Poetry

Suicide in the Trenches

Last modified on 2010-06-26 14:02:12 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

A classic and pioneering anti-war poem from the WWI soldier and visionary Siegfried Sassoon. Would that every world leader could read and understand this man’s work before ever committing young men and women to combat.

I knew a simple soldier boy…..
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
And no one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you’ll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

Risk

Last modified on 2010-06-17 11:15:29 GMT. 1 comment. Top.

Risk is a strange term, because it is the cornerstone of a strange industry, insurance. I wonder how differently that business might be conducted if its executives, underwriters, and actuaries could read and feel Anais Nin’s poem, “Risk”:

And then the day came,
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took
to blossom.

The Ancient Mariner’s Farewell

Last modified on 2010-06-06 22:28:09 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

A classic is a poem you can read numerous times during your life and gain something different from it each time. Here is the conclusion of Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which I cited in my recent piece about hope. If you’ve seen the photographs of the dead and defiled birds in the Gulf of Mexico that are all over the Internet these days, this might be a particularly apt moment for you to take Coleridge’s journey once more.

Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.

He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.”

The Mariner, whose eye is bright,
Whose beard with age is hoar,
Is gone; and now the Wedding-Guest
Turned from the bridegroom’s door.

He went like one that hath been stunned,
And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man
He rose the morrow morn.

Rilke on the Rich and the Poor

Last modified on 2010-05-28 12:56:15 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

From “The Voices,” a collection of poems by Rainer Maria Rilke. The translation is by Robert Bly, from Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke.

It’s O.K. for the rich and the lucky to keep still;
no one wants to know about them anyway.
But those in need have to step forward,
have to say: I am blind,
or: I’m about to go blind,
or: nothing is going well with me,
or: I have a child who is sick,
or: right there I’m sort of glued together….

And probably that doesn’t do anything either.

They have to sing; if they didn’t sing, everyone
would walk past, as if they were fences or trees.

That’s where you can hear good singing.

People really are strange: they prefer
to hear castratos in boy choirs.

But God himself comes and stays a long time
when the world of half-people start to bore him.

I Cannot Remember the Name

Last modified on 2010-04-24 17:52:05 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

I cannot remember the name of that priest who died in agony
with his arms around the tree of ignorance. Under his body
lay the black scattered shards of his sacred vow of denial
to the monument of shadows, and the skin of a fruit uneaten.

Nearly all our words, all our truths, are pretense — or at best strangers
met on a road a thousand years ago, held with the eye in a wordless moment
and then lost to the dusk-lit air of remembrance.
Lord make me chaste, said the Saint, but not yet.

The banana’s skin does not ask why it has been thrown aside
and left undigested beside the path lit by lovers and darkened by gods.
Not every life can be a chalice; not every name can be spoken. All, however,
though they clutch with their last grasp at the tree of ignorance, can teach.

America’s New Song: A 21st Century National Anthem (A Prose Poem)

Last modified on 2010-04-24 17:52:08 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

I have no energy left but for revolt — the revolt of the one who abandons the climb, turns his back, and goes back down the hill toward the water.

Dick Cheney ate my flesh and shat upon my skeletal remnants. Obama came after him, unzipped his fly and emptied the pale dilution of his bladder-wine onto me (it was warm and sparkling at first, but soon became cold and fetid).

I do not want to be treated by your white-robed functionaries who take me to the precipice’s edge, deliver a pill to my mouth, a hand in my pocket, and a push on my back. I do not want to be educated by your masters of delusion, your demons of standardized measurement. I do not want to be fed by your factory corpses who sit like workers in cubicles, unmoving and covered to their hips in excrement and despair. I do not want to be employed by your treadmill machines that turn time into regret and obedience into tears. I do not want to be informed by your chyron streams that feed the wells of desolation and ignorance. I do not want to be a part of your economy that fills the fountains of palaces with the blood of innocence, where investment is a tout sheet that dissolves into electrons as the getaway limousine races toward the mansion.

The sheer and final exhaustion of the rebel is his last and only triumph: he drops the knife of his cause, gently lowers the stiffening body of his holy purpose into the receptive dust, clears aside a few stony pieces of the rubble, and kneels in submission to the earth and all the teeming beauty that lies beneath it.

For then he knows: it is I, too, like these others, who have walked among the dead.

Another Brother, Another Poet

Last modified on 2010-04-24 17:52:08 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

The poetry chromosome is scattered around our family — as you have seen, I have a rather torn strand of it; but two of my brothers received fairly intact versions of this poetry gene. Here’s the eldest of us, John Donohue, and a brief selection of his recent work.

Things

The half finished jigsaw puzzle,
on the card table.
The eyeglasses on the open word search book,
page 117.
The newspaper folded to the comic section,
resting on the pillow on the end of the couch.
Her sweater hangs on the hall tree,
as does her hat.
Things!
I should clean up around here
and get rid of these things.
But if I do
she’ll be gone.

I think I’ll wait awhile.

Four Haiku

How do you subtract?
Just what is the difference?
No one really knows.

You live, laugh, and cry,
There’s a reason why,
Hidden in the summer’s sky.

Dreams can come or go,
But passion lives forever.
Have passionate dreams.

It’s not the long fall
that summons your attention!
It’s the sudden stop.

Time

Last modified on 2010-04-24 17:53:12 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

A poem I wrote about aging, many years ago when I was actually young but didn’t feel it. It is one of those poems that, as one wag put it, need to be written but should never be read. So I’ll hide it here, with the distant possibility in mind that someone will find it vaguely resonant.

time

“Absolutely Preposterous”

Last modified on 2010-04-24 17:53:16 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Here is a truly outstanding small verse that I found online. The author strikes quickly, works deeply into the reader’s emotion without a trace of sentiment, and then gracefully leaves. If I were teaching poetry (as if such a thing were possible!), I would make this poem a prominent study piece. What a beautiful, straightforward, honest poem.

So, I walked into my bedroom and got
punched in the stomach when I realized
that you weren’t really there, on the bed
conspicuously eyeballing me and taking up
as much space as you possibly could; it was a
feline ability at which you eclipsed all others
and after fifteen years by my side, it’ll take
more than a couple weeks to get used
to the idea of never seeing you again;
except in the plastic- wrapped, plain
cardboard box with the yellow sticker
so starkly dominating in its finality and
reminding me how ridiculous it is
that you, of everyone, have been reduced to
the same residue that the rest of us
mere mortals will someday be reduced to.

An Old Man’s Gift

Last modified on 2010-04-24 17:53:17 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

The traditional story has it that the following lines were written by an old man entering a forced exile, at the border of the nation he was leaving and in whose government he had served for decades. This old fellow had stopped at the border crossing guard’s hut, received some food, water, and rest for himself and his animal there, and in return he acceded to an unusual request from the sentry. The request was that he write a summary of his philosophical teachings, for which the old man had gained some small renown during his time in the capital.

And so, he wrote. The old man wrote 81 little poems, probably with no concern for who might read them and what might befall them after he had left them with the crossing guard. He was merely returning a favor as he left the only world he had known for decades.

He wrote with the sincerity, purity, and anguish that arise from exhaustion; with an insight that soars from the body of resignation. His work was visionary because he did not mean it to be so. He wrote what he saw, remembered, and deeply felt. The following, in my own translation, is Chapter 20 of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching.

Shut down your intellect, and answer:
Between yes and no, spoken from within,
How little a difference is there,
Compared to that between success and failure?

Why would I fear what others do?
Why must I give my inner consent
To the values of the collective?

