Purdah by Sylvia Plath

[nupurjn.livejournal.com]

( A woman whose hues were universal, despite the detail she observed in the specifities of the contexts she wrote about.)

Jade --
Stone of the side,
The antagonized

Side of green Adam, I
Smile, cross-legged,
Enigmatical,

Shifting my clarities.
So valuable!
How the sun polishes this shoulder!

And should
The moon, my
Indefatigable cousin

Rise, with her cancerous pallors,
Dragging trees --
Little bushy polyps,

Little nets,
My visibilities hide.
I gleam like a mirror.

At this facet the bridegroom arrives
Lord of the mirrors!
It is himself he guides

In among these silk
Screens, these rustling appurtenances.
I breathe, and the mouth

Veil stirs its curtain
My eye
Veil is

A concatenation of rainbows.
I am his.
Even in his

Absence, I
Revolve in my
Sheath of impossibles,

Priceless and quiet
Among these parrakeets, macaws!
O chatterers

Attendants of the eyelash!
I shall unloose
One feather, like the peacock.

Attendants of the lip!
I shall unloose
One note

Shattering
The chandelier
Of air that all day flies

Its crystals
A million ignorants.
Attendants!

Attendants!
And at his next step
I shall unloose

I shall unloose --
From the small jeweled
Doll he guards like a heart --

The lioness,
The shriek in the bath,
The cloak of holes.

from Jamaica Woman: An Anthology of Poems, 1980

[youfuckingbitch.livejournal.com]

The Roots-man

On campus
they say he's
proceleusmatic.
Word word!
he likes it
and strikes the pose:
clothes like Nyerere,
guerilla cap,
pin-ups of Mao, Mau-Mau,
and a slogan-
watch, snoop, cool it,
when the time is ripe
we'll swipe.

In town
they say he's
charismatic:
Comrades, who is robbing you?
Who who who?
And you, black woman woman,
stand behind your man,
build your black man.

Black in his rebel roost
he's strangely subdued,
a red-haired woman rules the roost.
Her mistress-of-the-manor style
put to use
on servants, decor:
porcelain from Europe's salons
deck zebra skin tom-toms-
culture amalgamation-
she explains

He calls her his Union Jack
she calls him her black.
But when he's wracked
with rebel rage
she purrs, tiger in my cage,
when he nightly prays
to fix just that one imperialist,
when he struggles with that there flag,
she goads, fakir-nigger


- dorothea edmondson

Haven't posted here in a while...

[cabaiste84.livejournal.com]

Allow me to share one of my faves:

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T.S Elliot


S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.


LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

( Keep going... )

Awesome, innit?!