Conrad Aiken, 'Discordants'

[duathir.livejournal.com]

Discordants

I. (Bread and Music)

Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread;
Now that I am without you, all is desolate;
All that was once so beautiful is dead.

Your hands once touched this table and this silver,
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.
These things do not remember you, belovèd,
And yet your touch upon them will not pass.

For it was in my heart you moved among them,
And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes;
And in my heart they will remember always,--
They knew you once, O beautiful and wise.

II

( My heart has become as hard as a city street... )

by Conrad Aiken

'I Think I Could Turn and Live With Animals' by Walt Whitman

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

I Think I Could Turn and Live With Animals
by Walt Whitman


I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and
self-contain'd,
I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of
owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of
years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

So they show their relations to me and I accept them,
They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their
possession.

I wonder where they get those tokens,
Did I pass that way huge times ago and negligently drop them?

Why Rimbaud Went to Africa//David Lerner

[crabwise-son.livejournal.com]

 Why Rimbaud Went to Africa
David Lerner

Poetry isn't literary
poetry isn't sure which fork to
use
poetry can't name the parts of speech
fill out a grant application
logroll

poetry doesn't like cappuccino
poetry doesn't want to be printed in a 
small press edition with its name on the
cover and get reviewed in 2 little magazines
read by 3 people
argued over by 8

poetry doesn't care about glory
glory is nice but poetry figures it's
dessert
poetry doesn't want to get laid
poetry might want to get drunk but
that's only self defense

poetry doesn't want to traipse around Europe
and collect stray bits of wisdom
from ruined empires
that it can show like slides when it gets home
poetry has a headache
( Read more... )

America [Try saying wren], Joseph Lease

[moireach.livejournal.com]

America [Try saying wren]
Joseph Lease



                  Try saying wren.

It's midnight

in my body, 4 a.m. in my body, breading and olives and
cherries. Wait, it's all rotten. How am I ever. Oh notebook.
A clown explains the war. What start or color or kind of
grace. I have to teach. I have to run, eat less junk. Oh CNN.
What start or color. There's a fist of meat in my solar plexus
and green light in my mouth and little chips of dream flake
off my skin. Try saying wren. Try saying
mercy.

                           Try anything.

The Weight of Nothing by Amy Uyematsu

[catpaws.livejournal.com]

to end with nothing is something
Suvan Geer

or to rephrase a popular Billy Preston song,
“somethin’ from nothin’ is somethin’”

I

everyone loves
the disappearing
coin. a bird pulled from
an empty hat. the comfort of
trusting a magician’s hands.
when we know we’ll get some-
thing from what
he takes away.

II

the student’s assignment—
concentrate on nothing
for fifteen minutes a day.
she tries to empty her head
but can’t figure out how.
after all, she doesn’t know what
nothing sounds or looks like,
and the teacher won’t give
the slightest clue. yet
she’s got a good hunch
the exercise might quiet
all that shriek and clatter
trapped between her ears.
so like a good pupil,
she devotes an entire year
searching for nothing.
some days she’s as still
as a stone, but can’t
escape the distractions
of river and wind,
footsteps approaching,
birds calling in the trees
overhead. or closing
her eyes, she’ll focus
on a cloudless blue sky.
pillows and planes and purple
sunsets keep interrupting.
she silently repeats words
like ocean or why,
chants sounds that dwell
low in her throat
like maah and uhmm.
at year’s end her teacher
asks if she’s found nothing.
she tells him she’s found
everything but nothing.
he smiles, you’re closer
than you think. now
try for twenty minutes.

( we’ve all seen them— )