Oh! How the desolation around me
Has reached its utmost sunken limit!
The lusty mob is buried in busyness,
As if gathered for a sacrificial feast
(Yet who or what is being sacrificed?)
But I alone—as if from an outpost of vigilance—
Am apart: blank and unmoved,
Like an infant who hasn’t yet learned to smile.
Isolated and withdrawn, I am like a homeless man.

Others are absorbed in getting and spending;
While I appear broken and bare of influence.

Others shine with the luminous glow
Of progress, brilliance, and daring;
But I am like a simpleton, vapid and raving.

The world around me teems with cleverness;
I alone retreat into dullness.

With what fathomless depth,
Like a sea-born whirlpool of sound and storm,
Do they ponder and debate—
Ceaseless, directionless, and adamant—
But I alone am obtuse, disturbed, thickheaded,
Like some coarse cloth, unrefinable
And therefore worthless.

Yes, I am different, as are my values:
For I drink from the breast of the Sublime Mother.

Neruda on Love

Last modified on 2010-04-24 17:53:19 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Our nod to Valentine’s Day, I suppose. But this is a truly fine poem, from Pablo Neruda, from his Selected Poems:

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Search Term Verse No. 18

Last modified on 2010-04-24 17:53:24 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

from seeing the seeing has become so retail:
what part of zen do you not understand?

collapse is required for renewal, and
alexis completes felicity, which always
ranked 36th in health care.

feverish ardor americans pursue a
code of honor among thieves;
what is beater republican or democrat?
what is generally the first step in code?

save the world learn to do nothing –
sunlight in winter. Empires fall
every time i came to the end of a block.
mistress vacuum slave, the fall of american empire –
small writing on vanish, acts of condemnation,
the installar poem when i m in my bed at night.

Search Term Verse No. 17

Last modified on 2010-04-24 17:54:57 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

in zen grasshopper calls his master
liebermann jesus, greed and corruption,
trojan horse.

one more sip and ill slip beetween the
ubuntu desktop breasts, between
jesus and history.

we throw our energy about like waste in
american escapism, in protestant art today:
how can you see in the dark?

escapism video games, get motivated bullshit:
a bad apple destroys the other apple in
kurtz’s intellect.

middle aged women like sex with young
non consumptive christians, with
a hundred and forty-two snowbanks.

The Self-Examined Life is Well Worth Living

Last modified on 2010-04-24 17:55:02 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

A little before or perhaps even at the same time as Socrates taught that the unexamined life is not worth living, Lao Tzu lived and wrote the following poem, #54 of the Tao Te Ching:

With a firm inner foundation,
You cannot be toppled.
An embrace is all the grasp you need
To be safe within.
An offering of simple honor,
From the children of the past
To the children of the present
Supports the children of the future.

Why do you cultivate your image
When your natural being is already full?
Why aggrandize your family pride
When the perfection of family is complete?
Why meddle with your community
When its natural form is imperishable?
Why do you fight to enrich your nation
When its simple order is abundance?
Why divide and oppose earth and heaven
When the purity of their union is unalterable?

Therefore, examine yourself
To become your Self.
Examine your home
To become a family.
Examine your village
To become a community.
Examine the state
To become a nation.
Examine the world
To become one with Being.

How do I know
That this is the way of Nature?
Because I asked It,
From within my deepest self.

“I Grow Old, I Grow Old…”

Last modified on 2010-04-24 17:55:03 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

I have read these verses countless times since I was a teenager, and can still but rarely reach the end of this poem with dry eyes. From T.S. Eliot: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. To feel the full effect of this haunting music, I recommend reading it aloud.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

Search Term Verse No. 16

Last modified on 2010-04-24 17:55:57 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

It’s been a while since I’ve looked into the search term dustbin seeking potential poems. It is now time to do it again. For those who haven’t seen the others, these are real search terms used by Googlers to find our site. I merely pull them out of the report and cobble them together to make something resembling verse.

words of emphaty:
sexy self-abasement blowjob girls
repent the end.
grasshopper, seek not the answers.

jesus teaching:
racism has become a loaded word.
pornography –
how to cook a perdue roaster.

arab shoes,
jews in the middle ages;
exposing an image:
conservative healthcare plan.

holy jesus i hate aig;
guilt is self-indulgence,
his mouth is a sewer.
cigna black krim tomatoes.

9/11/09: Three Verses of Remembrance

Last modified on 2010-04-24 17:55:59 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

The first selection is from Yoel Hoffman’s Japanese Death Poems: Written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death. The second selection is from Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching in my translation. The last piece is a haiku of mine.

Leaves never fall
in vain — from all around
bells tolling.
(death poem of Chori, died 1778)

To live in the Tao means abiding in the eternal—
Perceiving completely, with all one’s being:
Life is never exhausted;
It is only delusion that dies.
(from Tao Te Ching, Chapter 16)

Above the autumn
hillside, unheard through weeping –
silver sparrows sing.

Bly’s One-Eyed Bear

Last modified on 2010-04-24 17:56:00 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

This is a fun little verse from Robert Bly’s “The Horse of Desire,” which appears in Eating the Honey of Words. It’s an ingenious poetic profile of…well, you’ll get what it’s about.

The bear between my legs
Has one eye only,
Which he offers
To God to see with.
The two beings below with no
Eyes at all love you
With the slow persistent
Intensity of the blind.

I Celebrate Myself

Last modified on 2010-04-24 17:56:01 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Walt Whitman, from the first page of Leaves of Grass, written here in Brooklyn in 1855:

I celebrate myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease….observing a spear of summer grass.

Houses and rooms are full of perfumes….the shelves are crowded
with perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it.
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

The atmosphere is not a perfume….it has no taste of the distillation
….it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever….I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

(from the edition by Gary Schmidgall)

Seeking, Finding

Last modified on 2010-04-24 17:56:04 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Seek humility –
and when you find it,
start over.
For that is when
you are no longer humble.

Seek freedom –
and once you own it,
search anew.
For you are now a slave
to your possession.

Seek the Truth –
and when you’ve grasped it,
let go and seek again.
For you are now clutching
a stiff bag of lies.
____________________________________________

“Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.” — Andre Gide

A Visit From Death

Last modified on 2010-04-24 17:56:10 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

On a steaming asphalt summer day
death came running, stumbling:
He ran by me like a Wall Street Master,
head down, shuffling hard and staring
at some invisible Blackberry.

I called out to Him — “Death, I’m here!”
And as he turned in his bumbling darkness,
He nearly tripped over his shroud.
“Are you real?” I asked as he approached,
still pulling at his poncho-shroud.

“I am,” he snarled in his boardroom drawl
“just as you see me.” “A fool, a vapid fool!”
I cried out; and I watched his asphalt haze
rise like torpid, fetid vapor dissolving,
vanishing into the light that held us both.

Rilke: The Panther

Last modified on 2009-07-13 18:14:51 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

A well known poem of entrapment, from Rainer Maria Rilke. The translation is by Robert Bly, and appears in News of the Universe.

From seeing and seeing the seeing has become so exhausted
it no longer sees anything anymore.
The world is made of bars, a hundred thousand
bars, and behind the bars, nothing.

The lithe swinging of that rhythmical easy stride
that slowly circles down to a single point
is like a dance of energy around a hub,
in which a great will stands stunned and numbed.

At times the curtains of the eye lift
without a sound — then a shape enters,
slips through the tightened silence of the shoulders,
reaches the heart and dies.

The Atheist’s Limerick

Last modified on 2009-07-10 16:26:47 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Because godlessness has for so long been forbidden or socially demonized, it has developed a bawdy strain in which urinal authorship prevails. Thus, the axiom that I have attempted to teach to the religious at all times applies: if you want to give a movement life, drive it underground. Here’s a limerick that a regular reader sent me: if anyone has any idea of whether it has an identifiable author, let me know. For the reasons mentioned above, I tend to doubt it.

