Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Versed versus verse:
A TASTE OF RUMI
These spiritual window-shoppers,
who idly ask, ‘How much is that’
Oh, I’m just looking.
They handle a hundred items and put
them down,
shadows with no capital.
What is spent is love and two
eyes wet with weeping.
But these walk into a shop,
and their whole lives pass sud-denly in
that moment,
in that shop.
***
When someone mentions the
gracefulness
of the nightsky, climb up on the roof
and dance and say,
Like this.
If anyone wants to know what
‘spirit’ is,
or what ‘God’s fragrance’ means,
lean your head toward him or her.
Keep your face there close.
Like this.
***
We are as the flute, and the music
in us is from thee;
we are as the mountain and the echo
in us is from thee.
We are as pieces of chess engaged in
victory and defeat:
our victory and defeat is from thee,
O thou whose qualities are comely!
Who are we, O Thou soul of
our souls,
that we should remain in being
beside thee?
***
Make yourself free from self at
one stroke!
Like a sword be without trace
of soft iron;
Like a steel mirror, scour off all
rust with contrition.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Death
Come thou, thou last one, whom I recognize,
unbearable pain throughout this body's fabric:
as I in my spirit burned, see, I now burn in thee:
the wood that long resisted the advancing flames
which thou kept flaring, I now am nourishinig
and burn in thee.
My gentle and mild being through thy ruthless fury
has turned into a raging hell that is not from here.
Quite pure, quite free of future planning, I mounted
the tangled funeral pyre built for my suffering,
so sure of nothing more to buy for future needs,
while in my heart the stored reserves kept silent.
Is it still I, who there past all recognition burn?
Memories I do not seize and bring inside.
O life! O living! O to be outside!
And I in flames. And no one here who knows me.
Gacela of the Dark Death
by Federico García Lorca
Translated by Robert Bly
I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,
I want to get far away from the busyness of the cemeteries.
I want to sleep the sleep of that child
who longed to cut his heart open far out at sea.
I don't want them to tell me again how the corpse keeps all its blood,
how the decaying mouth goes on begging for water.
I'd rather not hear about the torture sessions the grass arranges for
nor about how the moon does all its work before dawn
with its snakelike nose.
I want to sleep for half a second,
a second, a minute, a century,
but I want everyone to know that I am still alive,
that I have a golden manger inside my lips,
that I am the little friend of the west wind,
that I am the elephantine shadow of my own tears.
When it's dawn just throw some sort of cloth over me
because I know dawn will toss fistfuls of ants at me,
and pour a little hard water over my shoes
so that the scorpion claws of the dawn will slip off.
Because I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,
and learn a mournful song that will clean all earth away from me,
because I want to live with that shadowy child
who longed to cut his heart open far out at sea.
William Carlos Williams
Transitional
First he said:
It is the woman in us
That makes us write--
Let us acknowledge it--
Man would be silent.
We are not men
Therefore we can speak
And be conscious
(of the two sides)
Unbent by the sensual
As befits accuracy.
I then said:
Dare you make this
Your propaganda?
And he answered:
Am I not I--here?
The Beat Page
The Moon Versus Us Ever Sleeping Together Again - Richard Brautigan
I sit here, an arch-villain of romance,
thinking about you. Gee, I'm sorry
I made you unhappy, but there was nothing
I could do about it because I have to be free.
Perhaps everything would have been different
if you had stayed at the table or asked me
to go out with you to look at the moon,
instead of getting up and leaving me alone with
her.
Jefferson Airplane - Lather
Lather was thirty years old today,
They took away all of his toys.
His mother sent newspaper clippings to him,
About his old friends who'd stopped being boys.
There was Harwitz E. Green, just turned thirty-three,
His leather chair waits at the bank.
And Seargent Dow Jones, twenty-seven years old,
Commanding his very own tank.
But Lather still finds it a nice thing to do,
To lie about nude in the sand,
Drawing pictures of mountains that look like bumps,
And thrashing the air with his hands.
