sometimes the price of freedom

                    Love-Letter-Burning










The archivist in us shudders at such cold-
blooded destruction of the word, but since
we're only human, we commit our sins
to the flames. Sauve qui peut; fear makes us bold.




Tanka was bolder: when the weather turned
from fair to frigid, he saw his way clear
to build a sacrificial fire
in which a priceless temple Buddha burned.




(The pretext? Simple: what he sought
was legendary Essence in the ash.
But if it shows up only in the flesh—?
He grinned and said, Let's burn the lot!)




Believers in the afterlife perform
this purifying rite. At last
a match is struck: it's done. The past
will shed some light, but never keep us warm.




                                      Daniel Hall


















......

a day's trouble sufficient unto itself

             A CHILD'S PRAYER












For Morn, my dome of blue,
For Meadows, green and gay,
And Birds who love the twilight of the leaves,
Let Jesus keep me joyful when I pray.







For the big Bees that hum
And hide in bells of flowers;
For the winding roads that come
To Evening’s holy door,
May Jesus bring me grateful to his arms,
And guard my innocence for evermore.   














                       Siegfried    Sassoon      




















....                

a sabbath trajectory

Some keep the Sabbath going to the Church --
 I keep it, staying at Home --
With a Bobolink for a Chorister --
And an Orchard, for a Dome --



 Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice --
I just wear my Wings --
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton -- sings.



 God preaches, a noted Clergyman --
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last --
I’m going, all along.








                                   Emily Dickinson
















......

fate calls sadly

                       










                       Notes Toward a 25th Reunion

















“And what do you do?” Mrs. Appoplex,
Fat dam of some dim Story Street savant
In baggy Marimekko muumuu and
Barbaric Inca necklet, asks my wife
At some dream sherry party packed with ham-
Strung academics swaying gently in
The wind of Babel. “Why, just cook and fuck,”
My wife does not, so sweetly, tender in
Reply, although I wish like hell she would.
Whose world is real, for Christ’s sake, anyway?
Their sculpture gallery of images
That move mechanically in circumscribed
Tangents and – this is a recording – talk
In selfsame selfsongs all the livelong day?
(I must say I have just enough of a
Foot in that world to see its tiny point
Flash in the haystack of irrelevance.)
Or my free-form theatre of absurd,
Unaugurable happenstance, in which -
For gain, my lads, for gain – we businessmen
Risk all upon a nutty and divine
Idea of weal and on our con-man’s skill
To sell it to each other, I’ll back that
Frail matchstick pyramid of barest will,
On which to balance, one exposes all
To the black, hithering eye of the abyss,
As realer than the static autoclave
Of academe, full of blunt instruments
Becoming sterile as they sit and steam.
And yet, when I return in steaming June
To my Reunion in the pullulant
Hive of the Yard, I’ll look with shuttering
Eyes on my unknown classmates, businessmen
Who have no business with me, and greet
The likes of Mrs. Appoplex and her
Effete levée with a glad, homing cry.
The question is, what kind of fool am I?






                                                L.E.  Sissman

contemplate a chilly dark

song 21


Snows' night's winds on the window rattling
Would seem to leap out of the bed-spring

What prevents a feat like that occurring
Reason-but the more actual bedding

Springs of steel mercurial spirallings
making a body's night a changeable singing

The winged boots of the frozen seek of it! sheltering
Safety from the window's pommelling












                                     Louis Zukofsky        
























...








                  

a somewhat anonymous heist

another haiku






lake mist dissolves
     dissipates in morning sun
         shimmering seagulls












......

Stanza V of Burnt Norton

     








                      V












Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,
Not that only, but the co-existence,
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them. The Word in the desert
Is most attacked by voices of temptation,
The crying shadow in the funeral dance,
The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.
The detail of the pattern is movement,
As in the figure of the ten stairs.
Desire itself is movement
Not in itself desirable;
Love is itself unmoving,
Only the cause and end of movement,
Timeless, and undesiring
Except in the aspect of time
Caught in the form of limitation
Between un-being and being.
Sudden in a shaft of sunlight
Even while the dust moves
There rises the hidden laughter
Of children in the foliage
Quick now, here, now, always -
Ridiculous the waste sad time
Stretching before and after.






