It's Juice Runs Through the Streets

[scimiotix.livejournal.com]

Ode To Tomatoes

The street
filled with tomatoes,
midday,
summer,
light is
halved
like
a
tomato,
its juice
runs
through the streets.
In December,
unabated,
the tomato
invades
the kitchen,
it enters at lunchtime,
takes
its ease
on countertops,
among glasses,
butter dishes,
blue saltcellars.
It sheds
its own light,
benign majesty.
Unfortunately, we must
murder it:
the knife
sinks
into living flesh,
red
viscera
a cool
sun,
profound,
inexhaustible,
populates the salads
of Chile,
happily, it is wed
to the clear onion,
and to celebrate the union
we
pour
oil,
essential
child of the olive,
onto its halved hemispheres,
pepper
adds
its fragrance,
salt, its magnetism;
it is the wedding
of the day,
parsley
hoists
its flag,
potatoes
bubble vigorously,
the aroma
of the roast
knocks
at the door,
it's time!
come on!
and, on
the table, at the midpoint
of summer,
the tomato,
star of earth, recurrent
and fertile
star,
displays
its convolutions,
its canals,
its remarkable amplitude
and abundance,
no pit,
no husk,
no leaves or thorns,
the tomato offers
its gift
of fiery color
and cool completeness.

-Neruda

Carl Dennis, "The God Who Loves You"

[lunar-endeavor.livejournal.com]

It must be troubling for the god who loves you
To ponder how much happier you'd be today
Had you been granted his powers of understanding.
It must be painful for him to watch you on Friday evenings
Driving home from the office, content with your week—
Three fine houses sold to deserving families—
Knowing as he does exactly what would have happened
Had you gone to your second choice for college.
Knowing the course in art you'd have chosen by chance
To fill the distribution requirement
That would have kindled in you a life-long passion.
A life thirty points above the life you're living
On any scale of satisfaction. And every point
A thorn in the side of the god who loves you.
You don't want that, a large-souled man like you
Who tries to withhold from your wife the day's disappointments
So she can save her empathy for the children.
And would you want this god to compare your wife
With the woman you were destined to meet on the other campus?
It hurts you to think of him ranking the conversation
You'd have enjoyed over there higher in insight
Than the conversation you're used to.
And think how this loving god would feel
Knowing that the man next in line for your wife
Would have pleased her more than you ever have
Even on your best days, when you've really tried.
Can you sleep at night believing a god like that
Is pacing his cloudy bedroom, harassed by alternatives
You're spared by ignorance? The difference between what is
And what could have been will remain alive for him
Even after you cease existing, after you catch a chill
Running out in the snow for the morning paper,
Losing eleven years that the god who loves you
Will feel compelled to imagine scene by scene
Unless you come to the rescue by imagining him
No wiser than you are, no god at all, only a friend
No closer than the actual friend you made at college,
The one you haven't written in weeks. Why not sit down
Tonight and collect your thoughts.

How should you say it's going, the life you've chosen?

SEVEN POEMS, VII

[dinnerateight.livejournal.com]

who knows if the moon's
a balloon,coming out of a keen city
in the sky--filled with pretty people?
(and if you and i should

get into it,if they
should take me and take you into their balloon,
why then
we'd go up higher with all the pretty people

than houses and steeples and clouds:
go sailing
away and away sailing into a keen
city which nobody's ever visited,where

always
       it's
            Spring)and everyone's
in love and flowers pick themselves

-e.e. cummings, 1925

Hi!

[earth2mother.livejournal.com]

New here. Just thought I'd post this here. It's my favorite from Shakespeare.

Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patens of bright gold.
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;
Such harmony is in immortal souls,
But whilst this muddy vesture decay
Both grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
- The Merchant of Venice (Lorenzo at V, i)

Novel by Arthur Rimbaud

[dylanesque.livejournal.com]

I.

No one's serious at seventeen.
--On beautiful nights when beer and lemonade
And loud, blinding cafés are the last thing you need
--You stroll beneath green lindens on the promenade.

Lindens smell fine on fine June nights!
Sometimes the air is so sweet that you close your eyes;
The wind brings sounds--the town is near--
And carries scents of vineyards and beer. . .

( &Continue )

*Note - I've recently turned 17. (January 26) and this poem makes me wish for summer!

(no subject)

[atzbacher.livejournal.com]

FRACTIONAL CODE

(my) tiny responsible sex-animal
(my) tiny dreamy sex-animal
(my) tiny hopeless sex-animal
I'm leaving, I'm leaving, I'm leaving for
those horrible golden-islands of which
I was telling you over the pillow, under the blanket, across
(your) hopeless responsible dreamattress
I'm leaving
for the final crucial meeting with several high-ranking monsters,
who have been suspended from their ancient posts at some of
China-wall's frontgates (not mine)
I'm leaving, and nothing more can
keep me here (I)
tiny resposinble, sex-animal, tiny
dreamy sex-animal, tiny
hopeless sex-animal
my own (your own)



-David Avidan