They Shoot Poets - Don't They?

Happy Birthday Mr. Dylan!

2011-05-24T21:50:00.001-04:00

If You're in the Montreal Area on Tuesday - Check Out : " Writers Out Loud " - 'Nuff Said!

2011-05-21T19:45:00.005-04:00

Upon Seeing The Space Allotted to Poetry Books in The Largest English Bookstore in Montreal!

2011-05-20T19:13:00.005-04:00

There I stood in front of the poetry section. I had spent the last half hour walking up and down the stacks of different forms of Literature looking for this spot of hallowed ground. "Spot" being the operative word here. What I saw before me, at once stupefied and sickened me. This poor excuse for a collection of poetry books rendered me speechless. Yes it did indeed include some of the giants of poetry: Neruda, Rilke, Whitman, Eliot, ... etcetera. But it was lacking in so many ways. There were no poetry guides or reference books. Although I did see a copy of "Poetry for Dummies". How apropos! Furthermore there were no new volumes of upcoming poets.

There was a time when the Poetry section occupied much more of the bookstore's realestate. What had happened is obvious. For a time, I stood there pouring over a volume of Billy Collins hoping to find some levity in the situation. Reading for the umpteenth time: "The Trouble With Poetry". Still chagrined I walked out onto St-Catherine Street into the damp undertow of worker-ant activity.

Hello... Is There Anybody Out There?

2011-05-19T12:29:00.002-04:00

The Sound of These Whales is Mighty Sweet

2010-11-18T18:36:00.005-05:00

Nic Sebastian's Whale Sound arose from an "... idea ..to record and post readings of a range of contemporary poems, selected through a mixture of solicitations and submissions (self- and third-party).

The recordings are posted, archived and indexed on her blog, and Whale Sound is also available as a free downloadable iTunes podcast. Links to poem texts available elsewhere online are posted, but no text is posted on the blog itself.

Whale Sound also accepts third-party submissions made on behalf of other web-active poets."

She says "...in a recent blog post on the project, I find that reading other people’s work aloud is the most tender and respectful, and also the most careful, way to engage with it. I hope you will join me in this continuing celebration. "

All this blogger can say is check it out. Her vocal renderings of other poets' work are amazing.

Poet Searching for Online Poetry Workshop

2010-11-15T21:24:00.008-05:00

Yeah, that's right. Once again I'm looking for a place to hang my on-line poetic hat. Most of the places I used to frequent have gone "The Way of all Flesh". Anybody have any suggestions? I'm all ears....really. Oh... and I promise to be more active than this guy!

Taking out the Shears & Doing Some Pruning.

2010-11-06T20:53:00.003-04:00

I've changed the blog's template and have pruned away links that no longer functioned. If there's something I've missed drop me a line.

On Responding to the Question: "Why Have You Abandoned Poetry?"

2010-11-03T22:29:00.006-04:00

I have received in the course of the last several months open e-mails inquiring why I had stopped posting on this blog and more importantly why I had stopped writing and being an active member of the on-line poetry scene. The truth is that I had not abandoned poetry. Rather, poetry had until very recently abandoned me. No longer did the music of poetry spill into my everyday life. I had become oblivious to its calling. Whereas, before, the urgency of ars poetica would boil and bubble into my very essence, it had now become a footnote to my existence. This did not seem or feel right. Then there was the need to mourn my recent losses. Perhaps the time has come for renewal.

The Something
Charles Simic

Here come my night thoughts
On crutches,
Returning from studying the heavens.
What they thought about
Stayed the same,
Stayed immense and incomprehensible.

My mother and father smile at each other
Knowingly above the mantel.
The cat sleeps on, the dog
Growls in his sleep.
The stove is cold and so is the bed.

Now there are only these crutches
To contend with.
Go ahead and laugh, while I raise one
With difficulty,
Swaying on the front porch,
While pointing at something
In the gray distance.

