The Jabberwocky

[onyxblue1.livejournal.com]

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

( To the tree! To the tree! )

Jill, Afterwards by Philip Dacey

[historyproject.livejournal.com]

He had this idea about the hill,
How at the top there would be water
Sweeter than any in any pail
Lugged previously, and to come down
Would be the easiest part of all.
I told him it was a kids' story.

Before I had knockers that story
Was making the rounds in my gang. Hell,
We laughed at it even then. We all
Knew better than to think sweet water
Could be had for the price of a pail
And a little legwork up and down

A hill that had been standing there, dawn
To dreary dawn, our whole life's story
Long. Not to mention the probabil-
ity such a thing as sweet water,
Hill or no hill, didn't exist. I'll
Give him credit for this, though: a wall

Couldn't have been more stubborn. He'd call
Me late at night even, to break down
My resistance. Okay, I said, I'll
Go. The truth is, he was cute. Starry-
eyed but cute. And I wondered whether
He had anything in his pants. Pale

Dawn found us taking turns with the pail
As we rose above the town. Not all
The money down there beats the water
We'll find, he said. Now I was poor, down
To a few bucks. It's no mystery
Money talks. Loud. But I climbed the hill.

To the top. And there was this big hole.
And deep. I got dizzy to look down
It. He had rope and let the pail fall
Yards and yards. 'Got something, he yelled, pull-
ing the catch in. Later the story
He told, back in town, was the water

Spilled out. But the fact of the matter
Is I saw what he had. Nothing. Damn
If he didn't claim different, though. Al-
ways. Damn, too, if his pants weren't full.
I've got these kids to prove that story.
When they whine, I tell them: climb a hill.

i miss this community.

[natelyswhore.livejournal.com]

i've started school and i've been oh-so-busy -- unfortunately livejournal is splayed out on the chopping block of expendable activities. it's a shame; i love this community.

this is a poem i picked out to read to my literary editing and publishing class:

Let Me Remind You
You Are Still Under Oath


Out of marsh out of the bronchial
tree limbs out of low clouds
we grow up to be President, we emerge
as nurses or green grocers or red lips
waiting for a cigarette. From the lagoon
beside the postcard meadow under elk-
antlered skies we are raised to a flame
in a streetlight. Arterial dust mites.
A gnat's death banged out by the New York Times.

From the Why-hast-thou
and the We'll-be-back-soon, through
siren wail and bird call
we step up with our sticks
and stigmatas, our forged
documents. We mature
into the foxtrot and cha-cha-cha.

Past the Dead End and Deaf Child signs
and out of the valley's huge cowbells
we evolve as hammers chisels
sprung traps. We ring up the Colonels of Parks
who call friends who've just dredged
the Erie Canal and are en route
to zip open Panama but can meet us
for a moment with our paper sacks
and pitchforks. They accept our potatoes.

From woodlands. From bobcat bellies. Over
downed fences. Out of ashes and owl eyes shining
we are passed on with a B-
by Mr. and Mrs. God in plaid kilts.
The unhinged eye of the compass spins
and we migrate: first fern, first night's first dream the first fathers
suffered: the flower expelling its seed.

We step over the wires, and still keeping taut
the thread of a kindly folksong, we arrive
at an age to shoot the last crows
behind the slumped barn. We're the Presidents
the Colonels have called
and our voices shouting What? What? What?
fill the forest of felled trees.


Nance Van Winckel

sylvia plath & frieda hughes

[ex-lifeofawo188.livejournal.com]

( Daddy by Sylvia Plath )

( Readers by Frieda Hughes )

Pablo Neruda...

[mishubaboolz.livejournal.com]

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

Well, now that he's off the shelf...

[degram.livejournal.com]

Some Beasts

It was early twilight of the iguana.

From his rainbow-crested ridging
his tongue sank like a dart
into the mulch,
the monastic ant-heap was melodiously
teeming in the undergrowth,
the guanaco, rarified as oxygen
up among the cloud-plains,
wore gold-flecked boots,
while the llama opened candid
wide eyes in the delicacy
of a wrold filled with dew.
The monkeys wove a thread
interminably erotic
along the banks of dawn,
demolishing walls of pollen
and flushing the violet flight
of the butterflies from Buga.
It was night of the alligators,
pure and pulsating night
of snouts about the ooze
and from over the sleep-drenched bogs
a dull sound of armour
fell back upon the original earth.

The jaguar touches the leaves
with his phosphorescent absence,
the puma runs on the foliage
like all-consuming flame
and in him burn
the alcoholic eyes of the jungle.

The badgers scratch the river's
feet, scenting out the nest
whose throbbing delight
they'll assail red-toothed.

And in the deeps of great water
the giant anaconda lies
like the circle of the earth,
covered in ritual mud,
devouring and religious.

-P.N.