(no subject)

[silverflurry.livejournal.com]

Necessity

John Clare
wrote poems
on scraps
of paper,

erased them
with bread
he ate
afterwards.

When he ran
out of scraps
he wrote
in his hat.

When he ran
out of bread
he ate
grass.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Harrison, Jeffrey. Feeding the Fire. (Sarabande Books - 2001).

request

[cepebpo.livejournal.com]

well, i have a request. don't know if we're really allowed, but i thought i would anyway. (I keep my bed with the maintainer of this community.)

Anyway, i would like to find a poem that is about a good-bye. not in a romantic way, but more platonic. if you have any ideas, please post them in comments or email them to me. i appreciate it.

thank you.

From "Words in Mourning Time"

[watashi.livejournal.com]

VII
voice in the wilderness

Know that love has chosen you
to live his crucial purposes.
Know that love has chosen you.

And will not pamper you nor spare;
demands obedience to all
the rigorous laws of risk,
does not pamper, will not spare.

Oh, master now love's instruments--
complex and not for the fearful,
simple and not for the foolish.
Master now love's instruments.

I who love you tell you this,
even as the pitiful killer waits for me,
I who love you tell you this.

-Robert Hayden

The Poem as Mask

[watashi.livejournal.com]

"The Poem as Mask"

When I wrote of the women in their dances and wildness, it was a mask,
on their mountain, god-hunting, singing, in orgy,
it was a mask; when I wrote of the god,
fragmented, exiled from himself, his life, the love gone down with song,
it was myself, split open, unable to speak, in exile from myself.

There is no mountain, there is no god, there is memory
of my torn life, myself split open in sleep, the rescued child
beside me among the doctors, and a word
of rescue from the great eyes.

No more masks! No more mythologies!

Now, for the first time, the god lifts his hand,
the fragments join in me with their own music.

-Muriel Rukeyser