A Picture of Otto (Ted Hughes)

[poppyromanov.livejournal.com]

You stand there at the blackboard: Lutheran
Minister manqué. Your idea
Of Heaven and Earth and Hell radically
Modified by the honey-bee's commune.

A big shock for so much of your Prussian backbone
As can be conjured into poetry
To find yourself so tangled with me -
Rising from your coffin, a big shock

To meet me face to face in the dark adit
Where I have come looking for your daughter.
You had assumed this tunnel your family vault.
I never dreamed, how occult our guilt,

Your ghost inseparable from my shadow
As long as your daughter's words can stir a candle.
She could hardly tell us apart in the end.
Your portrait, here, could be my son's portrait.

I understand - you never could have released her.
I was a whole myth too late to replace you.
This underworld, my friend, is her heart's home.
Inseparable, here we must remain,

Everything forgiven and in common -
Not that I see her behind you, where I face you,
But like Owen, after his dark poem,
Under the battle, in the catacomb,

Sleeping with his German as if alone.

Bertolt Brecht, 'The Burning of the Books'

[duathir.livejournal.com]

The Burning of the Books

When the Regime commanded that books with harmful knowledge
Should be publicly burned on all sides
Oxen were forced to drag cart loads of books
To the bonfires, a banished
Writer, one of the best, scanning the list of the
Burned, was shocked to find that his
Books had been passed over. He rushed to his desk
On wings of wrath, and wrote a letter to those in power.
Burn me! he wrote with flying pen, burn me. Haven't my books
Always reported the truth? And here you are
Treating me like a liar! I command you:
Burn me!

by Bertolt Brecht

A few more Celan poems

[shinygobonkers.livejournal.com]

TWO AT BRANCUSI'S
If one among these stones
were to tell
what conceals it:
here, nearby
on the old man's crutch-stick
it would open, as a wound
into which you'd have to dive,
lonely,
far from my scream, the already also
hewn, white one.


TO A BROTHER IN ASIA
The auto-transfigured
cannons
drive towards heaven,

ten
bombers yawn,

a running fire blooms
as surely as peace,

a handful of rice
expires as your friend.


TREK-SCOW-TIME
the half-transformed drag
at one of the worlds,

the dis-elevated one, intimated,
speaks under the foreheads on the bank:

Quits with death, quits with
God.

Request: Poems that exemplify the disconnection between mind & body?

[acid-gloss.livejournal.com]

Philosophically, this tends to be the major argument regarding anorexia nervosa. The only poem I have found that features this beautifully is "Ellen West" by Frank Bidart.
Any poems about eating disorders on a deeper, psychological/philosophical level would be appreciated. I have been searching for a while and it's been difficult to find good, published poetry that captures the disconnection in a meaningful way. 

"Ellen West" by Frank Bidart

I love sweets,—
heaven
would be dying on a bed of vanilla ice cream ...

But my true self
is thin, all profile

and effortless gestures, the sort of blond
elegant girl whose
body is the image of her soul.

—My doctors tell me I must give up
this ideal;
but I
WILL NOT ... cannot.

Only to my husband I’m not simply a “case.”

But he is a fool. He married
meat, and thought it was a wife.

. . .
( "Ellen West" by Frank Bidart )

Ann Landers column - Gossip

[kaishin108.livejournal.com]

This is from an Ann Landers column on the topic of Gossip...

NOBODY'S FRIEND
I have no respect for justice.
I maim without killing.
I break hearts and ruin lives.
I am cunning and malicious and gather strength with age.
The more I am quoted the more I am believed.
I flourish at every level of society.
My victims are helpless; they cannot protect
themselves against me because I have no name and no face.
To track me down is impossible. The harder you try, the more elusive I become.
I am nobody's friend.
Once I tarnish a reputation, it is never the same.
I topple governments and ruin marriages.
I end ministries set up by God.
I ruin careers and cause sleepless nights, heartache and indigestion.
I spawn suspicion and generate grief.
I make headlines, headaches and heartaches
I make innocent people cry in their pillows.
Even my name hisses.

---Author unknown