How to, Ensare
Lay the trap nicely, firmly, gently,
Know what she likes, bring her
In with the old smell of paper, remind
her of the rustling turning of pages
as she opens, with a pen-knife,
----shhhhhhhreeeeeeeppp-----
through the perforated cardboard,
opens, with both hands, looking
into a womb of dead trees.
Good Morning, Love
The perfect morning greeting is,
When cold water hits warm skin, when
Your warm lips meet my cool face; maybe
When I breathe in deep and you
do the same. I smile,
and the day begins.
I can never forget you; all your feelings for me (I'm not sure if it was love, but it was certainly an affection of some kind) are written in every page of all the books you made me read. Made me read with a vengeance, to keep up with your vociferous knowledge. I wanted to be like you, to be you, devouring, ingesting, nibbling on old paper and new books. I can never ever forget you, because every thing you said to me is inscribed in those books. They are worse than memories, because memories I can bury under dirt, shovel under deep dirty snow and forget that you asked me to read this or that. They stand there, proudly - almost smugly - on my shelves with only a layer of dust sneaking into the crusty old pages, or turning crisp new ones into yellowed history. I cannot forget because these, no matter what, are my favourites, and every time (every single time) I pick them up I feel you, pulsing through the one millimeter lines, threatening to stain my fingertips. As I read and reread, I do not want to, but am forced to, hear your voice reciting out my favourite lines. It's unfair. Why must my most treasured pastime be filled with so much hate, so much regret, so much love?
I continue to read these tortured receptacles of old love. I read them again, and again, and again because I want to believe that with every new reading, I forget yours, and then finally, these books will become me.
best of friends
they wrote letters to each other,
marked "return to sender", because
they knew what the other wrote. understood
that even with the reading and the crying
they would never truly understand; understood
that they were one and the same of the many.
zizek's best friend was slavoj was zizek was slavoj.
COPY CAT, CHASE THE RAT
GO HOME LET YOUR MOTHER SLAP.
FATHER SAY NEVER MIND
BROTHER/SISTER SAY GO AND DIE
Waste Land Limericks
I
In April one seldom feels cheerful;
Dry stones, sun and dust make me fearful;
Clairvoyantes distress me,
Commuters depress me--
Met Stetson and gave him an earful.
II
She sat on a mighty fine chair,
Sparks flew as she tidied her hair;
She asks many questions,
I make few suggestions--
Bad as Albert and Lil--what a pair!
III
The Thames runs, bones rattle, rats creep;
Tiresias fancies a peep--
A typist is laid,
A record is played--
Wei la la. After this it gets deep.
IV
A Phoenician named Phlebas forgot
About birds and his business--the lot,
Which is no surprise,
Since he'd met his demise
And been left in the ocean to rot.
V
No water. Dry rocks and dry throats,
Then thunder, a shower of quotes
From the Sanskrit and Dante.
Da. Damyata. Shantih.
I hope you'll make sense of the notes.
-- Wendy Cope
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And Love itself have rest.
-Lord Byron
Holy Sonnets: Death, be not proud
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
-John Donne
Excerpt from Darkness
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;
Forests were set on fire--but hour by hour
They fell and faded--and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash--and all was black.
-Lord Byron
Leftover Food.
I let, the water run over
flow under and around,
the vegetables in the drainer.
hope that, the flavours will be
washed away.
just like, how I hold my hands
beneath running water,
sitting and wishing that my
flavour, my tart taste will be
muted and rendered unseen.
Remember
That to have the eyes of an artist,
That can be enough,
The ear of a poet,
That can be enough.
The soul of a human
just pointed
in the direction of the divine,
that can be more than enough.
I tell you this to remind myself.
Every gesture is an act of creation.
Even empty spaces and silence
can be the wings and voices of angels.
- Michele Linfante
By Maya Angelou (who is one of my favourite contemporary poets)
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
stop en
trap ping
our souls
in between four
walls letting
words force
us into
small spaces.
let me, and
my world, overflo
w.
to a dead lion (hanging on my wall, or lying on the floor)
I dresssed you in wit; placed
some sort of intrinsic value in
you.
I gave you shoes too big; made
you socks too tight (your bony feet
looked horrible -- gaunt -- in them).
I brushed until you shone; glowing
with your own self-imbued glory and
my foolish belief that you had no teeth.