You see nothing, eh?
Neither do I, Mr. Milkman.
I better hit you once or twice over the head
With this fine old prop,
So you don't go off muttering

I saw something!

In Memoriam - Carmela Bruno (1926 - 2010)

2010-07-01T10:37:00.004-04:00

OSTEO - PARADIGM

In a world of perfect bones,
there is no room for hairline fractures,
hip replacements or herniated disks.
Prostheses are non-existent; bones
do not snap like bread sticks
or wear down like soapstone.

My mother can still squeeze my hand
till my knuckles run white and our thumbs
become one. She does not fixate on yellow
biohazards or aluminum walkers. She studies
how long the water will take
to course through irrigation ditches.

In a world of perfect bones,
long after cicadas turn silent
and the calabrian heat subsides,
my mother walks about
on that five foot high retaining wall
that separates her from her garden.

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

Better Late Than Never

2010-04-05T13:25:00.007-04:00

April is the cruellest month...mixing
Memory and desire. (T.S. Eliot)

For those of you whose memory serves them right, this blog was once brimming with poetry. Whether or not these poems had/have any real intrinsic literary value, I leave to your judgment. I have not been writing with the frequency that I once did. But then again I state the obvious.

For those of you who still read this blog on the off chance that there might be something to glean from recent entries - I offer you this. I have ceased to be fixated on publication in book format of my poetry that has appeared in literary magazines. I would like at this point, in light of the fact that this is April and the month that we have set aside to celebrate poetry, to present to you a retrospective look at my published poetry -- for the duration of this month.

In order to make amends this first installment offers five poems (April 1st - April 5th):

Old Keyboards

My daughter likes to tie old keyboards
to my chair, as though to tether

the words to their source. They orbit
my sphere where tropes unite.

The cables interconnect my thoughts
to the hub from which she suspects all

must emanate and that I am the harbinger
of the - Truth is - she is my compass.

---------------------------------------------
first published: fall 2002 – Another Toronto Quarterly

A Marmot in the City

A marmot in the city seemed odd,
like Bermuda shorts in a Canadian winter;
yet there it was in the tomato patch,
between the rock garden and scotch pine.
It sniffed at a San Marsano ready to be picked,
but settled for shoots of parsley.

It seemed uncertain as it ate; the new kid
in class, all our eyes on the back of its head.
Then one morning my wife noted its form
among the forget-me-nots,
I went out to inspect and it scampered
into a hole burrowed beneath our landing.

Days later our youngest complained
about an odor emanating from its lair.
The S.P.C.A. came but couldn't dig it up;
so there it lay sepulchered,
a lone carcass in its tomb. What if
others crawled inside to their demise?

I imagined that a future archaeologist
might excavate the site and think
that this primitive culture buried their pets
in a communal plot close to their hearths.

What were Neanderthals at Le Moustier
really thinking as they buried their dead
in the caves of Les Eyzies' shallow pits,
a boy's remains surrounded by wild goat horns?

-----------------------------------------------
Winter 2003 – Verse Libre Quarterly V: 3 e: 1

Her Particular Disposition

Inviolate, in her satinette housecoat
her arm's secrets safely hidden, she walks
him to the door, the broken screen reminds
her of a room and of time spent at the wall
of ignorance at the hospital's psych wing.
Don't forget tomorrow's session with Dr. Marx.

She nods and allows anxiety to seep
through the careful presentation of self;
derailed by the exhaustive effort, she runs
her fingers raw across the screen's
ragged edge. Smiles him out, lips pursed
to snap her pupils into a dance.

He hears the door's lock click behind him,
as he steps out from under the eaves
and off the stoop, between the dank
sedges on an uneven walkway, looks
back over shoulder to see her beneath
the light, behind the door, her face
pressed against the torn mesh.

----------------------------------------
April 2003 – The Breath E-Zine

MELTDOWN

He stepped past the police cordon,
put on the mandatory surgical gloves,
pulled out his notepad and pen
and considered why,
they had asked a poet
to visit the scene of a crime.