Thus spake, “I am that I am”
For the virgin I don’t give a damn
I was excited at most
when I buggered the ghost
and then got sucked off by the lamb

Strings of Small Events

Last modified on 2009-07-10 16:32:29 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Stag-flation, Earl Butz, Agribusiness, Atrazine
Bladex, Corn Syrup, Coca-Cola, Cheap Oil
Small Towns, Irrigation, Central Plains
Ogallala Aquifer
Genetically Engineered Seed, Franken-foods
Factory Farms, Purdue Chicken, Monsanto, Irrigation
Rural Development, Population Decline, Sunbelt, Legal Gambling
Trailer Trash, Meth Labs, Walmart, … Sarah Palin

*this was an unauthorized addition to Brian’s Poetry Page – hope it’s ok!
… a list of links for the curious

Po Chu-i, on Old Age

Last modified on 2009-06-13 00:32:29 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

We revisit Po Chu-i, this time finding him in contemplation of old age. From David Hinton’s translation of Po Chu-i’s collected poems.

Grateful to escape such grave illness,
I’m happy to wither away at the root,

let this lamp gauge darkening eyes,
my belt measure this thinning waist.

On a day of frost turning leaves red,
in a time of hair gone white as snow,

I may grieve over old age coming on.
But once old age ends, I’m grief-free.

Search Term Verse #15

Last modified on 2009-05-18 22:58:51 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

In case you haven’t been following our Poetry page (where the rest of these live), the idea of what follows is simple: I occasionally go through the WordPress search term report, which is merely a list of phrases that Googlers have used to find our site. Then I hand pick a few of them and cobble together a poem. Here’s another one.

accurate jesus, sacred tortoise:
the imp and the crust.
man wearing sign in trinary code:
the meaning of ivan fyodorovich nightmare?

compare and contrast essay:
doors of perseption and mania.
it furthers one to see geek cats
in the month of may.

pineapple in ass, running internet explorer –
conservatives taxation humiliation game;
bechtel brainwashing little naked kids –
i ching please bless me.

The Blind Men and the Elephant

Last modified on 2009-05-11 03:23:52 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

You can’t very well have an op-ed blog without quoting this famous poem by John G. Saxe:

It was six men of Indostan,
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the elephant,
(Though all of them were blind,)
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.

The first approached the elephant,
And, happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl
“God bless me! but the elephant
Is very like a wall!”

The second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried: “Ho! what have we here.
So very round, and smooth, and sharp?
To me ’tis very clear,
This wonder of an elephant
Is very like a spear!”

The third approached the animal,
And, happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up he spoke:
“I see,” quoth he, “the elephant
Is very like a snake!”

The fourth reached out his eager hand,
And felt about the knee:
“What most this wondrous beast is like
Is very plain,” quoth he;
“‘Tis clear enough the elephant
Is very like a tree!”

The fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: “E’en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most:
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an elephant
Is very like a fan!”

The sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
“I see,” quoth he, “the elephant
Is very like a rope!”

And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right
And all were in the wrong!

Withdraw and Conquer

Last modified on 2009-05-05 00:24:34 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Another poem from Stephen Donohue:

The last shot of debris
 That hits the ground alone. 
Castrated the wisdom 
You thought you could control.

Back to sleepy memories 
Contrast and proclaim.
 Debate and debauchery
 Makes a science out of grammar 
And buys the platinum tongue.

It dominates their reason 
And quickens the demise
 To end a night of potential,
 With morality in the air.

Melodic interludes so lovely
 Amidst the graphic decay. 
You see the poetry
 Then ignore the nightmare-
 Which do you wake up with?

When You are Old

Last modified on 2009-05-02 01:38:47 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

A tiny treasure from W.B. Yeats:

When you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

Big Eyed Beans From Venus Stolen!

Last modified on 2009-05-03 10:07:50 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

I found a story today in Yahoo’s Odd News about a burglar who broke into a house and stole nothing but a few jelly beans. I instantly wondered if it was Captain Beefheart’s house and those were “big eyed beans from Venus.” Here are the lyrics, which I found here:

Distant cousins, there’s a limited supply.
And we’re down to the dozens, and this is why:
Big Eyed Beans from Venus! Oh my, oh my.

Boys and girls,
Earth people around the circle,
Mixtures of man alive.
Big eyed beans from Venus,
Don’t let anything get in between us.

Beam in on me baby,
and we’ll beam together
I know we always been together,
but there’s more.

Mister Zoot Horn Rollo, hit that long lunar note,
and let it float.

Men let your wallets flop out,
and women open your purses,
Cause a man or a woman without a big eyed bean from Venus
Is suffering with the worstest of curses
Yeah, you’re suffering, with the worstest of curses.

Put ‘em out in the sun, and when the night come
You don’t have to go out and get ‘em
They’ll glow with you
They’ll go with you
They’ll show with you
Ain’t no losers
Cause they’re on the right track
Cause they’re on the right track
You can be on the right track, woman,
Of course, of course

Ain’t no SNAFU, no fol-de-rol

Check these out, Big eyed beans from Venus
Oh, let a few out, let ‘em pass in between us

Distant cousins, there’s a limited supply.
And we’re down to the dozens, and this is why…

Don’t let anything get in between us!
Big eyed beans from Venus
Big eyed beans from Venus.

Search Term Verse #14

Last modified on 2009-04-29 04:40:37 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Time to dig again in the WordPress stats and assemble a few of the search terms used by desperate Googlers to find this site. Here’s another search term poem:

poor anal texas to secede redskins brady;
houynyms live and die in the margins.
nj estate tax farm, balls heimer disease:
the meaning of looking at jesus.

palm sunday: oprah meditation 101;
turning on lights with your mind.
we have decided to pursue dick and balls–
bring me back to the dome.

flu economy: video games and escapism;
protestant church art, ozymandias, and war–
near to jesus, sphere of consciousness:
what do christians do in church ?

Incidentally, I wrote to Huffington Post’s webmaster to ask if I could use their data to create even more search term poetry. It’s been over a week, and I’ve received no response.

Percy Bysshe Shelley: Ozymandias

Last modified on 2009-04-26 19:13:44 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

One of the great short poems of them all, actually written in a friendly contest with another poet:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Robert Bly: The Death Eaters

Last modified on 2009-04-21 18:36:29 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

20 years before Harry Potter, Lord Voldemort, and the “death-eaters” were a twinkle in J.K. Rowling’s eyes, Robert Bly wrote this verse in a poem called “The Teeth Mother Naked at Last”:

The ministers lie, the professors lie, the television lies, the priests lie…
These lies mean that the country wants to die.
Lie after lie starts out into the prairie grass,
like enormous caravans of Conestoga wagons…

And a long desire for death flows out, guiding the enormous caravans from beneath,
stringing together the vague and foolish words.
It is a desire to eat death,
to gobble it down,
to rush on it like a cobra with mouth open

It’s a desire to take death inside,
to feel it burning inside, pushing out velvety hairs,
like a clothes brush in the intestines –

The is the thrill that leads the President on to lie

Search Term Verse, #13

Last modified on 2009-04-18 11:11:33 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

the lord is my shepherd site youtube.com:
difference between trust and faith
lilacs the waste land — freud in ww2;
pineapple up ass.

wu wei: hold the golf club like a bird.
john currin quotes women like squirrels;
pange lingua vatican, neuropia;
kids that live in a bubble.

rilke i can hardly believe this
golf masters commentary;
the easter story contradictions,
jesus and the end times cartoon.

poor anal: hitler+palm sunday;
catholic easter, spiritual analogy
of tarnished silver, premature birth,
and personality disorder.