But wait, oh Lather's productive you know,
He produces the finest of sound,
Putting drumsticks on either side of his nose,
Snorting the best licks in town,
But that's all over...
Lather was thirty years old today,
And Lather came foam from his tongue.
He looked at me eyes wide and plainly said,
Is it true that I'm no longer young?
And the children call him famous,
what the old men call insane,
And sometimes he's so nameless,
That he hardly knows which game to play...
Which words to say...
And I should have told him, "No, you're not old."
And I should have let him go on...smiling...babywide.
The Family by Ed Saunders
Denny's Wizard
A TASTE OF RUMI
These spiritual window-shoppers,
who idly ask, ‘How much is that’
Oh, I’m just looking.
They handle a hundred items and put
them down,
shadows with no capital.
What is spent is love and two
eyes wet with weeping.
But these walk into a shop,
and their whole lives pass sud-denly in
that moment,
in that shop.
***
When someone mentions the
gracefulness
of the nightsky, climb up on the roof
and dance and say,
Like this.
If anyone wants to know what
‘spirit’ is,
or what ‘God’s fragrance’ means,
lean your head toward him or her.
Keep your face there close.
Like this.
***
We are as the flute, and the music
in us is from thee;
we are as the mountain and the echo
in us is from thee.
We are as pieces of chess engaged in
victory and defeat:
our victory and defeat is from thee,
O thou whose qualities are comely!
Who are we, O Thou soul of
our souls,
that we should remain in being
beside thee?
***
Make yourself free from self at
one stroke!
Like a sword be without trace
of soft iron;
Like a steel mirror, scour off all
rust with contrition.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Death
Come thou, thou last one, whom I recognize,
unbearable pain throughout this body's fabric:
as I in my spirit burned, see, I now burn in thee:
the wood that long resisted the advancing flames
which thou kept flaring, I now am nourishinig
and burn in thee.
My gentle and mild being through thy ruthless fury
has turned into a raging hell that is not from here.
Quite pure, quite free of future planning, I mounted
the tangled funeral pyre built for my suffering,
so sure of nothing more to buy for future needs,
while in my heart the stored reserves kept silent.
Is it still I, who there past all recognition burn?
Memories I do not seize and bring inside.
O life! O living! O to be outside!
And I in flames. And no one here who knows me.
Gacela of the Dark Death
by Federico García Lorca
Translated by Robert Bly
I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,
I want to get far away from the busyness of the cemeteries.
I want to sleep the sleep of that child
who longed to cut his heart open far out at sea.
I don't want them to tell me again how the corpse keeps all its blood,
how the decaying mouth goes on begging for water.
I'd rather not hear about the torture sessions the grass arranges for
nor about how the moon does all its work before dawn
with its snakelike nose.
I want to sleep for half a second,
a second, a minute, a century,
but I want everyone to know that I am still alive,
that I have a golden manger inside my lips,
that I am the little friend of the west wind,
that I am the elephantine shadow of my own tears.
When it's dawn just throw some sort of cloth over me
because I know dawn will toss fistfuls of ants at me,
and pour a little hard water over my shoes
so that the scorpion claws of the dawn will slip off.
Because I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,
and learn a mournful song that will clean all earth away from me,
because I want to live with that shadowy child
who longed to cut his heart open far out at sea.
William Carlos Williams
Transitional
First he said:
It is the woman in us
That makes us write--
Let us acknowledge it--
Man would be silent.
We are not men
Therefore we can speak
And be conscious
(of the two sides)
Unbent by the sensual
As befits accuracy.
I then said:
Dare you make this
Your propaganda?
And he answered:
Am I not I--here?
The Beat Page
The Moon Versus Us Ever Sleeping Together Again - Richard Brautigan
I sit here, an arch-villain of romance,
thinking about you. Gee, I'm sorry
I made you unhappy, but there was nothing
I could do about it because I have to be free.