The force of the explosion had strewn
about human parts. The cadaver's pride
was on the commode. His vanity
hung by the mirror. The libido sat
exposed on the loveseat. Gobbets of guilt,
were hidden in denial behind the door.

But most telling, his stupidity
was splattered on the wall
behind the writing desk in particles
of dura mater and blood. And there
in front of the corpse was the culprit:
a journal of love poems in the victim's handwriting.

------------------------------------------------
September 2002 - Electric Acorn #13

ONE HAND CLAPPING

What is the Sound of a Single Hand? When you clap together both hands a sharp sound is heard;
when you raise the one hand there is neither sound nor smell...

Hakuin Ekaku Zenji (1686-1768)

She speaks to me - a foreign movie
without subtitles; a dubbed version
of an English feature - snippets of dialogue
recognizable amid aphasic speech. Audio
and visual feed out of sync in dyslexic pattern;
the face familiar, the words incomprehensible.

It is in the eyes that I read her meaning,
double projectors they impress
on cognitive screen. Imploring her
to slow the reel of words, she shrugs,
breathes deeply and retraces her steps;
rewinds the sequence of gibberish through
dysfunctional dendrites and starts over.

Unexpectedly, there is a freeze frame,
the spool unravels and all goes blank.
She attempts to splice severed synapse
of film; grabs an HB pencil with balled fist,
scribbles and pushes the pad towards me
with the lead firmly implanted into the paper:

When I speak, it feels like I'm one hand clapping.

-------------------------------------------------
March 3-9, 2003 - Poetry Super Highway

This has got to Mean Something.... Right?

2010-03-13T18:34:00.008-05:00

I made it onto the following list:

"30 Awesome Poetry Blogs You Aren’t Reading Yet".

Get this. I'm described as follows:

"Nick is a lovable Canadian poet."

I guess they haven't met me... yet. ;-)

Sincerely,
Your lovable Canadian Poet

Attack of the Hallmark People

2010-02-20T17:01:00.001-05:00

They mean well. Most of them are very erudite and articulate under normal circumstances. But, somehow, give them a picture of a Carebear or a kitten holding a heart (not on its sleeve) but in its paw and they start handing out Hallmark Card blingee thingees like condoms at an orgy or an olympic village.

Now I knew when I signed up for this Facebook gig that it wasn't going to be a "Blog-like" commitment. But...Hey my facebook wall isn't your refrigerator door where you can post all your thingamajigs. At least not without my say so.

Yeah...Yeah! I know that Facebook is the "post-its" of the internet age. So what should I expect? How about a little respect. If you've got something you want to put up on my wall or profile or whatever just gimme a shout first. Otherwise I will remove it without any further notice. Turnabout is fair play.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled program.

Poetry in Vitro: Volume 4; Number 3

2010-01-12T14:57:00.003-05:00

Architecture of Youth

Coming soon to a poetry journal near you!

Sitting

2010-01-05T09:29:00.000-05:00

Reflections of a Lesser Poet

2010-01-04T14:49:00.020-05:00

So it's that time of the year again..isn't it? It's a time for taking stock. It's a time for introspection. A time to reflect on the direction or misdirection that our life is taking. The fact that this is the first few days of a new decade only exacerbates the sense that we must give pause and seek a place where we can contemplate.

In the course of my life, the past decade was a very eventful one to say the least. It was the decade in my life where I rediscovered poetry and began writing my own verse with the intent and purpose of publication. Between 2003 - 2007... I was published in some 50 odd venues. It was a period where I finally made it into print in reputable poetry journals. I had finally employed my affinity for poetry to some end culminating in poems that I still feel resonate with me and thankfully several editors along with a few readers to boot.