An Open Mind

Last modified on 2009-04-09 04:09:46 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

scottart Another poem from Stephen Donohue:

Consider all the options,
Review every fact,
Return with a judgment
Which is fair,
and vague,
and full of regret.

Once the tables are turned
and the curtain is drawn,
and the lights go out,
You have to let fate evolve.

A vessel full of thought
is prodded and probed,
tinkered and tugged
until saw and scalpel
leave the shallow mind
beside the empty skull.

They take it all out
and put it all back,
Just the way they found it.
Only the error of your ways,
A little piece of the puzzle
which just wouldn’t fit,
is left in the tin-
He’ll never know it is gone,
He’ll never care where it’s been.

All in all,
a surgical sensation,
now skillfully adjusted
to fit any society.

Eliot: The Waste Land

Last modified on 2009-04-01 04:56:44 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

The opening of what may be the most famous poem of the 20th century; the whole of which may be found here.

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

A Full Crescent Moon

Last modified on 2009-03-30 19:50:18 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

I have a brother, Stephen, who’s an actual poet. I mean, I dabble in the stuff — this guy has written entire books of it. Here’s a sample:

A Full Crescent Moon

Stored somewhere
In the dimples of your sanity
And measured with a caliper
Checking the degrees of remorse,
Calculating right angles of regret,
You remember those thirsty nights.

Romance, love and lust
With lascivious potential
Went wisping about the light bulb
Of another’s reality
Like a moth in a tirade
Demanding its vision of the sun.

Emotions take you dancing
In a dark sky,
Stepping on starlight,
Howling to a moon
That doesn’t care why,
Then breaks the back of aspirations.

Humiliated, lonely and destroyed
Downtrodden, oppressed and stagnant
Broken, hungry and defeated
Walking through hot city air
Wincing at cold city smiles
Otherwise it’s a beautiful night.

Staggering past the neon lights
While sifting through darkness
Created by expectations
Never learning from experience
Just keep trying to go home
Until the explosion of the dawn.

Search Term Verse, #12

Last modified on 2009-03-28 04:17:19 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

things color green: imac dome;
brian williams, clairvoyant;
kraut pope.

why does life have to end?

stockholm syndrome, freud:
justice poor charity;
i ching vigilance.

have you ever tried to touch infinity?

treatment of animals at medieval times:
celibate for seven yrs;
turtle bay dog walkers.

what punishment do we use today?

“goddess transformation”:
swedish zoo chimp, blood hexagram;
medieval rape.

21st century poetry guns.

Search Term Verse, No. 11

Last modified on 2009-03-13 18:34:40 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

For those of you who don’t read here regularly: every so often I go through WordPress’s report on search terms used to find this site. I simply copy out phrases and put them together into a poem. If we had more search engine traffic, I could do more of these — I’d love to mine the riches that must lie in similar reports for the likes of Huffington Post, Daily Kos, or Drudge.

esoteric america: how to install wine;
wizard of oz, socialist, warren court –
escapism god, renaissance imp;
puppy on macbook.

i ching demon becoming unemployed:
how the marijuana laws oppressed black
man with imp of the perverse.
freshman high school diary.

siddhartha mango tree, maroon bell deaths.
demon sphere: assertion failed.
anyone out there need help with
robber barons 8th grade history?

The Winter of Our Discontent

Last modified on 2009-02-27 00:31:22 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

The famous phrase that you’re hearing so much of in our economic moment comes from one of the more fully-frontal character introductions of literary history. It’s Act I, Sc. i of Shakespeare’s Richard III, and if you experience the play (that is, read it and see it), you’ll feel more of Dick Cheney in Gloster (later Richard III) than you will of Bernie Madoff.

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums chang’d to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visag’d war hath smooth’d his wrinkled front;
And now,–instead of mounting barbed steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,–
He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I,–that am not shap’d for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp’d, and want love’s majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deform’d, unfinish’d, sent before my time
Into this breathing world scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;–
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun,
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore,–since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,–
I am determined to prove a villain,
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false, and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew’d up,–
About a prophecy which says that G
Of Edward’s heirs the murderer shall be.

Queen of Beers

Last modified on 2009-02-26 01:21:03 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Another song I wrote 15 or 20 years back:

The desert, they say, is better crossed
If the nomad knows his way;
Your mind, I’m told, is easily lost,
But who am I to say?

It’s written that the road is longer now
Than the one that Jesus walked;
I’ve read where Satan’s stronger now,
But who am I to talk?

You can’t believe the things you hear;
To each his private dread:
I’m looking for the Queen of Beers
To take her to my bed.

Queen of Beers
Magic tears
Foaming in your head;
Give me one more sip
And I could slip
Between the living and the dead.

The TV says that folks are worse
Than they ever were before;
And the earth is just a cosmic hearse
Driven by a whore.

The paper’s printing war and fear
Seems soon we’ll all be dead;
I’m searching for the Queen of Beers
To fetch her to my bed.

Queen of Beers
Golden tears
Running through my head;
Just one more sip
And I could slip
Between the living and the dead.

Now the homeless folks are crying
While the politicians steal;
And the animals are dying
And religion isn’t real.

The subfrastructure’s falling here
(Whatever the hell they said);
I’m still waiting for that Queen of Beers
To lie down in my bed.

Queen of Beers
Barley tears
Burning in my head;
I’ll have one more sip
And then I’ll slip
Between the living and the dead.

Taking Off the Uniform

Last modified on 2009-02-26 01:12:05 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

This is an unfinished song I wrote about 20 years ago, apparently under the influence of Dylan.

There’s a colder wind blowin’
Than what we knew before.
There’s a dark man ravin’
He’s knockin’ down my door.
On the other side it’s snowin’
Now and the river rises more;
But that doesn’t mean I have to feel
Like the man in the uniform.

There’s half a man walkin’
On his chapped and broken palms;
He’s followed by his faithful cat
Whose backward legs have gone.
The observers are all talking
As two forlorn ghosts snake on
But it doesn’t mean I have to act
Like the man in the uniform.

Far away in the harbor now
A woman stands alone;
She used to have a job, they say
She used to have a home.
Selling flowers to the cars for now
She hides beneath the chrome;
But that doesn’t mean I have to think
Like the man in the uniform.

Yeats’ 50th Year

Last modified on 2009-02-01 18:37:13 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

W.B. Yeats, in a poem that I quote in my book on “neuropia“:

My fiftieth year had come and gone,
I sat, a solitary man,
In a crowded London shop,
An open book and empty cup
On the marble table-top.

While on the shop and street I gazed
My body of a sudden blazed;
And twenty minutes more or less
It seemed, so great my happiness,
That I was blessed, and could bless.

Shakespeare: Sonnet 29

Last modified on 2009-01-20 03:09:23 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

One of the great poems of all time.

When in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon my self and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least,
Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate,
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Economy Haiku

Last modified on 2009-01-09 13:44:24 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Corporate kingdoms
crumbling in their corruption:
Winter renewal.

Kabir and Religion’s Loaded Gun

Last modified on 2008-12-28 12:07:05 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Kabir lived somewhere around 600 years ago, but in the following poem he might have been speaking to the self-righteous fools on every side who foment war in the name of God in the MidEast and elsewhere:

I don’t know what sort of a God we have been talking about.

The caller calls in a loud voice to the Holy One at dusk.
Why? Surely the Holy One is not deaf.
He hears the delicate anklets that ring on the feet of an insect as it walks.

