Flowers by Imani Cezane

My mother tells me I am her favorite daughter
Granted I'm the only one
But it makes me smile anyway
The other day I asked her what kind of flowers she wants to be buried with
Gardenias she said, white ones
She isn't dying, but I've spent my whole life watching her eat herself into the earliest grave she can fit into
We don't talk about drug addicted parents who keep their goods in the pantry, in the cupboard, in the freezer
Addiction is seeking comfort in that which is destroying you
I was in the third grade the first time my mother put me on a scale
I didn't know why
By fifth grade all I wanted to be when I grew up was thin
In the seventh grade I learned that self destruction was hereditary when my grandfather shot himself in the head
In the tenth grade I fainted at lunch because I ate so much that my throat closed into a fist
Senior year I didn't take my yearbook picture because I didn't want to be remembered
It doesn't matter what you look like when all you do is hide
Hide belly, hide back rolls, hide underarm fat, hide double chins,
Seek a remedy,
Seek low fat,
Low calorie,
Low carb
Hide cookies under the bed,
Hide chocolate bars in the closet,
Seek Atkins diet,
Seek Southbeach diet,
Seek Weightwatchers,
Seek Jenny Craig,
Seek God,
Hide from dressing rooms,
Hide clothes that don't fit, but will one day
Hide binge, after binge, after binge,
Seek lovers who love me better than my father did,
Hide lovers who are already other's lovers lover's
Seek forgiveness for the damage done to self
Seek reason to believe this isn't my fault,
Seek help, seek help, seek help,
My relationship with food is the most loyal one I've ever been in
Eating disorders run through my family like a leaky faucet I don't have the tools to fix
But the day I stop reading my weight like an obituary
I will take one of the flowers I've been saving for my casket I will stick it in my hair the way my mother used to
Sing one of them songs she sings on days that ain't that bad
The ones her mother sang before her
And her mother before that
And her mother before that



                                     David Greene






















...

a gentle setting of priorities

   I HAVE FOLDED MY SORROWS                                   





 I have folded my sorrows into the mantle of summer night
 Assigning each brief storm its allotted space in time, 
Quietly pursuing catastrophic histories buried in my eyes, 
And yes, the world is not some unplayed Cosmic Game, 
And the sun is still ninety-three million miles from me, 
And in the imaginary forest, the shingled hippo becomes 
                   the gay unicorn. 
No, my traffic is not with addled keepers of yesterday's 
                  disasters, 
Seekers of manifest disembowelment on shafts of yesterday's 
                  pains. 
Blues come dressed like introspective echoes of a journey. 
And yes, I have searched the rooms of the moon on cold 
                    summer nights. 
And yes,  I have refought those unfinished encounters, 
                      Still,  they remain unfinished.
 And yes, I have at times wished myself something different. 

The tragedies are sung nightly at the funerals of the poet; 
The revisited soul is wrapped in the aura of familiarity.



                                             Bob Kaufman











.....

landscape and the senses

               Fulcrum (Bowl With Wild Plums)    

September 14: They say the cliff swallow
is half an inch longer than the violet-green.

Yesterday, north wind on the South Platte,
flickering free-fall olive speckled with citron.

Now south wind over the North Platte,
shimmering chanterelle singe and glow.

Right and left. A dog sniffing flowers
for a change. The colors of the cliff swallow

the very same as the bay-breast's.

                                  Merrill  Gilfallan

...

Enheduanna

Lament to the Spirit of War                                      

You hack everything down in battle….
God of War, with your fierce wings
you slice away the land and charge
disguised as a raging storm,
growl as a roaring hurricane,
yell like a tempest yells,
thunder, rage, roar, and drum,
expel evil winds!
Your feet are filled with anxiety!
On your lyre of moans
I hear your loud dirge scream.

