to here,
the joy that snuck up when I’d sworn off joy:
we’ve made a sterling start, we’ve got a plan
to watch it on your satin couch downtown
and I’ll be there upon the stroke of eight,
bearing in my trembling ungloved hand
a silver rose for you.


rachel wetzsteon

[epilogue]

I got to experience the Sylvia Plath exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery this past Monday. Reading her poetry was one of the first times that poetry has affected me beyond utter confusion and an aching surge of futility. I hate that I'm so completely stupid about poetry. Hate, hate, hate it. But Plath's stuff, much of it rough and/or unpublished, really hit me. I have her Ariel collection. Maybe I should read that.

[tragabigzanda]

Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.

[Simple Torture]

I got to experience the Sylvia Plath exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery this past Monday. Reading her poetry was one of the first times that poetry has affected me beyond utter confusion and an aching surge of futility. I hate that I'm so completely stupid about poetry. Hate, hate, hate it. But Plath's stuff, much of it rough and/or unpublished, really hit me. I have her Ariel collection. Maybe I should read that.

You should watch Paterson! I think you would love it.

The poetry in Patterson was very good. The movie was pretty good, too; I'd love to watch it again.

[epilogue]

I got to experience the Sylvia Plath exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery this past Monday. Reading her poetry was one of the first times that poetry has affected me beyond utter confusion and an aching surge of futility. I hate that I'm so completely stupid about poetry. Hate, hate, hate it. But Plath's stuff, much of it rough and/or unpublished, really hit me. I have her Ariel collection. Maybe I should read that.

You should watch Paterson! I think you would love it.

The poetry in Patterson was very good. The movie was pretty good, too; I'd love to watch it again.

I love Adam Driver.

[knee tunes]

There are cemeteries that are lonely,
graves full of bones that do not make a sound,
the heart moving through a tunnel,
in it darkness, darkness, darkness,
like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves,
as though we were drowning inside our hearts,
as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul.

And there are corpses,
feet made of cold and sticky clay,
death is inside the bones,
like a barking where there are no dogs,
coming out from bells somewhere, from graves somewhere,
growing in the damp air like tears of rain.

Sometimes I see alone
coffins under sail,
embarking with the pale dead, with women that have dead hair,
with bakers who are as white as angels,
and pensive young girls married to notary publics,
caskets sailing up the vertical river of the dead,
the river of dark purple,
moving upstream with sails filled out by the sound of death,
filled by the sound of death which is silence.

Death arrives among all that sound
like a shoe with no foot in it, like a suit with no man in it,
comes and knocks, using a ring with no stone in it, with no
finger in it,
comes and shouts with no mouth, with no tongue, with no
throat.
Nevertheless its steps can be heard
and its clothing makes a hushed sound, like a tree.

I'm not sure, I understand only a little, I can hardly see,
but it seems to me that its singing has the color of damp violets,
of violets that are at home in the earth,
because the face of death is green,
and the look death gives is green,
with the penetrating dampness of a violet leaf
and the somber color of embittered winter.

But death also goes through the world dressed as a broom,
lapping the floor, looking for dead bodies,
death is inside the broom,
the broom is the tongue of death looking for corpses,
it is the needle of death looking for thread.

Death is inside the folding cots:
it spends its life sleeping on the slow mattresses,
in the black blankets, and suddenly breathes out:
it blows out a mournful sound that swells the sheets,
and the beds go sailing toward a port
where death is waiting, dressed like an admiral


Nothing but Death
~Pablo Neruda

[Bammer]

Have a drink they're buying,
Bottom of, bottle of denial,
Big guy, big eye, watching me,
Have to wonder what it sees,
Progress, laced with, ramifications,
Freedom's big plunge.
Pull the innocent from a crowd,
Raise the sticks then bring 'em down ,
If they fail to obey,
If they fail to obey.
For every tool they lend us, a loss of independence.
I pledge to my grievance to the flag,
Cause you don't give blood, then take it back again,
We're deserving of much more.
Progress, taste it, invest-it-all,
Champagne breakfast for everyone.
Break the innocent when they're proud,
Raise the stakes, then bring 'em down,
If they fail to obey,
If they fail to obey.
Pledge my grievance to the flag,
Aw come on, don't give blood, then take it back again,
We're all deserving something more.
I want to breathe, part of the seen,
I want to taste, everyone I see,
I want to run, when I'm up high,
I want to run to the sea,
I only want life to be,
I just want to be,
I will feel alive as long as I am free.

[knee tunes]

Edge
BY SYLVIA PLATH


The woman is perfected.
Her dead

Body wears the smile of accomplishment,
The illusion of a Greek necessity

Flows in the scrolls of her toga,
Her bare

Feet seem to be saying:
We have come so far, it is over.

Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,
One at each little

Pitcher of milk, now empty.
She has folded

Them back into her body as petals
Of a rose close when the garden

Stiffens and odors bleed
From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.

The moon has nothing to be sad about,
Staring from her hood of bone.

She is used to this sort of thing.
Her blacks crackle and drag.

[Ello Sailor]

I'm the shit
I'm farting

- Kodak Black

[knee tunes]

my lover's got humor
she's the giggle at a funeral
knows everybody's disapproval
I should've worshiped her sooner

if the heavens ever did speak
she's the last true mouthpiece
every Sunday's getting more bleak
fresh poison each week




if I'm a pagan of the good times
my lover's the sunlight
to keep the Goddess on my side
she demands a sacrifice
drain the whole sea
get something shiny
something meaty for the main course
that's a fine looking high horse
what you got in the stable?
we've a lot of starving faithful
that looks tasty
that looks plenty
this is hungry work

no masters or kings when the ritual begins
there is no sweeter innocence than our gentle sin
in the madness and soil of that sad earthly scene
only then I am human
only then I am clean

[E.H. Ruddock]

I prefer dicky poetry

[Ms Harmless]

The Snowboy

as in, a person, or my debut pamphlet of 2011?

[Mickey]

I've just come in here to say that all this "mentioning books I haven't heard of" crap is British poet-shaming.

British poetry is just J.H. Prynne, Martin Corless-Smith, and a bunch of farts.

Still true. Rotten little island

[washing machine]

Fog
Carl Sandburg

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

[washing machine]

Ave Maria
Frank O'Hara

Mothers of America
let your kids go to the movies!
get them out of the house so they won’t know what you’re up to
it’s true that fresh air is good for the body
but what about the soul
that grows in darkness, embossed by silvery images
and when you grow old as grow old you must
they won’t hate you
they won’t criticize you they won’t know
they’ll be in some glamorous country
they first saw on a Saturday afternoon or playing hookey

they may even be grateful to you
for their first sexual experience
which only cost you a quarter
and didn’t upset the peaceful home
they will know where candy bars come from
and gratuitous bags of popcorn
as gratuitous as leaving the movie before it’s over
with a pleasant stranger whose apartment is in the Heaven on Earth Bldg
near the Williamsburg Bridge
oh mothers you will have made the little tykes
so happy because if nobody does pick them up in the movies
they won’t know the difference
and if somebody does it’ll be sheer gravy
and they’ll have been truly entertained either way
instead of hanging around the yard
or up in their room
hating you
prematurely since you won’t have done anything horribly mean yet
except keeping them from the darker joys
it’s unforgivable the latter
so don’t blame me if you won’t take this advice
and the family breaks up
and your children grow old and blind in front of a TV set
seeing
movies you wouldn’t let them see when they were young