(no subject)

[redheartleaf.livejournal.com]

Still Here


I been scared and battered.
My hopes the wind done scattered.
Snow has friz me,
Sun has baked me,

Looks like between 'em they done
Tried to make me

Stop laughin', stop lovin', stop livin'--
But I don't care!
I'm still here!


Hughes, Langston.

Langston Hughes (1902-1967) was born James Langston Hughes in
Joplin, Missouri. Hughes began writing poetry in the eighth
grade, and was selected as "class poet." His father, however,
didn't think poetry was a practical career choice and paid
tuition for Hughes to attend Columbia University on the
condition that he study engineering. After a short time, Langston
dropped out of the program and continued writing poetry. His
first published poem, appearing in 1921, was "The Negro Speaks of
Rivers".

Hughes traveled to Harlem, New York, in 1924, the period known as
the Harlem Renaissance. In 1925 he moved to Washington, D.C., and
continued to spend time visiting blues and jazz clubs. He
returned to Harlem in 1926 and became an important voice for
African-Americans.

Hughes was a prolific writer, producing sixteen books of poems as
well as novels, short story collections, plays, children's
poetry, musicals and operas, autobiographies, and dozens of
magazine articles.

Langston Hughes died of cancer in 1967. His residence at 20 East
127th Street in Harlem, New York has been given landmark status
by the New York City Preservation Commission.

(no subject)

[redheartleaf.livejournal.com]

So the dark figure


So the dark figure falls
backward, arms out and
eyes wide, through the purple

door to another
world. No hint had
been given him

that he would be called
upon and taken
into this painting.


Palmer, Michael. The Lion Bridge: Selected Poems 1972-1995.
(New Directions - 1998).

Michael Palmer (1943- ) is a contemporary American poet known for
his unusual syntax and striking imagery. Born in New York City,
he attended Harvard University. Following graduation, he spent
some time in Europe before settling in San Francisco. Palmer's
poems have been translated into several languages and he has won
numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Pen
Center West Poetry Award.

"Ash Wednesday" by T. S. Eliot

[desolateangel83.livejournal.com]

( Because I do not hope to turn again )

Campbell McGrath

[arielblue.livejournal.com]

The Human Heart

We construct it from tin and ambergris and clay,
   ochre, graph paper, a funnel
   of ghosts, whirlpool
in a downspout full of midsummer rain.

It is, for all its freedom and obstinance,
   an artifact of human agency
   in its maverick intricacy,
its chaos reflected in earthly circumstance,

its appetites mirrored by a hungry world
   like the lights of the casino
   in the coyote's eye. Old
as the odor of almonds in the hills around Solano,

filigreed and chancelled with flavor of blood oranges,
   fashioned from moonlight,
   yarn, nacre, cordite,
shaped and assembled valve by valve, flange by flange,

and finished with the carnal fire of interstellar dust.
   We build the human heart
   and lock it in its chest
and hope that what we have made can save us. 

---Campbell McGrath
   from Pax Atomica (Ecco, 2004)

Truth About Love - Bob Hicok

[orneryhipster.livejournal.com]

I apologize for not being Gandhi or Tom
           the mailman who is always kind.

He makes his way every day no matter
           the mood of the sky with our words

in a sack and Gandhi made the English
           give India back without

taking a gun for a wife. My contribution
           to the common good is playing

with the alphabet in a little room
           while the world goes foraging

for food. I'm a better poet than man
           and it's well known how little

my verbs are worth. I am my only subject,
           being the god of my horizons.

What saves me is that just beyond my skin
           the world of yours is where

I'd rather live. The AMA says you've added
           seven point six years to my life.

In a phrase, love is a transfer of wealth.
           This is why Adam Smith gave up

romantic verse. In trying to say what can't 
           be said I'll take the Dragnet

approach. Just the facts. I'd be dead
           sooner without you, you'll die faster

for being a Mrs., raw deal can't be more
           clearly defined. To make amends

I offer ten percent more kisses each year.
           Or do I do more harm the closer

we become? If yes, leaving would be love
           and a better man might. But my thrills

are selfishly domestic. I like sweeping words
           into piles and whispering good night.

Six Years Later - Joseph Brodsky

[uberjkim.livejournal.com]

Six Years Later
- Joseph Brodsky
(translated by Richard Wilbur)


So long had life together been that now
the second of January fell again
on Tuesday, making her astonished brow
lift like a windshield wiper in the rain,
so that her misty sadness cleared, and showed
a cloudless distance waiting up the road.

So long had life together been that once
the snow began to fall, it seemed unending;
that, lest the flakes should make her eyelids wince,
I'd shield them with my hand, and they, pretending
not to believe that cherishing of eyes,
would beat against my palm like butterflies.

So alien had all novelty become
that sleep's entanglements would put to shame
whatever depths the analysts might plumb;
that when my lips blew out the candle flame,
her lips, fluttering from my shoulder, sought
to join my own, without another thought.

So long had life together been that all
that tattered brood of papered roses went,
and a whole birch grove grew upon the wall,
and we had money, by some accident,
and tonguelike on the sea, for thirty days,
the sunset threatened Turkey with its blaze.

So long had life together been without
books, chairs, utensils --- only that ancient bed ---
that the triangle, before it came about,
had been a perpendicular, the head
of some acquaintance hovering above
two points which had been coalesced by love.

So long had life together been that she
and I, with our joint shadows, had composed
a double door, a door which, even if we
were lost in work or sleep, was always closed:
somehow its halves were split and we went right
through them into the future, into night.

Darkness by Lord Byron

[whatifitsdead.livejournal.com]

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
( . )