exceptions play by rules

Beyond the possibility of questioning,
certain marine reptiles once thought to be extinct
continue to live in the depths.
Through the ages they have evolved
and adapted to fantastic pressures that play upon them;
for which reason we observe them but rarely--
when they are sick,  or have been injured.
On such occasions they swim toward the surface,
becoming visible to us for a little while.

I believe the sea is preparing specific revelations
for the benefit of Man,
who has forgotten the value of himself.

Now,  another day comes quietly to its end.

The night is lambent;
it is wholly beautiful.

      - Evan S. Connell  (pg 151 of - Notes from a bottle....  1962   Viking Press)

it is hard to put the writing of Connell into a category.  often
you'll find his works in the poetry shelves of used bookstores
but it isn't rightly poetry...does not set out to be poetry.
insofar as he weaves a theme from beginning to end through a long series of
aphorisms independent insights or thematically arranged points of view 
one could call notes from a bottle found on the beach at carmel a long poem.
but more rightly it may be referred to as a narrative without particular characters.
i find him to be one of the most hard-hitting honest writers of the 20th century.

sequentia

no aesthetics to speak of nothing of sentiment nothing of acknowledgement of the souls yearning nothing of emotional pretense nothing of commentary on the plight of man nothing of hope just text text text text text...phrases sentences are photos and little else...


                         ...[The] crowd at the hockey game
                       is entirely white.
                     It's morning and trucks
                   double park.
                        in front of the market
                      utility crew sips cups
                    bright yellow hardhats
                  loud orange vests
               Unable to fathom love some men
             will crave power.
                           Not even May yet
                         and the hills are turning brown.
                      Out  here where old men
                     come to sit in the park
                    in the shade of
                  the great eucalyptus.
                              a yong man in white
                             turns slowly hands forward
                            in the silence of tai chi
                          an auto backs up.....
   
   from What  (pg 70)

   -ron silliman

i present this in a sloppily rendered way
like a photo too long in the pocket

it is not as if...

it is not as if the lights were dim
indeed silver is black
and the day as dark
sitting silently in a sliver of ray
the sun is whole again
forgotten is the excuse of night
he falls responsibly
and the day is dark
floating frightfully from that of grace
a soul is awake again
blind from that which is love
the prism of shackles and chains
darkness becomes the way
easterly dreams seek shelter from the weak
running from rain ... eclipsed

    - michael madsen

Lord, not you,

it is I who am absent.
At first
belief was a joy I kept in secret,
stealing alone
into sacred places:
a quick glance, and away--and back,
circling.
I have long since uttered your name
but now
I elude your presence.
I stop
to think about you,  and my mind
at once
like a minnow darts away,
darts
into the shadows,  into gleams that fret
unceasing over
the river's purling and passing.
Not for one second
will my self hold still,  but wanders
anywhere,
eveywhere it can turn.  Not you,
it is I am absent.
You are the stream,  the fish, the light,
the pulsing shadow,
you the unchanging presence,  in whom all
moves and changes.
How can I focus my flickering,  perceive
at the fountain's heart
the sapphire I know is there?

  - Denise Levertov   feeling fraudulent

prose poem

           POEM OF THE MOON

There are upon the night three mushrooms that are the moon.

As brusquely as the cuckoo sings from a clock, they rearrange themselves at midnight each month. There are in the garden rare flowers that are small sleeping men, one-hundred of them. They are reflections from a mirror.

There is in my dark room a luminous censer that swings, then two... phosphorescent aerostats. They are reflections from a mirror.

There is in my head a bumblebee speaking.



 

          - translation of a Max Jacob poem













.

Memory

- I honestly haven't the slightest idea
where this all came from  -  Hoelderlin perhaps?

The northeast blows,
My favorite of the winds,
From its spirit of fire
And kind lift I prophesy sailors.
But go now and greet
The beautiful Garonne,
And the gardens of Bordeaux
There, where the sharp bank cuts
The path and the current falls deep
Below the brook, but looks
Come from above, a noble pair
Of oak and silver poplar;

Still I remember this well, how
The broad peak bows down
The elms, above the mill,
But the courtyard fig tree grows.
Go there on a holiday
Brown women walking
Silken ground,
The month of March,
When night and day are the same,
And on lazy trails,
Heavy with golden dreams,
Where lulling air tails.

But it is rich,
Full of dark light,
This fragrant cup
Of sleep; it's sweet
Under the shadow of slumber.
It's not good to think
The mortal is soulless.
But it’s good to converse
In the voice of the heart
And hear much as love emerges
And acts, occurrences happen.

But where are my friends? Bellarmin
With his companion? Some are afraid
To go to the source;
Where the wealth begins,
In the sea. They,
Like painters, pull together
The beauty of the Earth and disdain
War not winged, and
Live for years alone, below
The leafless mast, where night does not shine through
The city's festivities,
Nor its strings and indigenous dances.

