Nude Modeling

I sit perfectly still,
bare-naked, atop a step-ladder,
my robe draped over a rung.
My ass is numb,
I stare dumbly at a crawling clock.
One pretty art student,
swishes charcoal in her sketchbook,
winks at me and laughs.
I feel movement
where anything but perfect stillness
would bring growing embarrassment.
But, I think, it could be worse.
If this was a poetry reading
I'd be baring my soul.

     -Larry Schug - Avon,  MN

Near, Far off, not here, not there

a poem by Vladimir Solovyov

Near, far off, not here, not there,
In realms of mystic reveries,
In a world invisible to mortal eyes,
In a world neither of laughter nor of tears

There it was, goddess, that I first
Recognized you one misty night.
A strange child was I,
And strange dreams did I see.

It was in an alien guise that you appeared
To me. Your voice sounded obscure.
And as the obscure creation of a childish dream
I long considered you.

Now you appear to me once more
With a caress of unexpected love.
I see you now not in a dream,
Your speech is clear to me.

I, who had been deafened in an alien world
By a roar of incoherent speech,
Suddenly heard in your salutation
The word of my homeland.

The voice of my homeland in your magic speech,
In the light of your azure eyes,
My homeland's reflection in ethereal rays.
In the golden color of your marvelous curls.

Everything by which my heart and mind live,
Everything trembling here within my breast,
All powers of feeling, will, and thought
That are mine I've given into your hands.

That morose despot, the cold ego,
Sensing its death, trembles.
As soon as it sees you approaching from afar
It grows silent, pallid, and then flees.

Let it perish, arrogant fugitive!
In free bondage and in living death,
I am the sanctuary, I am the sacrifice and the priest.
Tormented by bliss, I stand before you.

.......trans:  ...Laury Magnus and Boris Jakim

first line titles poem

by  Antonio Machado

Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt -- marvelous error!
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?

Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt -- marvelous error!
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt -- marvelous error!
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.

Last night, as I slept,
I dreamt -- marvelous error!
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.


        trans:  Robert Bly

All True Vows

All the true vows
are secret vows
the ones we speak out loud
are the ones we break.

There is only one life
you can call your own
and a thousand others
you can call by any name you want.

Hold to the truth you make
every day with your own body,
don't turn your face away.

Hold to your own truth
at the center of the image
you were born with.

Those who do not understand
their destiny will never understand
the friends they have made
nor the work they have chosen

nor the one life that waits
beyond all the others.
By the lake in the wood
in the shadows
you can
whisper that truth
to the quiet reflection
you see in the water.

Whatever you hear from
the water, remember,
it wants you to carry
the sound of its truth on your lips.

Remember,
in this place
no one can hear you

and out of the silence
you can make a promise
it will kill you to break,

that way you'll find
what is real and what is not.

I know what I am saying.
Time almost forsook me
and I looked again.

Seeing my reflection
I broke a promise
and spoke
for the first time
after all these years

in my own voice,

before it was too late
to turn my face again.

David Whyte

unpuncuated frost poem

  













       fire 'n ice


some say the world
will end in fire
some say in ice
from what i've tasted of desire
i hold with those who favour fire
but if i had to perish twice
i think i know enough of hate
to say
that for destruction
ice is also great
and would suffice
















.

pilfered from NYT

                       ECONOMY

I put my words in a book tallying what, if
any, accumulated effect the labor will produce.

I use a No. 2 pencil with a rubbed
down eraser.

There are scratched
through parts on the paper where I can see
that nothing, really, has come of it.

Nevertheless, it’s a big day.
Someone’s got to give.

So I lick
my newspaper print fingers
and ante up.

 #DimeSucker.

Don’t think you’re hiding in the black
and white.

Not the buildings.

I don’t mind helping.

I don’t know your neighbors all that well but shoot,  Sam.

Why you gotta be like that?

— CARA BENSON
The author of “(made)”

part of a letter which came to me on little pieces of paper

the restaurant i worked at in Vermont
got destroyed by Peace ( Irene  )
after Hope came to live there


Am I made for endings?
I keep hearing the end of all is at hand


I live off decaying roots,
dead vegetable matter


Admit, discover,  understand,  claim:
I thrive off  (of) death
Now nothing can disturb me anymore.
I have found my vocation.


In the heart of the Church I will be death!


My fan whirs.


Connie has come home to clean up the kitchen-
a vegetable juice factory to delay death.


Every day mounds of carrots and Kale and
exotic greens get stripped of their form
and become liquid bouquets


My fungus factory sits quietly on the counter
trying to harmonize with all the
deformation going on.


Whatever it is it's capable
of breathing it in
transforming it into harmonizing elixir.


The Whole Catastrophe.


I should not have written these thoughts down
The thoughts that come to me are stupid

 - anonymous


     .....well not completely,  my dear

nod toward iowa

    Poem

"Grace to be born and live as

variously as possible"

    --Frank O'Hara

     1

The lightning arranges us

here in the tranquil reaches

where the red flowers

have history to grow from.