It was a decade that saw me move back (to Canada) from Europe after a brief sojourn there that had been intended to be of a more permanent nature. I realized during my time in Italy and France that I was more Canadian than Italian. I came to understand that being Italian by birth did not ensure that one was Italian by nature. I had suffered from culture shock while I was abroad and reverse culture shock when back in Canada. The move back was bound to rearrange my life just as the move to Europe in 1995 had left its irrevocable imprint on my persona.

But this decade was also fraught with tragic loss. In 2003 my mother's stroke for all intents and purposes took her away from us. Gone was the strong matriarchal figure that we, as her children, had come to love and respect for over seven decades. In her place we found a changeling – someone we were hard pressed to rediscover. A person who was unable to communicate her needs let alone her innermost thoughts. My father was hardest hit by this terrible turn of events as he had lost his life long companion. He now found himself her caretaker as she had become wheelchair bound and unable to perform the simplest of tasks.

My father's death in February of 2007 was the last in a series of events which took it's toll on my life. The brutality of his death at the hands of an errant driver while he was crossing a busy intersection on foot all but took away any motivation I had to carry on perfunctory and non-perfunctory tasks. Still, the bitter irony of this turn of events was not lost on my battered sensibilities. Here was a man who had left his home to start a new life in Canada. He had wanted something better for his four children. Then in his golden years, when his children had found their niche in Canadian society, he was determined to spend his final years in the land that had given birth to his culture. He returned to his patria in the 90's only to find himself (a decade later) alone and dying on a cold pavement in a city he had deemed he would not return to. My father had never acclimated to the cold of Canadian winters. Nonetheless, he succumbed to his injuries before he reached the ICU and died in much the same manner that he had come to this country – alone in the throes of winter - without being comforted by the family he worked so hard for.

It was a decade that saw my wife afflicted with thyroid cancer and now – thank God - cancer free. It has also been a decade of fiscal loss. The near closure of a business and livelihood that employs my wife and I due to legal litigation which fittingly never got to court as there was no basis for it in the first place. Thank God for that.

Yet here I am – limping into the second decade of a new millennium with very little fanfare and even less to show for it. However, unlike Jimmy Stewart in, "It's a Wonderful Life" – I appreciate the miracle of our existence and the series of improbable events that gets us to this point in our lives. I thank God every day for my wife and daughters. I am truly blessed. I am thankful for my talent in art and poetry. I wish that I had been a musician but realize that I have not pursued this end to its logical conclusion and thus have no one else to blame but myself.

There are challenges ahead of that I am sure. I have not published my poetry in the form of a book yet and that is another shortcoming. Mea culpa! But surely had not my train of submissions and the publishing of my poetry been derailed by personal upheaval it might be logical to assume that I should have attained this goal. There is the challenge of work shopping my poetry and reading it to an open audience to reap the benefit of instant feedback. This too is devoutly to be wished. Hopefully the workshop experience of 2009 will not be repeated. Are my expectations too high? I'll let you be the judge of that.

Here's to wishing you all much health, peace and prosperity in this new year and decade. Let us all ply this "sullen craft". Let us all write feverishly into the next ten years and damned be him or her that first cries, "Hold, enough!". May all your verse ring true.

Celebrating an Anniversary

2009-12-07T13:47:00.005-05:00

Two For Tuesday

2009-11-30T22:45:00.000-05:00

These Boots...Keep Walking

2009-11-26T16:46:00.003-05:00

When is a Poetry Workshop not Really a Poetry Workshop?

2009-11-23T14:47:00.007-05:00

It was with great expectation that I attended, at long last, my very first real-time poetry workshop moderated by a local poet. The course description on the site of the organization offering this workshop depicted a poetic experience devoutly to be wished. It incorporated a criteria which was and still is of intense interest to me -a consideration of the complexities of publication.

I admit that I had anticipated a cathartic experience in light of the fact that my muse and I had become estranged as of late. I suppose that it did not help matters much that my only experience with poetry workshops has come on-line. Yes it is true that my initial encounters with on-line workshops were with poetry boards that were so saccharine-imbued in their literary criticism that it sickened one's literary sensibilities to have to entertain some of the poetry and crits that were forwarded by the local board members.

