Edgar Lee Masters - George Gray

[gl-oriana.livejournal.com]

I have studied many times
The marble which was chiseled for me—
A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor.
In truth it pictures not my destination
But my life.
For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment;
Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid;
Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances.
Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life.
And now I know that we must lift the sail
And catch the winds of destiny
Wherever they drive the boat.
To put meaning in one’s life may end in madness,
But life without meaning is the torture
Of restlessness and vague desire—
It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.

D.A. Powell

[arielblue.livejournal.com]

[morning broke on my cabin inverted. tempest in my forehead] 

           The Poseidon Adventure (1972, Ronald Neame, dir.) 

morning broke on my cabin inverted. tempest in my forehead
fine kettle of fish, I'd tell myself, could I have pinpointed the date


marked SERO-CONVERSION in my pocket gregorian calendar. [a guess?
sometime between the day lady day died and the day lady di died]


my lymphocyte is no gillyflower. respiration no nightingale trilling in the dark
to those who hear crickets in sputum and the nightwind rasping in breath


I say: there is no positive in being positive. all that glitters is glitter


and so we have...                                         the climb:


first, think of all that can be jettisoned. cumbersome clothes for example
[always the one thing I'd think of doing without] when I was young


in borrowed 501s: had to have pants so someone could want to get in them
without boxers for weeks I could make do. not beyond wearing slinky panties


if the occasion arose. some drunk hetro plying me with schnapps: dress up, doll
what lies did he tell himself, biting his way down to that brass propeller shaft



also abandoned: retiring to miami [though I won't miss the guns or snakes]
or tel aviv [though I wouldn't miss the vipers. or the snipers]


dreams of a hot husband in a hot tub who'd complain “honey, I shrunk my kids”
and drink fresca all day & rub my feet. dreams of growing cantankerously old


shouting down the drainspout at a neighbor's brats. clipping my ruby begonias
haggling over the price of nectarines at the pick 'n pack 'n scrimp 'n save



but climbing always: as up the trellis and overshrouding the eaves, wisteria
spreads in clusters of carcinoma-colored bells. cascading epithelial light


up the spiral staircase of recombinant chromosomes. no one wants these genes
the double helix that swam through treacherous night: aching to be held again


you couldn't know the disaster this voyage has been. the shvimen, the shvitzen 
yard by yard the little deaths accrued [imagine your twin towers over and over and]


out: that glorious sky darkly hung with newspaper lanterns. scalpel-shaped chimes


—what am I meaning to tell in this cramped space? bubble suspended in glass—


the reckoning beyond this cargo hold. dear god, who hears the pounding on the hull



D.A. Powell
from Cocktails

to be kissed by Marty McConnell

[dirtygirl687.livejournal.com]

if honeysuckle were skin it would smell like me
but I am seawater
and cloud-dust on your tongue --
my mother's luminous shadow, father's
fallow orbit, I sweat medicine
and the fears of women whose desperate acts of faith
earned them fading places in forgotten albums
in Oklahoma City and Galva,
the excesses of men with my
saber tongue, my persistent thirsts
(I never wear lipstick,
always expecting to be kissed)
touch me -- my back new asphalt
under bike tires, my hands half chalice
half dare -- know
that I have known this body twenty-nine years,
loved myself through awkwardness and aging,
in the backs of cabs and the beds of strangers
loved myself out of doubt  
out of stubbornness      out of the delusions
that tie us weeping and dazed
to those who never claimed
to love us

I forged this body from starch
and fury, prisms and hymns and I am not
only beautiful dressed and I am not
only beautiful naked / I'm the sum
of every whisper, every whistle,
every mouthful of blood and honey
and if honey were blood it would run
like this: thick and steady / viscous
and telling / taste me, iron
and lava / smell me . I reek of nights
purposely alone with the stars,
of impatience corseted with faith
more breakable than whalebone / I live
on the ledges of fingerprints / my children
will carry dictionaries on their hips
and envy the ignorant / I've said
this before and will again / listen
to the quickbreaths between blinks
can you hear my heart beating sideways?
I shimmy     quiver     shriek
laugh in bathtubs      cry on streetcorners
I'm only trying to convince myself
I am not afraid

www.martymcconnell.com

Crucifixion

[surfacebirds.livejournal.com]

Had I been there that cruel day
When Jesus hung upon the cross,
I would have shouted loud the shame
And fought with no regard for loss.

But let me think- was it today
A name was slandered in our town,
When I stood by nor raised a hand
To put the smooth-tongued liars down?

Had I been there I might have watched
With mute consent the dark hours through...
Forgive me, Lord, for worse than they
I kill and know well what I do.

Written by: Carl S. Weist.

Charles Bukowski, Something For The Touts, The Nuns, The Grocery Clerks, And You . . .

[spiritualorchid.livejournal.com]

we have everything and we have nothing
and some men do it in churches
and some men do it by tearing butterflies
in half
and some men do it in Palm Springs
laying it into butterblondes
with Cadillac souls
Cadillacs and butterflies
nothing and everything,
the face melting down to the last puff
in a cellar in Corpus Christi.
there's something for the touts, the nuns,
the grocery clerks and you . . .
something at 8 a.m., something in the library
something in the river,
everything and nothing.
in the slaughterhouse it comes running along
the ceiling on a hook, and you swing it --
one
two
three
and then you've got it, $200 worth of dead
meat, its bones against your bones
something and nothing.
it's always early enough to die and
it's always too late,
and the drill of blood in the basin white
it tells you nothing at all
and the gravediggers playing poker over
5 a.m. coffee, waiting for the grass
to dismiss the frost . . .
they tell you nothing at all.

( we have everything and we have nothing -- )

</lj-cut

Carl Sandburg . Bricklayer Love

[insidiousintent.livejournal.com]

I thought of killing myself because I am only a bricklayer
and you a woman who loves the man who runs a drug store.

I don’t care like I used to; I lay bricks straighter than I
used to and I sing slower handling the trowel afternoons.

When the sun is in my eyes and the ladders are shaky and the
mortar boards go wrong, I think of you.