Around them, we become

direct & conversational,

having stood for so long

accomplishing great stumps

on the frozen lawn. But soon,

we imagine, we will collide

with furry places--the rose's

moist explosion--symmetrical,

dangling, alert.

     2

One cannot close this eye.

For it is the world in the end

that moves us--its miraculous urges

waking us each morning. The sky

focuses on all the strange little plants,

and we are among them, strangely,

holding a cup of coffee,

because we can't be perfect.

And the car drives over it,

soundlessly, its volume equivalent

to the air its movement displaces.

 

 

        Darrell  Gray    +  2011

a lady named natalia translated this

You are not depressed. You are distracted

 Facundo Cabral -   assassinated in guatemala in 2011

You are not depressed, you are distracted,

and distracted from the life that inhabits you.

Distracted from the life around you:

dolphins, forests, seas, mountains, rivers…

Do not end up as your sibling did,

suffering because of a human being

 when there are more than 5600 million human beings in the world.

Moreover it is not so bad to live alone.

 I do very well, deciding every moment what I want to do

, and thanks to the solitude I know myself,

something fundamental to live.

Do not end up as your father did,

 feeling old because he was 70 years old,

forgetting that Moses led the exodus when he was 80

and Rubinstein interpreted Chopin like nobody else when he was 90. 

I mean just to allude to two very well known cases.

You are not depressed; you are distracted.

You believe that you have lost something,

 which is impossible, because everything that you have was given to you. 

You did not make a single hair of your head so you can not own anything. 

In addition, life does not subtract things,

it liberates you from them.

It makes you lighter so that you can fly higher and reach the fullness.

From cradle to grave, it is a school,

and that is why those predicaments that you call problems are lessons, indeed.

You lost nobody;

 the one who died is just going ahead,

 because we all are going there.

Besides this, the best of him/her, his/her love, is still in your heart. 

Who could say that Jesus is dead? 

There is not death, but only movement. 

And on the other side there are some wonderful people waiting for you:

Gandhi, Michelangelo Whitman, St. Augustine, Mother Teresa,

 your grandmother and my mother,

who believed that poverty is actually closer to what we call Love,

because money distracts us with too many things,

and makes us apprehensive and doubtful.

Do only what you love and you will be happy;

the one who can do what he/she loves,

is blessed and destined to have success,

which will definitively come,

because what must come,

will come,

but will come naturally. 

Do not do anything for obligation or commitment, but for love.

Only then there will be fullness in your life,

 and with fullness everything is possible;

and possible without any effort because what will move you will be the natural force of life,

the same that raised me when the plane crashed with my wife and my daughter,

 the same which kept me alive when my doctors predicted

that I would have only 3 or 4 more months of life.

God has put a human being under your care,

and that is yourself; so please set yourself free and make yourself happy,

and then you will be able to share the true life with others.

Remember Jesus: “You shall love one’s neighbor as thyself.” 

Reconcile you to yourself, stand in front of the mirror

and think that the creature that you are seeing is a masterpiece of God

 and decide right now to be happy because happiness is an achievement.

Besides, happiness is not a right but a duty,

because if you are not happy,

you are making miserable the lives of all those who love you.

Just remember,

one man who had no talent or courage to live

ordered the execution of six million Jewish siblings.

There are so many things with which to enjoy ourselves here on earth

and our life is so short that suffering is a loss of time. 

We have, for example,

snow in winter to enjoy with;

flowers in spring, chocolate made by the Perugia,

French baguette, Mexican tacos,

Chilean wine, seas and rivers,

Brazilian soccer,

The Thousand and One Nights, the Divine Comedy,

Don Quixote, Pedro Paramo,

boleros composed by Manzanero

 and poems written by Whitman ,   Neruda,   Blake,  Levertov...

music of Mahler, Mozart, Chopin, Beethoven...,...
paintings of  Caravaggio,

 Rembrandt, Velasquez, Picasso and Tamayo, --

among many other wonders.

And if you have got cancer or AIDS,

two things can happen and both are good.

If it wins, it releases your body from so many things

that can be so annoying sometimes:

 I am hungry, I am cold, it is my dream, I feel like I am right, I have doubts …

and if you win,
 you will be more humble,
more grateful,
 therefore,
much more easily happy.

Liberate yourself from the tremendous burden of guilt,

responsibility, and vanity,

 and be ready to live each moment deeply, as it should be.

You are not depressed, you just need to be busy. 

Help the child who needs you, and that child will be your child’s partner. 

Help old people, and young people will help you when you are old.

  In addition, service to others is an absolutely guaranteed happiness,

as certain as enjoying and taking care of nature for those who will come tomorrow.

Give without measure and you will receive without measure.

Love till you become the beloved, and even more!

 Love till you become the love itself!

And never let some few homicidal and suicidal people

distract you nor confuse you;

the good is majority, but you do not realize it because it is quiet;

a bomb makes much more noise than a caress,

 but for every bomb that destroys houses,

 there are millions of caresses that nourish life.