O, but they were sharp. You tooled
me, secretly building up a false lustre upon my work.
I took off that mantle I gave you, along
with the badges that came along with it: Lance Corporal (Intelligence),
Private (Charm), Sergeant (Breaking and Entering).
ideal ideal
What I look for in a man: brown
nearly black eyes that only
look at me and those quaint
bits of knick-knacks by the window.
Buy them for me: magnetic milkcartons,
petulant pins; take pleasure in
presenting me with precious things and
enjoy receiving them in return. glow, when you
see sturdy wooden shelves, weathered through
love and aged with use. smile, when you
notice that small rocking lamb with frayed tail
edges.
You take delight in the study of light, the musty eeriness of the
darkroom; you bathe in the yellowed pages of
leatherbound books, words are your soap and you lather them
they rise up as bubbles, and I gather them one by
one by one by one. The rhythm of drums and bass, we revel in
the songs of tomorrow, lounging like lizards (i do hate them so) and you
sing soft verses that only I can hear.
You will, you would, you could find me waiting here as I walk slowly,
catching glimpses of you in everyone, but still not finding any one. Will you,
your books, your music, your eye for the serene and beautiful,
catch me before I fall off the
edge?
Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime...
But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near,
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
- Andrew Marvell, 1621 – 1678
But how should I avoid to be her slave,
Whose subtle art invisibly can wreath
My fetters of the very air I breath?
- Andrew Marvell, 1621 – 1678
IT is bleeding with a lust for life
As something emerges from you,
"Born to the world" it says, and crys
a babel of languages, a song of woe
in a multiplicate desert where the rain
evaporates before it hits the ground.
IT is bleeding with a lust for life
As it rolls out from your mouth, spills
from your veins and onto paper, everyw
here, on the sheets and tables,
on the blessed ground - sand and grass.
IT is bleeding, bleeding with such a want to live again,
That it cannot bear being alive
it must die
or it shall never feel that desire, that immense
longing to live again if it were but not
six feet beneath the froth of the sea.
IT is bleeding, it has bled for that
Lovely, longing, lust for life
that nothing remains.
not a skeleton of bones,
nor a thread of hair that marks
something which was once there:
an idea,
a thought;
unfamiliar phenomenon.
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phrotus!!! (over in this side of the world!)a conditioner of air, which drips
water to the steady beat of background beats (drums, syncopation)
a lustrous, velveteen voice singing over the frantic
clip-clops of keys being pressed into crevices.
i am, deaf to the world, ears cupped in softness,
before me is only light. light jumping out from screens,
creeping behind shaded plastic, peeking shyly out from under
curtains.
because i want to feel something tac-tile beneath my fingers,
to see something materialize out of otherwise blank (sometimes lined) space,
to hear something other than loneliness skipping towards me with its
moonsmile, to taste air that is cold and piercing, to smell
burnt radiator fluids, churning in an labyrinth of wires and electric pulses.
"My road is beyond the blue sky;
The clouds never make any commotion.
In this world there is a tree without any roots;
Its yellow leaves send back the wind."
- Sozan
[his dying words]
The very air
(Faith Reason)
but we tire of spirit sight
striving always for elsewhere as we are
so much among phenomena God
loses luster where we are local only inured
to detail starting small with grasses
flowers then trees we don't know nor rocks
days to recite the names of them all
seems heaven enough to us because what is
language that "categories of thought
embodied in individual living forms" thread through us
& things equally —matter a sidereal charity
& doesn't it bract doesn't it sepal & send seed splitting sheath
into soil doesn't our flesh the very fossils tremble bedrock
Brian Teare
somebody told me;;
that life was spread out in a million miles of paper
trails from one end to the next, in a flash of bygone texts
mses, messages that spring forth from an wavering river
of flickering data packets.
if this is life, would i want to hold it (hold you) in my hand?
soft, hardened, feint veins of being, all encompassing,
four walls of flesh
on bzztbzztbzztbarely there feelings and intonations.
if this is life, pull the plug, i no
longer want to be surrounded by reams,
tightened at the seams, it is
suffocating, undulating.
wrap in a fantasy, me, i long for no
multiple meanings, duly constructed readings.
give me something not made from LED light,
(please pull the plug, drain me off my battery)
it, five centimeters per second. (just like the amount of time, to read this line)
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timeasmymeasure