What purpose - pray tell - does sugar-laced critique serve? It is my humble opinion that it serves no one. Just as it might be argued that the deconstruction and dissection of a poem ad infinitum also does little to assist in the editing process if it is without purpose and/or constructive direction.

Still what transpired in the real-time workshop is an eventuality that I should have logically anticipated. Obviously, it is much easier to be more forthright on-line where there is a very different form of interaction between members. Face to face confrontation is more unnerving an enterprise. To look into the whites of their eyes and tell them that their poetry just doesn't cut it is much easier said than done.

There is much less at stake in an on-line confrontation than in a real-time one. It is a more liberating and less inhibiting feeling to know that by implementing a click of a mouse the poetic interlude is quickly concluded and a possible literary altercation is avoided.

I was clearly taken aback when my critique of a poem which was by no means intended to be malicious or caustic in nature was construed as such by one of the workshop members. The poet in question did not immediately confront me but then proceeded to attack the poetry I was work shopping at every turn. In actuality, I prefer to receive in-line critiques that meticulously point out the elements of poetry that don't work in a particular poem in question. But obviously said critique must be couched and/or based in the objectivity of the concrete and not the subjectivity of the abstract.

The upshot is that I have come away from the experience having gained no insight and having no real inclination to do it again. I would very much like to hear from those of you who have had a positive experience in real-time workshops in order that I might entertain the thought of dismissing this interlude as an aberration.

One of my All-Time Favourite Tracks of an American Doing a Cover of a Canadian Song

2009-11-14T09:35:00.003-05:00

Decidedly Canadian & Almost as Fabulous

2009-11-14T09:24:00.002-05:00

Decidedly Not Canadian...But Nevertheless Fabulous

2009-11-13T15:26:00.003-05:00

Two For Tuesday

2009-10-13T16:19:00.002-04:00

Canadian Eh?

Autumn in Quebec

2009-10-12T15:09:00.003-04:00

Even More Canadiana

2009-10-05T12:03:00.002-04:00

Reprise: Jane Mead

2009-10-03T08:50:00.003-04:00

Concerning That Prayer I Cannot Make

----------------------------------------------------------Jane Mead

Jesus, I am cruelly lonely
and I do not know what I have done
nor do I suspect that you will answer me.

And, what is more, I have spent
these bare months bargaining
with my soul as if I could make her
promise to love me when now it seems
that what I meant when I said "soul"
was that the river reflects
the railway bridge just as the sky
says it should-it speaks that language.

I do not know who you are.

I come here every day
to be beneath this bridge,
to sit beside this river,
so I must have seen the way
the clouds just slide
under the rusty arch-
without snagging on the bolts,
how they are borne along on the dark water-
I must have noticed their fluent speed
and also how that tattered blue T-shirt
remains snagged on the crown
of the mostly sunk dead tree
despite the current's constant pulling.
Yes, somewhere in my mind there must
be the image of a sky blue T-shirt, caught,
and the white islands of ice flying by
and the light clouds flying slowly
under the bridge, though today the river's
fully melted. I must have seen.

But I did not see.

I am not equal to my longing.
Somewhere there should be a place
the exact shape of my emptiness-
there should be a place
responsible for taking one back.
The river, of course, has no mercy-
it just lifts the dead fish
toward the sea.

Of course, of course.

What I meant when I said "soul"
was that there should be a place.

On the far bank the warehouse lights
blink red, then green, and all the yellow
machines with their rusted scoops and lifts
sit under a thin layer of sunny frost.

And look-
my own palm-
there, slowly rocking.
It is my pale palm-
palm where a black pebble
is turning and turning.
Listen-
all you bare trees
burrs
brambles
pile of twigs
red and green lights flashing
muddy bottle shards
shoe half buried-listen

listen, I am holy.

