unabashed neruda

 

Every day you play with the light of the universe.
Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water,
You are more than this white head that I hold tightly
as a bunch of flowers, every day, between my hands.

You are like nobody since I love you.
Let me spread you out among yellow garlands.
Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south?
Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.

Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window.
The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish.
Here all the winds let go sooner or later, all of them.
The rain takes off her clothes.

The birds go by, fleeing.
The wind.  The wind.
I alone can contend against the power of men.
The storm whirls dark leaves
and turns loose all the boats that were moored last night to the sky.

You are here.  Oh, you do not run away.
You will answer me to the last cry.
Curl round me as though you were frightened.
Even so, a strange shadow once ran through your eyes.

Now, now too, little one, you bring me honeysuckle,
and even your breasts smell of it.
While the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies
I love you, and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth.

How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,
my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.
So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,
and over our heads the grey light unwinds in turning fans.

My words rained over you, stroking you.
A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body.
Until I even believe that you own the universe.
I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells, dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.
I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.




                                         Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto
                                                     (  de Chile  )








,











......

memorial

 





GREEN                                                                                          



             

Some days I walk down the street
where we lived and the fat man
who stole  tomatoes
sits under the same old sycamore
tapping out his angry rhythms
on the knotted roots.  And though
the children are no longer ours,
the oaks are no less generous
to the sidewalks with their shade. 
Overhead, sweet air still arrives
through many simple branches—
some reaching skyward for joy,
others downcast for a reason. 
We were like good trees
the years we lived on this street. 
We were so green.  Fresh as leaves.
And the days whispered through us.



                           Charles Ross Douthat










.....

silent vignettes

We Are The Americans                                                                      







I am
Joseph H. McIlhenny Ph.D.
Who in the year 1932
Was fired from my instructorship in psychology
At $1800 a year
The reason given by the university
“unavoidable retrenchments of staff”
the result
my wife’s death
and the death of the child inside her
I found her with her head in the oven
And the gas jets on
Unlit
I have no more to say
Except
That whoever brings back times like those
Has me to deal with…

I am
Alex Bukowski a seaman
Torpedoed twice in this war
But still kicking
And still delivering the goods
I am one of the men
Tom Dewey
Governor of New York
Beat out of their votes in this election
Knowing that I
And all the other seamen
Had his number
We still have
And it’s coming up…

I am
George Nakomis
Melter on the open hearth
With two boys in the Navy
Somewhere in the South Pacific
Since Pearl Harbor
I have tapped more heats on my turn
Armorplate steel most of it
Than any other melter in Homestead Works
And none of it checked “off specifications” either
But Dewey’s man Pegler
Says I oughtn’t be allowed to vote
Because I was born on the other side
What wouldn’t I give
To get my hands on those two guys…

I am
Virginia Sparks the wife of Wallace Sparks
And mother of his three soldier sons
Who saw in Hoover’s day
The farm sold out from under him
That he and his father and his grandfather
Had plowed their lives into
Wallace is a quiet man
A gentle man
A man who supports the church
But I was afraid then
For his immortal soul
When he raved of killing in his sleep…

I am
Theordis Jackson, Negro
A GI on the docks in Naples
Unloading ships
But before the war
I followed the crops on the East Coast
And I remember how it was
When the New Deal came in and helped us
With camps to live in that were decent
And hospitals for the sick folks
And relief money
That time the frost killed out the crops
And there wasn’t anything to pick
I remember how it was before that
In the sugar cane the celery and the beans
A whole family in one stinking room
Two cents a bucket for your water
Cheating you on your pay
And if you said anything
They’d like as not kill you
And throw your body in the canal
I can’t vote
Because Congress threw the President’s bill out
But after I get back I will by God
And I know that for…

I am
A man who once worked at the bench alongside of you
Or leaned on the bar with his foot on the same rail
It doesn’t much matter who
For you’ll never see me again
There I was on the beach running inland with the rest
And feeling a lot better than in the boat
Because at last there was something to do
And that was the finish
Whatever hit me
I never felt it
I don’t exactly want you to feel sorry for me
And I don’t care whether you remember me even
Only
I wouldn’t like it to happen
For you to forget what brought me to that beach
And where I was headed for…





                          John Beecher

























....