But now the Indians are
The people left,
There on the airy spit,
And mountains of grapes fall
To the Dordogne, which along
With the mighty Garonne
Empties to the sea
That comes from the stream. Abounding,
It gives memories to the waters,
And to the lovers' eyes entwined,
But what remains, the poet finds.

visual poem

https://rosemarywashington.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/img_8051.jpg


















....

currency voices

Money Talks

1

Money is talking

to itself again

in this season's

bondage

and safari look,

its closeout camouflage.

Hit the refresh button

and this is what you get,

money pretending

that its hands are tied.

2

On a billboard by the 880,

money admonishes,

"shut up and play."

- Rae Armantrout

The Hermit

As he prowled the rim of his clearing
where the blade of choice had not spared
one stump of affection

he was like a ploughshare
interred to sustain the whole field
of force, from the bitted

and high-drawn sideways curve
of the horse's neck to the aim
held fast in the wrists and elbows-

the more brutal the pull
and the drive,  the deeper
and quieter the work of refreshment.

-  Seamus Heaney  (Station Island)
     the only poetry reading i attended this year was Seamus
     reciting in a large auditorium to a large crowd-
     a humble man stating his childhood and adult perceptions
     in terse words of irish-english gaelic tone
     i was left with the impression of his insight into blackbirds
     -  my sense is that these are poems which benefit a reader
         to the extent that they are uttered aloud

OF EARTH

Swallows looping and diving
by the darkening oaks,  the flash
of their white bellies,
the tall grasses gathering last light,
glowing pale gold, silence
overflowing in a shimmer of breeze--
these could have happened
a different way.  The heavy-trunked oaks
might not have branched and branched
and finely re-branched
as if to weave themselves into air.
There is no necessity
that any creature should fly,
that last light should turn
the grasses gold,  that grasses
should exist at all,
or light.
               But a mind thinking so
is a mind wandering from home.
It is not thought that answers
each step of my feet,  to be walking here
in the cool stir of dusk
is no mere possibility,
and I am so stained with the sweet
peculiar loveliness of things
that given God's power to dream worlds
from the dark,  I know
I could only dream Earth--
birds, trees, this field of light
where I and each of us walk once.

     - John Daniel

in the manner of this blog title

one day I walked up a wash
in some places more
a staircase
of white boulders
in other places
a ramp of rock-hard watermelons
that sometimes
tipped precariously
beneath my weight
making me aware
of the fragility
of my ankles
and other bones


not long ago
this was
a 3-4 meter deep channel
i was told
and then
after the fire
the boulders washed down
and filled up the channel
a good measure, pressed down,
and shaken together
an abundance of stones
brimming over
to create this ramp


up which
we were carefully treading
to see the sharp contact
at the base of a landslide


the rocks that tipped
and clunked beneath my feet
displayed an array of patterns
within defined parameters
a sort of typical signature
for this drainage


amazing, though
so many ways
of putting white and black
together in a rock
a limited palette
but a rich result
of patterns and textures
hornblende
and plagioclase
and quartz


i picked up a moderate
sized stone
on the way back
to take home with me


the sky was still gray and close
at the end of the day
the breeze cool
despite the approach of summer


and in this little patch
of wildness
on the edge of the city
nothing was lacking

---a geologian

MEDITATION BY HAKIM SANAI

trans. peter lamborn wilson
and
nasrollah pourjavady



Collect your mind's fragments
      that you may fill yourself
         bit by bit with Meaning:
    the slave who meditates
     on the mysteries of Creation
        for sixty minutes
          gains more merit
        than from sixty years
              of fasting and prayer.

Meditation:
    high-soaring hawk
       of Intellect's wrist
                 resting at last
         on the flowering branch
                 of the Heart:
            this world and the next
                   are hidden beneath
                      its folded wing.

Now perched before
                the mud hut
                           which is Earth
                             now clasping with its talons
                                  a branch of the Tree
                                                   of Paradise
                                                        soaring here
                                 striking there -- each moment
                                                 fresh prey
                                 gobbling a mouthful of moonlight
                                             wheeling away
                                                      beyond the sun
                                            darting between the Great Wheel's
                                 star-set spokes, it rips to shreds
                                                    the Footstool and the Throne
                                    a Pigeon's feather
                                                           in its beak --
                                                                            or a comet --
                                                   till finally free of everything
                                                      it alights, silent
                                                            on a topmost bough.

                     Hunting is king's sport,
                                      not just anyone's
                                                     pastime...
                   but you?
                          you've hooded the falcon
                                       -- what can I say? --
                                                  clipped its pinions
                                                        broken its wings...
                                                                                         alas.

circa.   1100 AD