                        thomas stearns eliot

snortblubberblubberblubberwhfuuuuuuduthsnorthack

LYRICS:










desert lullabye
chris stuart






sung most effectively acapella











Sleep little baby, sleep 'til the morning comes
Mama will keep you from all harm
Sleep little baby under the western sky
I'll sing you a desert lullaby


Sleep little baby, sleep on your mama's knee
Don't call the wolf and coyote
Sleep little baby, hush baby don't you cry
I'll sing you a desert lullaby


Dream little baby, dream of a valley green
Far over mountains by the sea
Dream little baby, one day no more you'll roam
Then you'll awake and find a home


Sleep little baby, sleep 'til the morning comes
Mama will keep you from all harm
Sleep little baby under the Western sky
I'll sing you a desert lullaby




















......

as to cognitive intentions

                 The Book











Now wars and waters, stars
And wires, the dead hand in the iron glove;
The bolted winds that ride death's cars;
Guns, gallows, barracks, poles and bars;
Seem to have laboured but to fetch us love.
Planets that burn and freeze
Now wring their hands, or forced to please,
Must twine them to a dance instead:
Distraught cosmogonies
Like bad old baffled fairies stand,
Where we, your head upon my hand,
Or sleeping hand in hand, or head by head
Have closed the book of the day and gone to bed.


But body, now be deep:
Worn hornbook, Mirror of the Sinful Soul,
Or Abbey of the Holy Ghost, The Keep
Of Spiritual Valour, keep
Your foxed and wormed and rusty pages whole,
That we may read our way.
Like an old lantern by whose ray
We hope to find a better light,
Glow feebly as you may;
Be torn and tattered, interleaved,
Our chapter will not be achieved,
Until we read by touch as well as sight,
And learn to turn the pages, kiss and write.


You are periphery;
And we would be the centre, if we could
But break your circle, or could be
Without you, inconceivably
Ourselves our multitude and solitude.
You would be nothing then,
As now all other things and men
Are turned to nothing at a touch
Of hand or lip; again,
We'd seek the soul, and having passed
Through you and through ourselves, at last
Find the dark kingdom which denies that such
As selves, and thoughts and bodies, matter much.


O Encheiridion,
O Salutaris Hostia in this kind:
Until that darkness comes, be all-in-one,
Be shadow to our double sun,
But single, as the purpose of our mind.
For if by love we mean,
To seek and find a go-between
Spelt from your incunabula,
And see at length what can be seen
By some new light beyond decay:
Through you we must burn time away,
And wither with the force of our idea
The world of visible phenomena.












                               F.T. Prince


















....

like a whisper

                          Singer in the Shadows








      Singer in the shadows, wake up:
A song is required that never has been before.
     Come prepared!

A cleansing wind will announce
     you,
Afterwards, the sea will fall silent
and you will sing and then be lost again
     as the sea commences,
A small stone set before the door of eternity
   will recall
the day you were honored.










                        Robert Sund




















......

FOR THE PISCES FULL MOON

    






                               by





                       Hoa Nguyen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

      Old that remembers my hospitality
the old part of the part
(or should you be
big blue to me?) Waste life or a love

She points like my mother in doorways
like my Canadian sky pale
like I am hung now a 4 upon

Walk on oatmeal in the foyer her favorite story
without the letter u in there

You can be the bringer of cakes
You can be a bringer

She said, “It’s OK tears are healing”
(back to river

                     back to sea)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.....

VIDPOME

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixPArT9n9DE










CLICK LOWER RIGHT CORNER OF IMBEDDED SCREEN FOR FULL PICTURE









.....














.......

on losing ones senses

                         




















                         Going Deaf  






 

No matter how she tilts her head to hear

she sees the irritation in their eyes.

She knows how they can read a small rejection,

a little judgment, in every What did you say?

So now she doesn’t say What? or Come again?

She lets the syllables settle, hoping they form

some sort of shape that she might recognize.

When they don’t, she smiles with everyone else,

and then whoever was talking turns to her

and says, “Break wooden coffee, don’t you know?”

She pulls all she can focus into the face

to know if she ought to nod or shake her head.

In that long space her brain talks to itself.

The person may turn away as an act of mercy,

leaving her there in a room full of understanding

with nothing to cover her, neither sound nor silence.

                                                         Miller Williams

                                                         Arkansas poet

                                                          +  01/01/2015

......