Naniboujou sings

 
       COPWAY'S DREAM SONG                                


It is I who travel in the winds,
It is I who whisper in the breeze,
I shake the trees,
I shake the earth,
I trouble the waters on every land.



                    George Copway  + 1869

the mind poignantly records

                             TRUE   LOVE                                     








In silence the heart raves. It utters words
Meaningless, that never had
A meaning.  I was ten, skinny, red-headed,

Freckled.  In a big black Buick,
Driven by a big grown boy, with a necktie, she sat
In front of the drugstore, sipping something

Through a straw. There is nothing like
Beauty. It stops your heart. It
Thickens your blood.  It stops your breath.  It

Makes you feel dirty.  You need a hot bath.
I leaned against a telephone pole, and watched.
I thought I would die if she saw me.

How could I exist in the same world with that brightness?
Two years later she smiled at me.  She
Named my name.  I thought I would wake up dead.

Her grown brothers walked with the bent-knee
Swagger of horsemen. They were slick-faced.
Told jokes in the barbershop.   Did no work.

Their father was what is called a drunkard.
Whatever he was he stayed on the third floor
Of the big white farmhouse under the maples for twenty-five years.

He never came down.  They brought everything up to him.
I did not know what a mortgage was.
His wife was a good, Christian woman, and prayed.

When the daughter got married, the old man came down wearing
An old tail coat, the pleated shirt yellowing.
The sons propped him.   I saw the wedding.  There were

Engraved invitations, it was so fashionable.  I thought
I would cry.  I lay in bed that night
And wondered if she would cry when something was done to her.

The mortgage was foreclosed. That last word was whispered.
She never came back.  The family
Sort of drifted off.  Nobody wears shiny boots like that now.

But I know she is beautiful forever,  and lives
In a beautiful house, far away.
She called my name once.   I didn't even know she knew it.






                                                                        Robert Penn Warren











....

quiet confession

                                                          FRESCO                                        

I have come again to the perfumed city.

Houses with tiered porches, some decorated with shells.

You know from the windows that the houses

are from a different time. I am not

to blame for what changes, though sometimes

I have trouble sleeping.

Between the carriage houses,

there are little gardens separated by gates.

Lately, I have been thinking about the gates.

The one ornamented with the brass lion, I remember

it was warm to the touch

even in what passes here for winter.

But last night, when I closed my eyes,

it was not the lion that I pictured first.

 

 

 

                       Richie Hofmann

 

 

 

 

 

 

sadness turns to rust

The Machines Mourn the Passing
               of                                                                                                          

                     People                                                         






        

 

We miss the warmth of their clumsy hands,

The oil of their fingers, the cleansing of use

That warded off dust, and the warm abuse

Lavished upon us as reprimands.

 

We were kicked like dogs when we were broken,

But we did not whimper.  We gritted our cogs—

An honor it was to be treated as dogs,

To incur such warm words roughly spoken,

 

The way that they pleaded with us if we balked—

"Come on, come on" in a hoarse whisper

As they would urge a reluctant lover—

The feel of their warm breath when they talked!

 

How could we guess they would ever be gone?

We are shorn now of tasks, and the lovely work—

Not toiling, not spinning—like lilies that shirk—

Like the brash dandelions that savage the lawn.

 

The air now is silent of curses or praise.

Jilted, abandoned to hells of what weather,

Left to our own devices forever,

We watch the sun rust at the end of its days.

 

Alicia E. Stallings

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

....

spring's summit

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------






This morning it wasn’t meaning to rain. I didn’t even owe
Now a story not worth telling. compulsive from a skittish memory who
 
I met a blues player. washed up cup
Put away til vodka
 
You poems and poets rupture my trunk in graft. the anti pain killer
Not gaugeably inflicted. nosing into the corners of eyes
 
Unprotected stream beds suffer the open sky. holed up in any-where’s silence
Trotting behind its endless stone wall. if turning to write appeared
 
Laugh may have history but not definition. a crash of joy of secret slaughter



                                         Joanne Hart









..

on second thought

I  TAKE  BACK  EVERYTHING  I'VE  SAID                                                     










Before I go

I’m supposed to get a last wish:

Generous reader

burn this book

It’s not at all what I wanted to say

Though it was written in blood

It’s not what I wanted to say.