Like a fiery monster you fill the land with poison.
As thunder you growl over the earth,
trees and bushes collapse before you.
You are blood rushing down a mountain,
Spirit of hate, greed and anger,
dominator of heaven and earth!
Your fire wafts over our land,
riding on a beast,
with indomitable commands,
you decide all fate.
You triumph over all our rites.
Who can explain why you go on so?

....

....the eye begins to see

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NQNey6ycfw










......

au naturelle

   Love Affair                                                                 

The sun sees many flowers,  but the flower sees only the sun:
Blinded three parts of the day,  or dark all dark,
Uneasy, cold,  attentive for release,
He crouches through the night,  or burns and swells
Blindly as in a kind of hurt of love.
They call it blossoming.  The unwieldy earth
Clamps round,  his sap strained and petals shrunk.

And nothing is said.  The sun moves on above
Indifferent,  raging in its own sweet fire
And light, light, light,  the flower twists for it,
Straining its mouth for death,  which it calls love.
‘A God has come upon me’,  gapes the flower
As over the lip of the earth the sun sinks down.
The moon swings to and fro between the trees
Its casual, icy fire.  The first leaves fall.

                                             A. Alvarez






....

can the poets be trusted - plato

American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin

The black poet would love to say his century began
With Hughes or, God forbid, Wheatley, but actually
It began with all the poetry weirdos & worriers, warriors,
Poetry whiners & winos falling from ship bows, sunset
Bridges & windows. In a second I’ll tell you how little
Writing rescues. My hunch is that Sylvia Plath was not
Especially fun company. A drama queen, thin-skinned,
And skittery, she thought her poems were ordinary.
What do you call a visionary who does not recognize
Her vision? Orpheus was alone when he invented writing.
His manic drawing became a kind of writing when he sent
His beloved a sketch of an eye with an X struck through it.
He meant I am blind without you. She thought he meant
I never want to see you again. It is possible he meant that, too.

                                                    Terrance Hayes

......

with kiowa eyes

     ANGLE OF GEESE                   



How shall we adorn
Recognition with our speech?—
Now the dead firstborn
Will lag in the wake of words.

Custom intervenes;
We are civil, something more:
More than language means,
The mute presence mulls and marks.

Almost of a mind,
We take measure of the loss;
I am slow to find
The mere margin of repose.

And one November
It was longer in the watch,
As if forever,
Of the huge ancestral goose.

So much symmetry!—
Like the pale angle of time
And eternity.
The great shape labored and fell.

Quit of hope and hurt,
It held a motionless gaze
Wide of time, alert,
On the dark distant flurry.




                Navarre Scott Momaday

desert solitaire romantic edward abbey

YES -- even after my death you shall not escape me I'll follow you in the eyes of every hawk, every falcon, vulture, eagle that soars in whatever sky you walk beneath, all the earth over, everywhere. Yes -- and when you die too, and follow me into that deep dark burning delicious blue and become like me -- a kind of bird, a feathered thing -- why, then I'll seek you out ten thousand feet above the sea; and far beyond the world's rim we'll meet and clasp and couple close to the flaming sun and scream the joy of our love into the blaze of death and burn like angels down through the stars past all the suns to the world's beginning again. .

grace

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dualpWSuT3I













....

depravity in the bone

                   

                           SLOTH                                              

When autumn came, my grandfather set up
Behind a metal desk in his garage,
With slender ballpeen hammer and curved pick
….. To hull and crack

The acrid mound of tennis-ball-sized husks
From which he freed those gnarled piths of black walnuts
Gathered beneath our trees the weeks before
….. And meant for this.

Other men I have known had other passions,
To sell insurance or run clothing stores,
To coach a squad of boys to pitch and hit
….. In summer league.

And we are so impressed by excellence,
By concentration, how it shuts the world out
And brushes off distraction with a rudeness
….. Quite accidental,

That some have thought that this was our vocation,
The answer to the question why we’re here,
And whose unceasing cultivation is
….. Our happiness.