Classic Canadian Rock

2009-09-21T16:59:00.002-04:00

In Praise of an Older Woman

2009-09-14T10:43:00.009-04:00

Standing on the prow of the Zephyr - a cruise ship ferrying us down the East River past Ellis Island toward that looming statue that personified acceptance to my grandfather before me, it occurred to me how much New York had changed since the last time that I had been here. Juliani had done a bang up job. Times Square was no longer that lewd man in a trenchcoat that said, "Come here, I've got something to show you." The Big Apple had cleaned up its act. It no longer was the city Mick and the boys sung about in "Shattered":

Dont you know the crime rate is going up, up, up, up, up
To live in this town you must be tough, tough, tough, tough, tough!
You got rats on the west side
Bed bugs uptown
What a mess this towns in tatters Ive been shattered
My brains been battered, splattered all over Manhattan

Uh-huh, this towns full of money grabbers
Go ahead, bite the big apple, dont mind the maggots, huh
Shadoobie, my brains been battered
My friends they come around they
Flatter, flatter, flatter, flatter, flatter, flatter, flatter
Pile it up, pile it high on the platter

Talk about a changeling - I was amazed at the transformation. Hopping on and off the tour bus I couldn't help but note the change. It might still be full of money-grabbers, but it had a different overall feel. The kids enjoyed the vacation soaking in the tour-guide information and sights and sounds like that child at the candy-store or should I say M&M's store. They posed with the wax figures at Madame Toussaud and ate in Little Italy's restos. They shopped on Canal Street and took in a Broadway show and didn't skip a beat. The only thing they complained about on the trip was that it was over too soon and that Montreal seemed slow-paced in comparison. Even my wife was excited during the stay and wants to revisit a revamped Gotham City.

It got me thinking - what must have been going through my grandfather's mind as he got off the ship on Ellis Island and looked over his shoulder at the figure that had travelled from France to grace North American shores.

Louise Bogan

2009-09-09T11:24:00.001-04:00

Baroque Comment

From loud sound and still chance;
From mindless earth, wet with a dead million leaves;
From the forest, the empty desert, the tearing beasts,
The kelp-disordered beaches;
Coincident with the lie, anger, lust, oppression, and death in many forms;

Ornamental structures, continents apart, separated by seas;

Fitted marble, swung bells;
fruit in garlands as well as on the branch;
The flower at last in bronze, stretched backward, or curled within;
Stone in various shapes: beyond the pyramid, the contrived arch and
buttress;
The named constellations;
Crown and vesture;
palm and laurel chosen as noble and enduring;
Speech proud in sound;
death considered sacrifice;
Mask, weapon, urn; the ordered strings;
Fountains, foreheads under weather-bleached hair;
The wreath, the oar, the tool,
The prow;
The turned eyes and the opened mouth of love.

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

Two For Tuesday

2009-09-08T18:58:00.001-04:00

More Canadiana

Small "Consolation" a la Billy Collins

2009-09-07T09:16:00.000-04:00

Consolation
by Billy Collins

How agreeable it is not to be touring Italy this summer,
wandering her cities and ascending her torrid hilltowns.
How much better to cruise these local, familiar streets,
fully grasping the meaning of every roadsign and billboard
and all the sudden hand gestures of my compatriots.

There are no abbeys here, no crumbling frescoes of famous
domes and there is no need to memorize a succession
of kings or tour the dripping corners of a dungeon.
No need to stand around a sarcophagus, see Napoleon's
little bed on Elba, or view the bones of a saint under glass.

How much better to command the simple precinct of home
than be dwarfed by pillar, arch, and basilica.
Why hide my head in phrase books and wrinkled maps?
Why feed scenery into a hungry, one-eyes camera
eager to eat the world one monument at a time?

Instead of slouching in a café ignorant of the word for ice,
I will head down to the coffee shop and the waitress
known as Dot. I will slide into the flow of the morning
paper, all language barriers down,
rivers of idiom running freely, eggs over easy on the way.