Go over and over your beads, paint weird designs on your forehead,
wear your hair matted, long, and ostentatious,
but when deep inside you there is a loaded gun, how can you have God?

–from The Soul is Here For Its Own Joy, ed. Robert Bly

Po Chu-i: Traveling Moon

Last modified on 2008-12-01 01:26:04 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Here’s an excerpt from David Hinton’s excellent translations of the poetry of Po Chu-i, a 9th century lyricist of China whose songs ring with a soft and limpid urgency, like a farewell kiss to the Earth — think of Basho joined with Bob Dylan. It really is extraordinary stuff.

A traveler from those southlands,
I set out as a crescent moon rose.

In a journey all distances, I saw
clear moonlight three times full,

trailed an old moon away at dawn,
then met a new one for the night.

Who says the moon is heartless?
It’s followed me a thousand miles.

Leaving a Wei River bridge early,
I’m in Ch’ang-an streets by dusk,

but this moon keeps on traveling,
stays the night who knows where.

Search Term Verse, #9

Last modified on 2008-11-29 15:03:24 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

poor leadership and companies collapse–
escapism in the 21st century.
automobile bailout, naked ladies walking in
freshman high school.
when does life begin and end?

crimen solicitationis:
1800 century guns game, perverts on the net;
how to build a sewage treatment plant.
walcott forty, philosophy nothing:
what insanity can teach us.

thomas friedman go shopping,
naked ladies painting internet explorer,
no sound in browser.
what is the i ching?
grimmauld place floor plan.

das kapital analysis: how do u get
vomit bags?

Lao Tzu, Chapter 20

Last modified on 2008-11-27 15:28:23 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

autumnsun
The world around me teems with cleverness;
I alone retreat into dullness.

With what fathomless depth,
Like a sea-born whirlpool of sound and storm,
Do they ponder and debate—
Ceaseless, directionless, and adamant—
But I alone am obtuse, disturbed, thickheaded,
Like some coarse cloth, unrefinable
And therefore worthless.

Yes, I am different, as are my values:
For I drink from the breast of the Sublime Mother.

When Animagi Were Ordinary

Last modified on 2008-11-15 16:21:53 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

I found this old Eskimo poem in The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart and made it the epigraph of my book about the Tao of Harry Potter:

In the very earliest time,
When both people and animals lived on earth,
A person could become an animal if he wanted to
And an animal could become a human being.
Sometimes they were people
And sometimes animals
And there was no difference.
All spoke the same language.
That was the time when words were like magic.
The human mind had mysterious powers.
A word spoken by chance
Might have strange consequences.
It would suddenly come alive
And what people wanted to happen could happen–
All you had to do was say it.
Nobody can explain this:
That’s the way it was.

—traditional Eskimo

Transformation (to Barack Obama)

Last modified on 2008-11-05 18:47:07 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

A caterpillar wrapped in white-threaded darkness
grows wings that will color the dawn.
The forked branch, host to this ordinary miracle,
was once itself a gene-strand in an acorn
pressed down by feet and ignorance.

You ask: did the caterpillar die
or was the butterfly born?

I could nearly announce the answer –
but it dies halfway along the crossing’s path,
exhausted by the twisting journey
from shore to shore, which the colored wings
effortlessly cover in a heart’s instant.

Orange Claw Hammer

Last modified on 2008-10-09 01:35:36 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

And now, something from a favorite poet of my younger days, Don Van Vliet, better known as Captain Beefheart. The following is from Orange Claw Hammer, on Trout Mask Replica:

Come little one with yer little dimpled fingers
Gimme one ‘n I’ll buy you uh cherry phosphate
Take you down t’ the foamin’ brine ‘n water
‘n show you the wooden tits
On the Goddess with the pole out s’full sail
That tempted away yer peg legged father
I was shanghaied by uh high hat beaver moustache man
‘n his pirate friend
I woke up in vomit ‘n beer in uh banana bin
‘n uh soft lass with brown skin
Bore me seven babies with snappin’ black eyes
‘n beautiful ebony skin
‘n here it is I’m with you my daughter
Thirty years away can make uh seaman’s eyes
Uh round house man’s eyes flow out water
Salt water

A Corporate Iliad

Last modified on 2008-09-23 01:19:51 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

(a poem in progress)

Sing, O Muse, of greed’s Inferno, fluorescent-fringed and frigid at the core;
of white-haired chiefs with square jaws and stiff-lined lips
whose speech came clipped and hollow like the towers
on whose upper reaches they sat like gods in clouds,
sealed from light by iron-toothed, two-footed dogs.
Sing of dark jagged lines tipping hellward like Abyss-sucked souls
whose eternal fall finds no bottom of either rest or termination;
of red numbers glowing like murderous stars in a flat-faced sky
whose blank, demonic edges rotate like knives dropping from heaven,
shifting but never changing; killing and never dying.

Search Term Verse 10

Last modified on 2009-04-20 00:45:12 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

More refrigerator poetry from the Age of Google, based on search terms used to find this site:

sphere consciousness, stimulus generalization
sarah palin shooting of wolves.
jesus christ was a community organizer,
meaning the firm correctness of
edward weston nudes

out on dvd 22nd september 2008:
naked irish girls, dancing naked ladies
like a chicken voting for col sanders

black servant wall tapestry, dumb mask
sacred rose of sharon venus nude;
running in the rain naked plump and tasty
are the new limits on campaign spending;
what is the meaning of old kinderhook?

Robert Bly: The Sense of Decline

Last modified on 2008-09-13 01:08:27 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Another favorite of mine from Robert Bly, about America’s death by slow self-mutilation. This poem is from The Man in the Black Coat Turns.

The Farallones seals clubbed,
Whales gone, tortoises
Taken from islands
To fill the holds; the Empire

Dying in its provincial cities.
No one to repair the baths;
Farms turned over
To soldiers; the judges corrupt.

The wagon behind bounces,
Breaking on boulders, back
And forth, slowly smashed
To pieces. This crumbling

Darkness is a reality
Too, the feather
On the snow, the rooster’s
Half-eaten body nearby.

And other worlds I do not see:
The Old People’s Home
At dusk, the slow
Murmur of conversation.

One Dark Step

Last modified on 2008-09-13 00:52:40 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

To write a poem
needs a fearlessness
that soldiers often lack,
and politicians never see.

It’s only one dark step
off the edge of certainty,
and into a canyon of
bottomless and variegating light.

The Most Trusted Name in Blues

Last modified on 2009-05-13 02:57:21 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

I’ve been on NBC and CNN and ABC and FOX;
I’ve been a Sunday morning Shouter
And a pundit roust-abouter.
But now my news career’s on the rocks.

I used to gossip with Miss Dowd,
Play the emotions of the crowd,
Laughed with Wolf Blitzer
And spat on Eliot Spitzer
I was the Prince of 24-7 Cable News…

I could dish it out and never take it,
Spread a rumor and make it
Feel true…I could ruin reputations
Plan attacks on sov’rin nations
Now I’m the most trusted name in the blues

I’ve been Rush’s right hand man,
Rode in every straight-talk van;
I’ve looked down Brit Hume’s nose
And seen Coulter with no clothes…
I’ve planned evening assassinations
On Rev’rend Pat’s true Christian stations,
But now I’m the most trusted name in blues.

I made Michael’s Savage Racist fame,
Played in Jeffrey Gannon’s softball game;
I’ve been the worst in Keith-O’s world,
I’ve taken Malkin for a twirl
I knew Chris Hitchens’ favorite booze…

I’ve been Bill-O’s biggest factor,
The Beltway Boys’ best actor;
I’ve been Matthew’s hardest ball
And Drudge’s know-it-all
I made the rich look poor, I made the winners lose –
Now I’m the most trusted name in blues.