No lot could be sadder than mine

I was defeated by my own shadow:

My words took vengeance on me.

Forgive me, reader, good reader

If I cannot leave you

With a warm embrace, I leave you

With a forced and sad smile.

Maybe that’s all I am

But listen to my last word:

I take back everything I’ve said.

With the greatest bitterness in the world

I take back everything I’ve said.


                  Nicanor Parra  (  102  yr  old  Chilean  poet  )




transl.  Miller Williams












......

quaterns anyone

tenacity                                                          





stoic we cling to the driftwood
hold on as if by doing so
would redeem us for our misdeeds
that have left us treading water

having lost sight of the coastline
stoic we cling to the driftwood
and seek the company of others
who float nearby on the currents

at the mercy of moon and tides
of the life that swims below us
stoic we cling to the driftwood
breathing in the sea’s salty air

one day bleeds into the next day
divided between light and dark
punishing gales and mild trade winds
stoic we cling to the driftwood



              Douglas Branson

a sort of lamentation

Dream Song 145                                                      





             John Berryman











 Also I love him: me he’s done no wrong
for going on forty years – forgiveness time –
I touch now his despair,
he felt as bad as Whitman on his tower
but he did not swim out with me or my brother
as he threatened –

a powerful swimmer, to take one of us along
as company in the defeat sublime,
freezing my helpless mother:
he only, very early in the morning,
rose with his gun and went outdoors by my window
and did what was needed.

I cannot read that wretched mind, so strong
& so undone. I’ve always tried. I – I’m
trying to forgive
whose frantic passage, when he could not live
an instant longer, in the summer dawn
left Henry to live on.















....

the aura of the blue flower that is a goddess

Immediately after the two brothers entered
The Seafood Shoppe with their wide-eyed wives
and extra-brown complexioned stepchildren,
the shrimp scampi sauce suddenly altered
its taste to bitter dishsoap. It took a moment
to realize the notorious twosome were "carrying"
medicines, and that I was most likely the next
target in the supernatural shooting gallery.
It was yet another stab at my precious
shadow, ne no ke we ni, the one who
always Stands First, wildly unafraid
but vulnerable.

This placement of time, this chance meeting
at Long John Silver's had already been discussed
over the burning flower clusters, approved,
and scheduled for a divine assassination.
What an ideal place to invisibly send forth
a petraglyph thorn to the sensitive
and unsuspecting instep I thought.
Out of fear I had to spit out the masticated
crustacean into the folded Dutch bandana.
I signalled Selene with my eyes:
something is terribly wrong here.

Even in the old stories, ke ta-a ji mo na ni,
my grandmother recited there was always
disagreement, jealousy, and animosity
between supernatural deities. That
actuality for humans, me to se na ni wa ki,
however was everpresent. It didn't conclude
as an impasse that gave us the weather,
the four seasons, the stars, sun, and moon.
Everything that was held together.

Unfortunately,
there could only be one re-creation
of earth. If it was requested in the aura
of the blue flower that I die,
the aura would make sure I die. . .

Later, the invisible thorn--when removed by
resident-physicians (paying back their medical
loans)--would transform into some unidentifiable
protoplasm and continue to hide in the more
sensitive, cancer-attracting parts of the fish-
eater.

In the mythical darkness that would follow
the stories the luminescent mantle of the kerosene
lamp would aptly remind me of stars who cooled
down in pre-arranged peace--to quietly wait
and glow.

                        

Ray Young Bear










......................

turtle mountain reservation

For Pat Gourneau, my grandfather



           

The heron makes a cross

flying low over the marsh.

Its heart is an old compass

pointing off in four directions.

It drags the world along,

the world it becomes.

My face surfaces in the green

beveled glass above the washstand.

My handprint in thick black powder

on the bedroom shade.

Home I could drink like thin fire

that gathers

like lead in my veins,

heart’s armor, the coffee stains.

In the dust of the double hollyhock,

Theresa, one frail flame eating wind.

One slim candle that snaps in the dry grass.