And after breakfast, I will not have to find someone
willing to photograph me with my arm around the owner.
I will not puzzle over the bill or record in a journal
what I had to eat and how the sun came in the window.
It is enough to climb back into the car

as if it were the great car of English itself
and sounding my loud vernacular horn, speed off
down a road that will never lead to Rome, not even Bologna.

Canadiana

2009-09-05T08:25:00.003-04:00

The Poppy Family was a late 1960s and early 1970s Canadian pop music group, based in Vancouver, British Columbia.

"In the late summer of 1969 the Canadian record buying public chose to endorse The Poppy Family by establishing "Which Way You Goin' Billy?" as the biggest Canadian hit ever. 'Billy' successfully climbed to the No.1 spot on all radio stations across Canada. Having watched The Poppy Family from Vancouver, British Columbia, evolve as a recording group has been a satisfying and rewarding experience. The constant creative growth, both musically and lyrically, within the group is evident in the album Which Way You Goin' Billy?. The versatility of the group, from Terry Jacks' meaningful writing, to his wife Susan's beautiful and emotion-packed voice allow them to explore avenues of musical expression hitherto uncharted. All the while The Poppy Family retain their own sound so unique to themselves". (Fraser Jamieson, President London Records, Canada - November 17 1969).

Carl Dennis

2009-09-03T20:08:00.002-04:00

The God Who Loves You

It must be troubling for the god who loves you
To ponder how much happier you'd be today
Had you been able to glimpse your many futures.
It must be painful for him to watch you on Friday evenings
Driving home from the office, content with your week-
Three fine houses sold to deserving families-
Knowing as he does exactly what would have happened
Had you gone to your second choice for college,
Knowing the roommate you'd have been allotted
Whose ardent opinions on painting and music
Would have kindled in you a lifelong passion.
A life thirty points above the life you're living
On any scale of satisfaction. And every point
A thorn in the side of the god who loves you.
You don't want that, a large-souled man like you
Who tries to withhold from your wife the day's disappointments
So she can save her empathy for the children.
And would you want this god to compare your wife
With the woman you were destined to meet on the other campus?
It hurts you to think of him ranking the conversation
You'd have enjoyed over there higher in insight
Than the conversation you're used to.
And think how this loving god would feel
Knowing that the man next in line for your wife
Would have pleased her more than you ever will
Even on your best days, when you really try.
Can you sleep at night believing a god like that
Is pacing his cloudy bedroom, harassed by alternatives
You're spared by ignorance? The difference between what is
And what could have been will remain alive for him
Even after you cease existing, after you catch a chill
Running out in the snow for the morning paper,
Losing eleven years that the god who loves you
Will feel compelled to imagine scene by scene
Unless you come to the rescue by imagining him
No wiser than you are, no god at all, only a friend
No closer than the actual friend you made at college,
The one you haven't written in months. Sit down tonight
And write him about the life you can talk about
With a claim to authority, the life you've witnessed,
Which for all you know is the life you've chosen.

Made in Canada - Michel Pagliaro

2009-08-31T16:48:00.006-04:00

Michel Pagliaro (born November 9, 1948, Montreal, Canada), often credited as simply Pagliaro, is a rock singer, songwriter and guitarist from Quebec. Although he writes and records predominantly in French, he has released material in English as well, and was the first Canadian artist to score Top 40 hits on both the anglophone and francophone pop charts in Canada. On May 3, 2008, the Governor General of Canada presented him with the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards (GGPAA), a lifetime achievement award considered Canada's "most prestigious artistic honour".

Poetry in Vitro - Volume 4, No.2

2009-08-28T12:08:00.004-04:00

Mnemonic Reprise
(or What a day for a Daydream.)

Slap me until I bleed
recollections that access synaptic
addresses of memory – a backdraft
of musical encores - stimulating
a piece of relative back-time.