Search Term Verse, 8

Last modified on 2008-08-29 11:04:33 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

It’s been awhile since we’ve dug through the search term listing in the WordPress stats to see whether there are any poems in the pile. Here is the next one:

vista religion wallpaper, bouguereau fabric
biblical man and bare body of ladies.
the wave breaking behind us.

what’s a crusade? nude ladies marching for their right;
wake up 3 am, demonic oppresion nightmare.
predicted end of democracy.

poems about being true have lived on the lip of insanity;
baby bird metaphors, spanking wallpaper,
installing internet explorer 8.

mccain and abel, rural nudity; neocon ready to sex.
hindenburg: a neo con magazine, wyeth the virgin.
vista can’t play audio.

natalie portman, bare naked ladies, japanese arch.
is russia strong enough to fight us?
recession: think wait fast.

Snowbanks North of the House

Last modified on 2008-08-25 18:54:34 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Listen to audio of this post:

m4a (iTunes)(4.1MB)
mp3 (WMP and others) (4.2MB)

A personal favorite, Robert Bly’s “Snowbanks North of the House” (from The Man in the Black Coat Turns).

Those great sweeps of snow that stop suddenly six feet from the house…
Thoughts that go so far.
The boy gets out of high school and reads no more books;
the son stops calling home.
The mother puts down her rolling pin and makes no more bread.
And the wife looks at her husband one night at a
party, and loves him no more.
The energy leaves the wine, and the minister falls
leaving the church.
It will not come closer –
the one inside moves back, and the hands touch
nothing, and are safe.

The father grieves for his son, and will not leave the
room where the coffin stands.
He turns away from his wife, and she sleeps alone.

And the sea lifts and falls all night, the moon goes on
through the unattached heavens alone.

The toe of the shoe pivots
in the dust…
And the man in the black coat turns, and goes back
down the hill.
No one knows why he came, or why he turned away,
and did not climb the hill.

Commentary:

In any poem worth the name, there is meaning unique to each individual who reads it (preferably aloud — try it yourself and see the difference). Meaning also varies with time: I have read this luminous poem scores of times over the years, and felt something different on each occasion.

In general, I find in this song of winter dusk a description of the retreat of what the I Ching calls “helpers.” It is a disconnection, a loss, a descending darkness of isolation and inner dissociation. As he often does, Bly sings directly to his culture, his nation: this is the work of an artist, his proper sphere of influence.

Every image in the poem cries out warning, danger, alert. The boy who stops reading; the woman who gives up nourishing and loving; the wine that loses the grape and becomes only drunken and colorless alcohol — these are images of separation from our source, from the song of growth and gratitude that Nature had programmed into us and trusted us to cherish and nurture.

There is a price to be paid for this disconnection, this arrogant loss of living humility: the son dies within the father; the inner marriage of form and formless, source and being, dark and light, is dissolved amid isolation; amid the narrow space of inner death — the coffin, the lonely bed, the six-foot space of emptiness where “the hands touch nothing” and “the one inside moves back.”

Yet the poem also tells us that the “helpers” are there, right before and around and within us, present, immediate, palpable. The sea, the moon, and even the man in the black coat — they are not invisible except to the one who chooses to deprecate them, mechanize them, ignore their living reality. The ignorance depicted in the final line of the poem is reversible: the black-coated man could come all the way up the hill and leave no one wondering; the snowbanks could touch our house; the dust can be moistened with the grateful recognition of truth and connectedness; the clear realities of life and death and life beyond death can be made the common core of all our awareness and knowledge; and no six-foot space need separate us from a living union with the cosmic reality of transformation. As Lao Tzu once said, life is never exhausted; it is only delusion that dies.

There is, in short, no need to wonder where the black-coated figure went, or why he retreated from our house and our hill: we can still recognize and accept him, and feel that cloak of acculturated darkness transformed into a moonlit snowbank that touches us, and never leaves.

Ezra Pound

Last modified on 2008-08-17 15:29:32 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

A verse on vanity, from Ezra Pound, found in The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart:

What thou lovest well remains,
the rest is dross
What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee
What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage…

The ant’s a centaur in his dragon world.
Pull down thy vanity, it is not man
Made courage, or made order, or made grace,
Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down.
Learn of the green world what can be thy place
In scaled invention or true artistry.
Pull down thy vanity,
Paquin pull down!
The green casque has outdone your elegance.

Lines From My Cubicle

Last modified on 2008-08-13 20:28:59 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Look away from the screen and up –
down the sani-white fluorescent lines
that prohibit darkness but cannot control
for blindness.

Touch the foamy gray wall, custom-made
to be stabbed but not wounded;
textureless and temporary — made to move
but never yield.

Boxes, lines, and all the garish light –
loud enough to keep you thinking;
but too loud, too straight, too blinding
to feel by.

Goethe on the Functionaries of Evil

Last modified on 2008-08-05 23:45:05 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Faust, speaking to the litigious Mephistopheles:

The pedant wants a legal document!
Have you never known a man who keeps his word?
Is it not enough that what I speak
shall govern all my living days?
Does not the world race by in tides and streams?
And why should I be shackled by a promise?
It’s a deep-grained delusion,
we do not easily part with it.
Blessed is he who keeps his own integrity;
he will not rue the greatest sacrifice!
A skin inscribed and stamped officially
is like a specter to be feared and best avoided.
The word is dead before it leaves the pen,
and wax and leather rule the day.
What do you, evil spirit, want of me?

Fuller on the Limits of AI

Last modified on 2008-07-31 16:18:42 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

I’m reading some more from Buckminster Fuller’s Intuition.

Development is programable;
Discovery is not programable.
Since the behaviors to be sought
Are unknown,
Computers cannot be instructed
To watch out for them.

What’s a Crusade?

Last modified on 2008-07-24 02:04:32 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Mark Twain’s prose, like much great writing in general, often takes a poetic measure. Consider this little excerpt from Tom Sawyer Abroad:

“Huck Finn, do you mean to tell me you don’t know what a crusade is?”
“No,” I says, “I don’t….”
“A crusade is a war to recover the Holy Land from the paynim.”
“Which Holy Land?”
“Why, the Holy Land — there ain’t but one.”
“What do we want of it?”
“Why can’t you understand? It’s in the hands of the paynim, and it’s our duty to take it away from them.”
“How did we come to let them git hold of it?”
“We didn’t come to let them git hold of it. They always had it.”
“Why, Tom, then it must belong to them, don’t it?”
“Why, of course it does. Who said it didn’t?”

Earth, Meet Dr. Atkins

Last modified on 2008-07-22 01:43:22 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Once in a while I pick up R. Buckminster Fuller’s book, Intuition, if only for a laugh. Here he is on the subject of Earth’s weight problem:

Studying the experientially acquired data
We begin to discover that energies emanating
From celestial regions remote from planet Earth
Are indeed converging and accumulating
In planet Earth’s biosphere, top soil, and oceans.
Earth is a spherical importer of energies,
Both as radiation and as matter.
Recent estimates of geo- and astrophysicists
Show many stardust tons landing daily on Earth.
Some estimate one hundred thousand tons daily —
Probably acquired during Earth’s orbital passaging
Through the rubble of comet tails.
By virtue of such stardust and asteroid fall-ins,
Earth is actually increasing its weight.