Ascending tall ladders

that walk to the edge of dusk.

Riding a blue cricket

through the tumult of the falling dawn.

At dusk the gray owl walks the length of the roof,

sharpening its talons on the shingles.

Grandpa leans back

between spoonfuls of canned soup

and repeats to himself a word

that belongs to a world

no one else can remember.

The day has not come

when from sloughs, the great salamander

lumbers through snow, salt, and fire

to be with him, throws the hatchet

of its head through the door of the three-room house

and eats the blue roses that are peeling off the walls.

Uncle Ray, drunk for three days

behind the jagged window

of a new government box,

drapes himself in fallen curtains, and dreams that the odd

beast seen near Cannonball, North Dakota,

crouches moaning at the door to his body. The latch

is the small hook and eye

of religion. Twenty nuns

fall through clouds to park their butts

on the metal hasp. Surely that

would be considered miraculous almost anyplace,

but here in the Turtle Mountains

it is no more than common fact.

Raymond wakes,

but he can’t shrug them off. He is looking up

dark tunnels of their sleeves,

and into their frozen armpits,

or is it heaven? He counts the points

of their hairs like stars.

One by one they blink out,

and Theresa comes forth

clothed in the lovely hair

she has been washing all day. She smells

like a hayfield, drifting pollen

of birch trees.

Her hair steals across her shoulders

like a postcard sunset.

All the boys tonight, goaded from below,

will approach her in The Blazer, The Tomahawk,

The White Roach Bar where everyone

gets up to cut the rug, wagging everything they got,

as the one bass drum of The Holy Greaseballs

lights a depth

charge through the smoke.

Grandpa leans closer to the bingo.

The small fortune his heart pumps for

is hidden in the stained, dancing numbers.

The Ping-Pong balls rise through colored lights,

brief as sparrows

God is in the sleight of the woman’s hand.

He walks from Saint Ann’s, limp and crazy

as the loon that calls its children

across the lake

in its broke, knowing laughter.

Hitchhiking home from the Mission, if he sings,

it is a loud, rasping wail

that saws through the spine

of Ira Comes Last, at the wheel.

Drawn up through the neck ropes,

drawn out of his stomach

by the spirit of the stones that line

the road and speak

to him only in their old agreement.

Ira knows the old man is nuts.

Lets him out at the road that leads up

over stars and the skulls of white cranes.

And through the soft explosions of cattail

and the scattering of seeds on still water,

walks Grandpa, all the time that there is in his hands

that have grown to be the twisted doubles

of the burrows of mole and badger,

that have come to be the absence

of birds in a nest.

Hands of earth, of this clay

I’m also made from.

 

 

 

 

                          Louise Erdrich

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

....

there's a criminal on the loose

Poetry Wanted, Dead or Alive                                            







The poster, tattered, blows
in the breeze: Poetry wanted
dead or alive.

How strange, it being dead
already. A reliquary of a world
past with beauty.

A summited bulwark, inadequate
to separate the serious worthy
from us.

Our banners waive in a new world
of decay. The revolution speaks
in prose.



                     Dr.Stu Kurtz PhD.









.................

it begs some definition

Poetry                                                                                                                   
 





I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle.
*****Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in
*****it, after all, a place for the genuine.

***********Hands that can grasp, eyes
***********that can dilate, hair that can rise
*****************if it must, these things are important not because a
high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because they are
*****useful. When they become so derivative as to become unintelligible
*****the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
***********do not admire what
***********we cannot understand: the bat

*****************holding on upside down or in quest of something to
eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf under
*****a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse that feels a flea
*******************************************************the base-
*****ball fan, the statistician—

***********nor is it valid
*****************to discriminate against "business documents and
school-books"; all these phenomena are important. One must make a *******************************************distinction
*****however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the result is not
*************************************************poetry,

*****nor till the poets among us can be
***********"literalists of
***********the imagination"—above
*****************insolence and triviality and can present
for inspection, "imaginary gardens with real toads in them," shall we have
*****it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
*****the raw material of poetry in
***********all its rawness and
***********that which is on the other hand
*****************genuine, you are interested in poetry.


********************************************—Marianne Moore









...