Open Ghazal

Kiss the hand and cheek, kiss the lips that open.
Kiss the eyes and tears, kiss the wounds that open.

The nuclei of our atoms are so small, we are mostly nothing.
Whoever did this made our stone walls out of windows always open.

In a thicket: A bag too dark to see, too big to lift, too familiar to walk away from. 
God grant me strength to drag it into the open.

6:10, stuck on the freeway again.
Love is singing with window and throat wide open.

My friend refused to greet the stranger in black,
was brought to the surgeon, who cut his heart open.

Go ahead, I dare you, take another breath.  Each one is full
of what 14 billion years ago blew this world open.

We safecracker poets sand fingertips, pass long nights on our knees.
All to feel those clicks that mean the door will spring open.

Len says, I love the night sky, but I adore the Milky Way:
It is the edge of Her robe.  See how gently it opens.








                                        Len Anderson












......

a little visit to maximus

   














John Burke did not rise




when Councilman Smith, nor had he signed


the complimentary scroll....


Staring into the torsion

Of his own face Burke


sat solid in

refusal (as,


in matters of the soul a private man


lives torn


by inspection


and judicium, the judge


or mischievous woman


who make hob


of us) sweat, Burke




sweat, indubitoubly,


in his aloneness-or he'd not have said,


"I am no hypocrite"


Against the greased ways


of the city now (of the nation) this politician


himself a twisted animal


swelling of mouth, followed


by squirrels as pilot fish


himself a shark will not


tolerate
the suave / the insolence


of agreement


     








               Charles Olson

Dreaming Winter

             

Don't ask me if these knives are real.
I could paint a king or show a map
the way home—to go like this:
Wobble me back to a tiger's dream
a dream of knives and bones too common
to be exposed. My secrets are ignored.


Here comes the man I love. His coat is wet
and his face is falling like the leaves,
tobacco stains on his Polish teeth.
I could tell jokes about him—one up
for the man who brags a lot, laughs
a little and hangs his name on the nearest knob.

Don't ask me. I know it's only hunger.
I saw that king—the one my sister knew
but was allergic to. Her face ran until
his eyes became the white of several winters.
Snow on his bed told him that the silky tears
were uniformly mad and all the money in the world
couldn't bring him to a tragic end. Shame
or fortune tricked me to his table, shattered
my one standing lie with new kinds of fame.


Have mercy on me, Lord. Really. If I should die
before I wake, take me to that place I just heard
banging in my ears. Don't ask me. Let me join
the other kings, the ones who trade their knives
for a sack of keys. Let me open any door,
stand winter still and drown in a common dream












                                    James Welch










.....

matt says

An opposing earth

What kind of mere essence

is this?

That ivory boy has

 no retrospection for anyone

Opposing smile beside you

on an earth

A trifle is slow,

their hand little with disgrace

They are too mighty;

 the trivial heat

recollects their wealth












                                    forgodot.com










....still waiting












....

veiled catholic allusions

                      








              


                    




                        ARTIFACT   




















 For three years you lived in your house
just as it was before she died: your wedding
portrait on the mantel, her clothes hanging
in the closet, her hair still in the brush.
You have told me you gave it all away
then, sold the house, keeping the confirmation
cross she wore, her name in cursive chased
on the gold underside, your ring in the same

box, those photographs you still avoid,
and the quilt you spread on your borrowed bed —
small things. Months after we met, you told me she had
made it, after we had slept already beneath its loft
and thinning, raveled pattern, as though beneath
her shadow, moving with us, that dark, that soft.






                                             Claudia Emerson     -     died  late  autumn 2014

Eating Poetry

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.



The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.



The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.



Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.



She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.



I am a new man,
I snarl at her and bark,
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.  










                                 Mark Strand      +December 2014       






















......                  

Psalm

No-man kneads us again out of Earth and Loam,
no-man spirits our Dust.
No-man.





Praise to you, No-man.
For love of you
we will flower.
Moving
towards you.



A Nothing
we were, we are, we shall
be still, flowering:
the Nothing-, the
No-man’s-rose.



With
our Pistil soul-bright,
our Stamen heaven-torn,
our Corolla red
with the Violet-Word that we sang
over, O over
the thorn.














       Paul Celan




               -I'm afraid I don't know who translated this from the german
















......










.