The Hollow Men

Last modified on 2008-07-21 10:42:46 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

As we eagerly prepare to see off the Bush administration, it may be worth having a look at the opening of Eliot‘s 1925 poem:

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us — if at all — not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

Sexton, on Childhood

Last modified on 2008-07-03 02:42:30 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

A poem of childhood, from Anne Sexton:

Young

A thousand doors ago
when I was a lonely kid
in a big house with four
garages and it was summer
as long as I could remember,
I lay on the lawn at night,
clover wrinkling under me,
the wise stars bedding over me,
my mother’s window a funnel
of yellow heat running out,
my father’s window, half shut,
an eye where sleepers pass,
and the boards of the house
were smooth and white as wax
and probably a million leaves
sailed on their strange stalks
as the crickets ticked together
and I, in my brand new body,
which was not a woman’s yet,
told the stars my questions
and thought God could really see
the heat and the painted light,
elbows, knees, dreams, goodnight.

(from All My Pretty Ones, 1962)

Search Term Verse #7

Last modified on 2008-06-18 01:16:18 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Another in our series of poems made from search terms used by Googlers to find our site.

hexagram 11: birth of venus
naked ladies with large breasts
bare naked art, pizza sex
pictures naked ladies
sex bush penis harvest

servitude of potter, i am awinner
woods mediate rural nudity
rough blow jobs with vomit.

educated ladies nude; rinzai zen ptsd
when does life end?
ladies bare crotch, french ladies nude
what happens when a bird breaks its neck
how to build a sewage treatment plant

conservatives & habeas corpus
ladies bathing painting naked teacher
mark morford says barack obama is a bear

Of the Force That Lives On

Last modified on 2008-06-07 16:02:18 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

The following poems are about the force of cosmic gravity, better known as love, that lives on as bodies cross dimensions. The first two are from The Oxford Book of Death; the last two are from a collection titled Japanese Death Poems.

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish’d by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
–Shakespeare, Sonnet 73

At the last, tenderly,
From the walls of the fortress’d house,
From the clasp of the knitted locks, from the keep of the well-closed doors,

Let me glide noiselessly forth;
With the key of softness unlock the locks — with a whisper,
Set ope the doors O soul.

Tenderly — be not impatient,
(Strong is your hold, O mortal flesh,
Strong is your hold O love.)
–Walt Whitman, “The Last Invocation”

Although the autumn moon
has set, its light
lingers on my chest.
–Kanshu

Autumn breeze:
driftwood
landing lightly on the bank.
–Kanna

Lao Tzu, Chapter 62

Last modified on 2009-03-10 21:32:49 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Another selection from my translation of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching:

Tao is the treasure of all being.
Those who accord with it
Are embraced by it.
And for those who wander,
Its arms remain open.

Eloquence may fetch its price,
Heroic deeds may garner glory,
But only at the brutal cost
Of a person’s deepest self.
Is fame worth such a sacrifice?

What if you were called to command
At the coronation of a king–
If the three imperial generals
Marched in state before you,
Leading out majestic stallions,
To confer on you the jade emblem
Of the highest office?

Could such opulence ever equal
The inner gift of simply sitting
Where the Tao resides?

Does this perhaps explain the truth
Of what the ancients have told me?
That when the Tao is your treasure,
You will always receive what is truly yours,
That every error can be corrected,
And that the treasure of Nature
Is already within you?

Search Term Verse #6

Last modified on 2008-04-19 00:37:44 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Another in our series of poems created from actual search terms used to find this site:

mugabe resume humor, obese kid
getting ready for the revolution.
sickness unto death locomotive.

is a fool on the throne relieved of all
dissent and revolution?
august rain, death of a scientist;
cherry blossom art.

Rilke, on the Fear of Death

Last modified on 2008-03-26 01:40:38 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Rainer Maria Rilke, #13 in Das Stundenbuch (translation by Robert Bly):

I can hardly believe that this tiny death,
over whose head we look every day we wake,
is still such a threat to us and so much trouble.

I really can’t take his growls seriously.
I am still in my body, I have time to build,
my blood will be red long after the rose is gone.

My grasp of things is deeper than the clever games
he finds it fun to play with our fears.
I am the solid world
from which he slipped and fell.

He is like
those monks in cloisters that walk around and around;
one feels a fear when they approach;
one doesn’t know — is it the same one every time,
are there two, are there ten, a thousand monks, more?
All one knows is the strange yellow hand,
which is reaching out so naked and so close…
there it is,
as if it came out of your own clothes.

Search Term Poem #4

Last modified on 2008-03-23 18:47:52 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Another verse cobbled together from search terms that are leading Googlers to find our site:

policy of racial integration in singapor:
pictures racial slavery,
anticommunism t-shirts online store.
gary wills antonin scalia divine right,
forgiven of bothside of pearl harbor
what is tyranny government?
tim westrich favorite metaphors–
wealth privilege decadence.
harry potter does he go back to hogwarts?

Richard Wilbur: “Transit”

Last modified on 2008-03-22 18:38:06 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Here’s something from Richard Wilbur, one of America’s great poets:

A woman I have never seen before
Steps from the darkness of her town-house door
At just that crux of time when she is made
So beautiful that she or time must fade.

What use to claim that as she tugs her gloves
A phantom heraldry of all the loves
Blares from the lintel? That the staggered sun
Forgets, in his confusion, how to run?

Still, nothing changes as her perfect feet
Click down the walk that issues in the street,
Leaving the stations of her body there
As a whip maps the countries of the air.

Prey Tell

Last modified on 2008-03-18 09:45:15 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Long walk, winter rain:
Demons running at my back,
Haven’t caught me yet.

“An Apartment in the City of Death”

Last modified on 2008-02-13 09:58:48 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Today, we feature Kabir, in a translation by Robert Bly:

Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think…and think…while you are alive.

If you don’t break your ropes while you are alive,
do you think
ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten –
that is all fantasy.

What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death.
If you make love with the divine now, in the next life you will
have the face of satisfied desire.

So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is.
Believe in the Great Sound!

Neil Young

Last modified on 2008-02-10 18:02:56 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

All great poetry has the heart of a child. That is its universal quality. Here is a living example of this principle, from the great Canadian poet and musician, Neil Young:

Some are bound for happiness,
some are bound to glory
Some are bound to live with less,
who can tell your story?

See the sky about to rain,
broken clouds and rain.
Locomotive, pull the train,
whistle blowin’
through my brain.
Signals curlin’ on an open plain,
rollin’ down the track again.
See the sky about to rain.

Bly, On Aging

Last modified on 2008-01-28 13:14:27 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

A great American, a great artist: Robert Bly. I found the following in his “August Rain,” a prose poem from Eating the Honey of Words.

The older we get the more we fail, but the more we fail the more we feel a part of the dead straw of the universe, the corners of barns with cow dung twenty years old, the belt left hanging over the chair back after the bachelor has died in the ambulance on the way to the city. These objects ride us as the child who holds on to the dog’s fur; these objects appear in our dreams; they are more and more near us, coming in slowly from the wainscoting; they make our trunks heavy, accumulating between trips; they lie against the ship’s side, and will nudge the hole open that lets the water in at last.

Corporate Pigeons

Last modified on 2007-10-19 18:29:32 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Steel-gray touched by blue,
merging with the colorless
walls that disguise them.

Another Bush Haiku

Last modified on 2007-10-19 18:25:35 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Talks peace and freedom;
lives in a hell of hatred.
Cold. Dark. President.