Perhaps everything would have been different
if you had stayed at the table or asked me
to go out with you to look at the moon,
instead of getting up and leaving me alone with
her.
Jefferson Airplane - Lather
Lather was thirty years old today,
They took away all of his toys.
His mother sent newspaper clippings to him,
About his old friends who'd stopped being boys.
There was Harwitz E. Green, just turned thirty-three,
His leather chair waits at the bank.
And Seargent Dow Jones, twenty-seven years old,
Commanding his very own tank.
But Lather still finds it a nice thing to do,
To lie about nude in the sand,
Drawing pictures of mountains that look like bumps,
And thrashing the air with his hands.
But wait, oh Lather's productive you know,
He produces the finest of sound,
Putting drumsticks on either side of his nose,
Snorting the best licks in town,
But that's all over...
Lather was thirty years old today,
And Lather came foam from his tongue.
He looked at me eyes wide and plainly said,
Is it true that I'm no longer young?
And the children call him famous,
what the old men call insane,
And sometimes he's so nameless,
That he hardly knows which game to play...
Which words to say...
And I should have told him, "No, you're not old."
And I should have let him go on...smiling...babywide.
The Family by Ed Saunders
Denny's Wizard
Monday, September 17, 2007
Shirley Collins
He's named like my name
“...and no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light” -2 Corinthians 11:14.
Hitler's Pope
Weaving Spiders Come Not Here
Ex Deo Nascimur, in Jesu morimur, per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus.
Ra-Hoor-Khuit hath taken his seat in the East at the Equinox of the Gods
Konx Om Pax
Beginning in childhood, he'd seen how people treated each other and wanted to know the truth of how this had begun and by what tortuous path the world had become what it is. In confusion, he looked everywhere and was led by curiosity to his Guardian Angel. Astra was how he called her, deep within himself. She led him through the outlying lands and in each of the twelve provinces a new part of his soul was purified, and balanced and subtilized. Now a madman noone understood, he was ready for his final test. She seemed to leave. He wandered until he found himself far away lost in the dark night. Before him arose the vicious dragon of all his dishonesty, confusion, and lovelessness, every image by which he had betrayed himself. Feeling completely lost and doomed, he saw the truth and said "I love you and reclaim you and restore you to your proper place." The Dragon dissipated into its elements and each was sent to its proper place, where it would be a jewel. Astra appeared and told him to go forth, heal, and be known as Rasputin.
He's named like my name
“...and no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light” -2 Corinthians 11:14.
Hitler's Pope
Weaving Spiders Come Not Here
Ex Deo Nascimur, in Jesu morimur, per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus.
Ra-Hoor-Khuit hath taken his seat in the East at the Equinox of the Gods
Konx Om Pax
Beginning in childhood, he'd seen how people treated each other and wanted to know the truth of how this had begun and by what tortuous path the world had become what it is. In confusion, he looked everywhere and was led by curiosity to his Guardian Angel. Astra was how he called her, deep within himself. She led him through the outlying lands and in each of the twelve provinces a new part of his soul was purified, and balanced and subtilized. Now a madman noone understood, he was ready for his final test. She seemed to leave. He wandered until he found himself far away lost in the dark night. Before him arose the vicious dragon of all his dishonesty, confusion, and lovelessness, every image by which he had betrayed himself. Feeling completely lost and doomed, he saw the truth and said "I love you and reclaim you and restore you to your proper place." The Dragon dissipated into its elements and each was sent to its proper place, where it would be a jewel. Astra appeared and told him to go forth, heal, and be known as Rasputin.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
poetry submitted to various websites:
*In Fresh Daisies I Swam*
I was duller than the day
but the day grew within me
I broke the butcher's handle
and the sparrow came to sing and sit beside me
my length had grown with the fairness of lit
my quick wit beheld in the fortress of the grace
eucharistic blindness
awaking peter and soloman
saintly salamanders who slither in columns
filing with their bony fingers
sticking stickers onto envelopes
enveloped by the levies
a dreary tangle
down into the shadow maze
the bird sang out of tune
the sand in the throat
it was all away and gone
angel in the pyre
dream season awake and done
all away and gone
give berries to the lord
the present precedent
the French cloth grew long
*In Fresh Daisies I Swam*
I was duller than the day
but the day grew within me
I broke the butcher's handle
and the sparrow came to sing and sit beside me
my length had grown with the fairness of lit
my quick wit beheld in the fortress of the grace
eucharistic blindness
awaking peter and soloman
saintly salamanders who slither in columns
filing with their bony fingers
sticking stickers onto envelopes
enveloped by the levies
a dreary tangle
down into the shadow maze
the bird sang out of tune
the sand in the throat
it was all away and gone
angel in the pyre
dream season awake and done
all away and gone
give berries to the lord
the present precedent
the French cloth grew long
got the new animal collective cd even though i have no money. Auger has a show on WED SEPT 26 at the Funeral Home in Buffalo 366 Ontario St. 8pm $5 with Kelli Shay Hicks and Red Tag Rummage Sale.
