(no subject)

[dontevertouchme.livejournal.com]

384
John Berryman

The marker slants, flowerless, day's almost done,
I stand above my father's grave with rage,
often, often before
I've made this awful pilgrimage to one
who cannot visit me, who tore his page
out: I come back for more,

I spit upon this dreadful banker's grave
who shot his heart out in a Florida dawn
O ho alas alas
When will indifference come, I moan & rave
I'd like to scrabble till I got right down
away down under the grass

and ax the casket open ha to see
just how he's taking it, which he sought so hard
we'll tear apart the mouldering grave clothes ha & then Henry
will heft the ax once more, his final card,
and fell it on the start.

(from His Toy, His Dream, His Rest)

"In My Blood Desire" by Rachel Eshed

[davidfcooper.livejournal.com]

In My Blood, Desire

1

I'll enter the lions' den with you
when you subdue them and place them as a gift at my feet.
We'll lie on green meadows,
burning like a heat wave, like night
perfume, never
bound to each other,
except in bonds of love.

2

I say "of human bondage"
meaning your body in mine,
the sweet boiling seed,
vanilla sugar I gather
to my breast
in night's lair and day's startled light.

3

Who is equal to our love,
what equals it?
Boiling lava at the mouth of
rising rivers--take cover
because I've come to capture
the proud stag
by its antlers.

4

Vanity of vanities, all is vanity
except your mouth's breath on mine
which almost expired before you reached
it
and the cathartic agony pleases
me
because here without sin,
pure minded, I knocked
on your door
and there you were.

5

Because there's no other name but love,
the tiger takes the tigress
as ever;
giant canyons taper
to a calm lake awakening;
in the salt marsh the reed quivers,
in my blood, desire.

6

Give me the pillar of fire,
sweeter than marijuana, than hashish,
to tatoo in my flesh
as a mark of addictive love.

(From Little Promises by Rachel Eshed (Bay City, MI: Mayapple Press, 2006)

(no subject)

[blue-thundering.livejournal.com]

Museum Guard
David Hernandez

My condolences to the man dressed
for a funeral, sitting bored
on a gray folding chair, the zero

of his mouth widening in a yawn.
No doubt he's pictured himself inside
a painting or two around his station,

stealing a plump green grape
from the cluster hanging above
the corkscrew locks of Dionysus,

or shooting arrows at rosy-cheeked cherubs
hiding behind a woolly cloud.
With time limping along

like a Bruegel beggar, no doubt
he's even seen himself taking the place
of the one crucified: the black spike

of the minute hand piercing his left palm,
the hour hand penetrating the right,
nailed forever to one spot.

Charles Baudelaire: The Sick Muse (two translations)

[darlingmalivi.livejournal.com]

trans. F.P. Sturm

Poor Muse, alas, what ails thee, then, today?
Thy hollow eyes with midnight visions burn,
Upon thy brow in alternation play,
Madness and Horror, cold and taciturn.

Have the green lemur and goblin red,
Poured on thee love and terror from their urn?
Or with despotic hand the nightmare dread
Deep plunged thee in some fabulous Minturne?

Would that thy breast, where so deep thoughts arise,
Breathed forth a healthful perfume with thy sighs;
Would that thy Christian blood ran by wave by wave

In rhythmic sounds the antique numbers gave,
When Phoebus shared his alternating reign
With mighty Pan, lord of the ripening grain.

trans. William A. Sigler

My impoverished muse, alas! What have you for me this morning?
Your empty eyes are stocked with nocturnal visions,
In your cheek's cold and taciturn reflection,
I see insanity and horror forming.
The green succubus and the red urchin,
Have they poured you fear and love from their urns?
The nightmare of a mutinous fist that despotically turns,
Does it drown you at the bottom of a loch beyond searching?

I wish that your breast exhaled the scent of sanity,
That your womb of thought was not a tomb more frequently
And that your Christian blood flowed around a buoy that was rhythmical,

Like the numberless sounds of antique syllables,
Where reigns in turn the father of songs,
Phoebus, and the great Pan, the harvest sovereign.

Reassurance

[keonaa.livejournal.com]

I must love the questions
themselves
as Rilke said
like locked rooms
full of treasure
to which my blind
and groping key
does not yet fit.

and await the answers
as unsealed
letters
mailed with dubious intent
and written in a very foreign
tongue.

and in the hourly making
of myself
no thought of Time
to force, to squeeze
the space
I grow into.

~Alice Walker (Revolutionary Petunias)