The Poet of Walden

Last modified on 2007-10-19 18:20:02 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root…”

–Thoreau, from “Economy” in Walden

Excerpt from Cost of Freedom

Last modified on 2008-03-26 01:58:09 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

A poetry excerpt from Cost of Freedom:

History Lesson (Michael Rattee)

It was some time ago
when we were prepared to bomb
whoever asked as a favor
now our vengeance is based
in the bank and money
generals our desires
what with the scarcity
of incorrectness
bordering on fanaticism
but anyway some time ago
when we were prepared
we did something about whatever was asked
if only a brisk reply
or a cup of tea brewed
on the vantage point
overlooking the overwhelmed
occasionally rescuing a few
to populate
our abundance of victims
it cultivated our taste
for indulgence
and taught us
to invade without invitation
a tactic we currently favor
what happened last time
being beside the point.

Rain Haiku

Last modified on 2007-10-12 00:30:49 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Here in New York this week, the city has been longing for rain. Everyone has been complaining about the unnatural heat and humidity. So when the rain finally arrived during the Tuesday evening rush hour, you might think there would be spontaneous thanksgiving offered. Instead, people began running through the streets, as if knives and not water were falling from the sky.

That’s the culture’s training kicking in: we are taught that rain is “bad weather”–everything from an inconvenience to a disaster, depending on its volume and severity. Rarely do you see someone here stopping to enjoy it, to soak it in as if it were a life-giving and cleansing gift (which, of course, it is).

Among the old ones, rain was recognized as a blessing: it fed the fields, cleaned the streets, and filled the wells with drinking water. Metaphorically, rain was appreciated for these cleansing, life-giving properties. For the authors of the ancient Chinese classic, the I Ching, the arrival of rain denoted the relief of tension, the release of a purifying energy that could resolve conflict and dispel opposition or delusion.

This is the sense in which I wrote the following haiku on the way home, after soaking in some of the blessed rain that fell this evening upon our city.

watching the rain clean
the asphalt bones of New York:
the moment has come!

Lao Tzu on the True Warrior (Ch. 68, Tao Te Ching)

Last modified on 2007-10-10 14:59:39 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

The natural fighter spurns aggression,
For a war cannot be won in vengeance.
He defeats his enemy by discarding enmity.

A skillful manager directs the work
By humbly serving those who do it.
This is called natural Modesty:
It gets things done without striving,
And lets each individual achieve his destiny.

Though the world may call it great,
It is simply the surpassing of greatness.

(translation by Brian)

Rain Comes, There is Rest

Last modified on 2007-10-10 14:52:46 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Late for autumn’s work:
ain’t over till it’s over,
and it never is.

The Small Departs, the Great Approaches

Last modified on 2007-10-09 19:15:55 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Saw her long ago,
her wrist the peace hexagram
in bottle green ink.

Subway Haiku

Last modified on 2007-10-02 21:05:36 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

I’ve noticed that even subway announcements fall into haiku form:

If you see something,
Belongings in site, all time.
Stand clear closing doors.

Dirge for the NY Mets

Last modified on 2007-10-01 14:26:23 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

“Historic meltdown”:
some multi-millionaires fail;
all keep their money.

Lao Tzu on Inner Balance

Last modified on 2007-09-27 19:27:49 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Standing on tiptoe,
You are easily knocked off balance.
Striding forth in grim pursuit,
You make little progress.
To affect luminosity
Is to dull your natural light.
Dig in your heels,
And you will never endure.
Display yourself,
And you accomplish nothing.
For the mildest conceit reveals the ego—
The parasite of true nature,
A consumptive, gnawing burden—
It is disdained by the Sage.
Rejecting the ego, the Sage reveals
The quiet autonomy of true being.

Lao Tzu on Freedom

Last modified on 2007-09-26 18:57:59 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Here is Chapter 43 of the Tao Te Ching, from my translation:

Within the realm of Nature,
The gentle horse runs free,
While more intransigent forms stay fixed.

Non-being is able to infiltrate
Where there isn’t any room.

Thus I see that unforced action
Is the only path to success,
And that the greatest eloquence is silence.

Action free of noise and expectation:
This is Nature’s teaching,
Which but few have truly learned.
Listen to your own true nature,
And learn.

Kafka Haiku

Last modified on 2007-09-26 18:53:16 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

One of the reasons for the popularity of haiku is that its form and flow are so natural. Consider how easily this famous quotation from Franz Kafka slides into the 5-7-5 haiku format:

So many steps on
the road to death–why does it
have to take so long?

Elders

Last modified on 2007-09-25 16:55:08 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

A haiku on what I saw this morning:

Elders in the street:
marching their rage-filled mourning.
Autumn sun, rising.

At the Office

Last modified on 2007-09-25 15:18:56 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Our fluorescent sun:
light glaring everywhere,
yet no one can see.

Joyce, on Poetry

Last modified on 2007-09-24 20:28:22 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

“Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality.” (James Joyce)

Robert Bly: “The Night the Cities Burned”

Last modified on 2007-09-20 19:37:31 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

From My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy, a beautiful collection from a great poet, Robert Bly:

It must have been Saturn and the other old men
Who arranged this night of darkness for us.
So much of our life goes by in the murky dark.

When you open an apple in order to take in
Its sweet fruit, be sure to eat the tiny black seeds
So you can taste the tartness that Swift knew.

I’m never tired of despair and desperation,
And I won’t be quiet. I keep crying out that the house
Is being robbed. I want even the thieves to know.

We’ll have to help each other to hear, because
It was in the middle of the night during a storm
That Sophocles and all the weepers were born.

We’ve tried to go straight for a hundred years
With the help of reason. Friends, we are tufted
Nuthatches blown for miles in the dawn wind.

I don’t know why these poems keep veering off
Toward darkness. Robert, you are actually a daughter
Of Lot, fleeing from the ruins of the Enlightenment.

–Robert Bly (2005)

To the Goddess of Transformation

Last modified on 2009-05-13 03:38:10 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Please come in: go all the way back
to the old closet past the kitchen
where the priests left their wine-stained robes.

Where the arms and legs of hallowed toys
that never worked, never played
are buried in the graveyard of lies.

Let the drunken robes sleep on,
undisturbed;
but clear away the empty bottles
of belief.

For every time I touch them,
I bleed onto the edges
of their granite labels.

Your Death Claim Has Been Denied

Last modified on 2007-09-18 21:08:55 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

The Tao is neither difficult nor mysterious:
You feel its voice and then follow it–
Not to gain glory, salvation, or the Power
Of Heaven–
But just to see where it leads.

Life is not painful–
Only ego is.
Death is not a cosmic
Termination:
Only ego makes up scary endings,
While the universe
Goes on and on.

Our Nation

Last modified on 2007-09-18 20:49:50 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

our nation. conceived in liberty
but born in slavery.
a lot can happen
in nine months of history.

In The Office

My city, covered in corporate logos,
Rising through the smoke of a burning planet.
So much ink and paper here,
But not a single poet in sight.

Science Did Not Fail Me

Last modified on 2007-09-07 02:35:17 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

I wrote a poem about science, and here it is.

Science did not fail me, nor I it.
The age of commitment, of the unconditional
Fell amid the rubble, after the Bombs
Of nuclear autumn.

So in an embrace of burning tongues
We lay briefly, sporadically
Amid delicious sunset passion
That each of us will remember
In the minute before sleep,
The second before death.

Perhaps every true scientist has known it,
This ambivalent lust
For the succulent food
That deepens your hunger.

Kekule followed a single night’s dream;
Newton pursued his madness
In a backward race of Order and Law.
Einstein rode a starry stallion
Of hard-charging, time-driven Libido.
Bohm, the fractal infinitude of wonder.

Science, your hair gave off light,
Your lips brushed my every nerve
With the imprint of despair.
And you always gave enough
To make me ask “what more?”