But even as a boy, when I would see,
Stowed in my idle laziness, the girls
Solicitous of every teacher’s praise,
….. Those busy bodies

Who volunteered to cook hot meals for old folks,
To tutor after school, or paint bright signs
For spirit week, I’d spy their flitting ache
….. Of restlessness.

And though I felt rebuked by their good will
And knew my brooding silence in the lunchroom
Was also discontent, if not distraction,
….. And marked for shame,

I nonetheless thought they had fled the question
Posed by their selves, or pushed it off beyond
Tomorrow with assurance that they had
….. Done what was asked.

And later, when I saw what Pascal wrote
About the king possessed of everything
Who would not have himself be left to sit
….. In solitude,

For fear his roving mind’s eye might return
Upon the glowering emptiness within
And there, cut off from glittering abundance,
….. Find gnawing misery,

I knew that man, contemptible and great,
Could build a far-flung empery from worry,
An earnest moral sentence from a lie
….. He tells himself;

And knew reflective anguish, in being thought,
Resembled more than humming outward deeds
What both too easily parody: that peace
….. We fear to seek.

For it is silly, Aristotle says,
To think the gods live their eternity
Fiddling about with war or sex or money.
….. They are all stillness.

No less must we, who crack our meat from shells
And earn commissions sweating at the office,
Set by our deeds at last for that pure act
….. Of god-like rest.

                       James Matthew Wilson

.....

thomas gray

ELEGY WRITTEN         

 IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day

The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,

The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,

And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,

And all the air a solemn stillness holds,

Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,

And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower

The moping owl does to the moon complain

Of such, as wandering near her secret bower,

Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,

Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,

Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,

The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,

The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,

No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,

Or busy housewife ply her evening care:   No children run to lisp their sire's return,

Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,

Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;

How jocund did they drive their team afield!

How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,

Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;

Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile,

The short and simple annals of the poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,

Awaits alike the inevitable hour.

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Nor you, ye Proud, impute to these the fault,

If Memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise,

Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault

The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

Can storied urn or animated bust  Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?

Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust,

Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death?

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid

Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;

Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed,

Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page

Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll;

Chill Penury repressed their noble rage,

And froze the genial current of the soul.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene,

The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear:Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,

And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast

The little tyrant of his fields withstood;

Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,

Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.

The applause of listening senates to command,

The threats of pain and ruin to despise,

To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,

And read their history in a nation's eyes,

Their lot forbade: nor circumscribed alone

Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined;

Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,

And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,

To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride

With incense kindled at the Muse's flame.

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,Their sober wishes never learned to stray;

Along the cool sequestered vale of life

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

Yet even these bones from insult to protect

Some frail memorial still erected nigh,

With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked,

Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

Their name, their years, spelt by the unlettered muse,

The place of fame and elegy supply:

And many a holy text around she strews,

That teach the rustic moralist to die.

For who to dumb Forgetfulness a prey,

This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned,Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,

Nor cast one longing lingering look behind?

On some fond breast the parting soul relies,

Some pious drops the closing eye requires;

Ev'n from the tomb the voice of nature cries,

Ev'n in our ashes live their wonted fires.

For thee, who mindful of the unhonoured dead

Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;

If chance, by lonely Contemplation led,

Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,

'Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn

'Brushing with hasty steps the dews away

'To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.

'There at the foot of yonder nodding beech

'That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,

'His listless length at noontide would he stretch,

'And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

'Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,

'Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove,

'Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,

'Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love.

     
     

'One morn I missed him on the customed hill,

'Along the heath and near his favourite tree;

'Another came; nor yet beside the rill,

'Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;

'The next with dirges due in sad array

'Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne.

'Approach and read (for thou can'st read) the lay,'Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.'

The Epitaph

Here rests his head upon the lap of earth

A youth to fortune and to fame unknown.

Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,

And Melancholy marked him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,

Heaven did a recompense as largely send:

He gave to Misery all he had, a tear,

He gained from Heaven ('twas all he wished) a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,

(There they alike in trembling hope repose)

The bosom of his Father and his God.