and then we're playing at the Death Trap (99 Custer St.) on October 19th.
and then we're playing at the Death Trap (99 Custer St.) on October 19th.
*a tune* going back to saddness again, i thought i wasn't losing my friend, i thought i'd be alone again, like i've been all along, a whispered song, the throat does dance in fire, my tongue like a lilac switch, 
the song of saints, the sinner's swell, the wicked yeast, the ecclipse of days, the tongue of lambs, the goat and frog's eye, a tooth in the buttons, my beautiful friend, 
my song stings the skin, the dream made flesh, the flesh of dreams, the bird of paradise, 
the robin's throat, the song of days gone by, the song's lament, the window gaze, the steeley glaze, the crusty hair, the stamps unlicked, a cache of dreams, the windows tear at the plane, the lead chips are cast, 
russian art minage a tois, the ringing of bells, the handmaiden's hands, the wet nurse's corpse, the corpse of the father and son, the holy ghost, the ghost's hands, the wet hands of the moist ghost, a ghost in wicked fall, seasonal guilt, wicked ghost, autumn hands, wicked guilt, autumn ghost, a skeleton betrayed, an exoskeleton exposed, exquisite jaguar nudity, the jaguar post, reading with jaguar eyes, 
archetypes of western understanding, western brotherhood, why can't the white man be poor? why can't he be sick? why can't he be mellow? why must he be bothersome? why must he be distressed? why does he bite down on his pen cap so hard? why does he inhale the fire water without end? why does he sell his grief to those not fortunate enough to have it for their own? why does the white man eat stake? why can't the white man eat yams? why does the white man wear a tie? why can't he wear nothing? why is he held so delicate in the holy ghost's wicked hands?
the song of saints, the sinner's swell, the wicked yeast, the ecclipse of days, the tongue of lambs, the goat and frog's eye, a tooth in the buttons, my beautiful friend, my song stings the skin, the dream made flesh, the flesh of dreams, the bird of paradise, russian art minage a tois, the ringing of bells, the handmaiden's hands, the wet nurse's corpse, the corpse of the father and son, the holy ghost, the ghost's hands, the wet hands of the moist ghost, a ghost in wicked fall, seasonal guilt, wicked ghost, autumn hands, wicked guilt, autumn ghost, a skeleton betrayed, an exoskeleton exposed, exquisite jaguar nudity, the jaguar post, reading with jaguar eyes, archetypes of western understanding, western brotherhood, why can't the white man be poor? why can't he be sick? why can't he be mellow? why must he be bothersome? why must he be distressed? why does he bite down on his pen cap so hard? why does he inhale the fire water without end? why does he sell his grief to those not fortunate enough to have it for their own? why does the white man eat stake? why can't the white man eat yams? why does the white man wear a tie? why can't he wear nothing? why is he held so delicate in the holy ghost's wicked hands?