Makarand

[thechasingiamb.livejournal.com]

Take my shirt off
and go in there to do the puja?
No thanks.

Not me.
But you go right ahead
if that is what you want to do.

Give me the matchbox
before you go,
will you?

I will be out in the courtyard
where no one will mind it
if I smoke.

Arun Kolatkar

Romance

[childecleon.livejournal.com]

I
When you are seventeen you aren't really serious.
- One fine evening, you've had enough of beer and lemonade,
And the rowdy cafes with their dazzling lights!
- You go walking beneath the green lime trees of the promenade.

The lime trees smell good on fine evenings in June!
The air is so soft sometimes, you close your eyelids;
The wind, full of sounds, - the town's not far away -
Carries odours of vines, and odours of beer...
( Read more... )

-Arthur Rimbaud.
--Translated by Oliver Bernard.

Birthday request

[faith-less-one.livejournal.com]

It's my best (known-her-since-we-were-babies) friend's 18th birthday in two weeks. As part of her present, I want a poem, to print out and decorate and frame all nicely. If I could write anything but your run-of-the-mill dark depressed teenage whining, I'd write something myself, but I'm hopeless.

So, I turn to you, o holders of the poetry knowledge. I'm looking for something about overcoming adversity, or friendship, or something along those lines.

Thank you so much.

How Could You Ever Be Fine by Stephen Dobyns

[starzindanite.livejournal.com]

I dreamt last night I heard someone speak your name,
two women were talking about you and I went to them
and asked about you and they gave me your number.
So I called you and we talked and you said
you were fine, and I doubted it was really you,
because how could you ever be fine? What have
twenty years done to you? Where are you now?
You had the smoothest skin, a face like a beautiful
wax figure as you moved from one messed-up man
to another. There was one who used to shoot up
Jack Daniel’s, and when I told him that was stupid,
he said, That’s right, I’m stupid, I’m really stupid,
somebody should kill me! Until I said it actually
wasn’t so stupid just to calm him. But all those men
who hit you and abused you and how you explained
they must have been right or else they wouldn’t
have done it. I was too tame, didn’t stick myself
with pins or know the names for all the drugs,
and had a vague idea of what I wanted to do
next week, next year. You would listen with one
black eye swollen half shut, then go back to the guy
who had done it so he could blacken the other.

( Read more... )

Anonymous, "Shih Ching"

[the-grynne.livejournal.com]

The Shih Ching, meaning “Classic of Poetry,” is the earliest anthology of Chinese poetry and is thought to have been compiled by Confucius. The collection contains 305 poems from the Western Chou Dynasty, which was from about 1122 to 771 BC, and a few other poems. (Encyclopaedia Britannica)



from the SHIH CHING


26
Cypress Skiff

Afloat in this skiff of cypress wood,
afloat upon the flow...
Aflame, aflame, I cannot sleep,
and yet my grief's my secret,
and I'm not without the wine
to make bold sport of this journey!

My heart's no mirror:
you would not find your face there.
Oh, and I do have strong brothers,
undependable,
I have taken my case before them,
and met only with their anger.

My heart is not a stone,
will not be rolled about, nor toyed with.
My heart's no doormat;
won't be rolled up and put away.
I am a woman, righteous, upright

as the hearty mountain plum.
There is no fault, no flaw in me.
My grieving heart pales with the moon,
yet hates all pettiness...
The petty folk who throng my door,
and all their petty insults.

Silenced, my words, in a brooding heart...
Yet every day, awakening, the pettiness anew.

Suns for but a day dwell, moons move...
Let them give way, since they will...
I'll wear my sorrowing heart,
the same unlaundered robe, each day.

I'm silenced here, but let words fly,
where body never may, to fray.


ANONYMOUS

Translated from the Chinese by J. P. Seaton

(no subject)

[fariewolffriend.livejournal.com]

Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Leaves of Grass. 1900.

52. To a Stranger

PASSING stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me, as of a dream,)
I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall’d as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,
You grew up with me, were a boy with me, or a girl with me,
I ate with you, and slept with you—your body has become not yours only, nor left my body mine only,
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass—you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,
I am not to speak to you—I am to think of you when I sit alone, or wake at night alone,
I am to wait—I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.

Elevator - by Mark Strand

[chiarikea.livejournal.com]

1.


The elevator went down to the basement. The doors opened.
A man stepped in and asked if I was going up.
"I'm going down," I said. "I won't be going up."


2.


The elevator went down to the basement. The doors opened.
A man stepped in and asked if I was going up.
"I'm going down," I said. "I won't be going up."