What were we then?
Figments or filaments of each other:
reflections of apprentissage,
the speed at which you speak
syllables of despair.

A morning shave and the nick
that spreads across the universe
of disjointed portraits of a self-
deprecating Dorian Gray existence:
a stab at the Methuselan mystique.

I have a recurring reverie
that does not include
this twenty-first century
schizoid man -
a dream that ends here.

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

Three More for the Road

2009-08-17T07:14:00.000-04:00

Two For Tuesday on a Sunday

2009-08-16T20:58:00.002-04:00

New York State of Mind...Some Pics From Our N.Y.C. Trip This Week

2009-08-15T14:40:00.017-04:00

Rock On!

2009-08-09T14:16:00.008-04:00

Apparently According to Some Quiz the Poem that Best Personifies me is:

2009-08-08T13:59:00.005-04:00

Mirror
by: Sylvia Plath

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful-
The eye of the little god, four cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

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

Just Dropped in to Say Hi!

2009-07-31T18:12:00.002-04:00

...Good

2009-06-27T13:39:00.002-04:00

.....Somethin'.....

2009-06-27T13:35:00.004-04:00

Smokin'....

2009-06-27T13:29:00.001-04:00

I Heard it From a Friend... Who Heard it From a Friend....

2009-06-10T15:29:00.004-04:00

The 5th Annual

CALGARY

BLOW-OUT!

7 Events Over 3 Days!

Thursday July 2 to Saturday July 4

This dangerously explosive festival, benefit, and launch for Filling Station Magazine and NoD Magazine once again puts the spotlight on Calgary’s innovative writing & arts community with

7 exciting events featuring readings, performances, concerts, art, film, and more!

TICKETS: $5 per Performance Event, $8 per Exploding Concert, or $20 Festival Pass. Available Now at Megatunes, Pages Books on Kensington, and Sloth Records!

BLOW-OUT SCHEDULE 2009

Event A: Flywheel Throwdown & NoD Magazine Launch!

Thursday July 2, 7:00 PM, FREE

Pages Books on Kensington

1135 Kensington Road N.W.

(PLEASE NOTE EARLIER TIME!)

Performers: Eva Gonzalez, Kye Kocher, John Creary, Andrew Barbero, Stephanie Davis,

Lesley Battler, Dale Herrington, Kim Tan MacNeal,

Jani Krulc (Guest Artist! Montreal)

Hosts: Ian Sampson & Ian Kinney

*

Event B: The Show Ain’t Over Performance Event

& Filling Station Issue 45 Launch

Friday July 3, 7:30 PM, $5

Arrata Opera Centre
1315 - 7 Street SW

A fast-paced night of poetry, fiction, film, and performance!

Performers: Ian Kinney, Samantha Warwick, Helen Hajnoczky, Paul Kennett, Eric

Moschopedis & Samuel Garrigó Meza, Nikki Reimer (Guest Artist – Vancouver)

Host: Andrew Wedderburn

*

Event C: Exploding Concert!

Friday July 3, 9:30 PM, $8

Arrata Opera Centre
1315 - 7 Street SW

Bands: The Beija Flor with Dolly Sillito

*

Event D: Independent Press & Arts Fair

Saturday July 4, 10:00 A.M. to 3:00 PM, FREE

Arrata Opera Centre
1315 - 7 Street SW

Participants: Small pressers and artists hawk handmade books, glossy mags, zines, broadsides, CDs,

art objets, handicrafts, and other enticing you-name-its.

*

Event E: Blow-Out Art Show & Sale

Ongoing throughout the Festival

Reception: Saturday July 4, 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM, FREE

Arrata Opera Centre
1315 - 7 Street SW

Participants: Challenged to find new ways to present their work in Arrata’s no-nails heritage space,

local artists show both art and ingenuity!

Music by: Kaley Kinjo

*

Event F: Til the Fat Lady Sings Performance Event

Saturday July 4, 7:30 PM, $5

Arrata Opera Centre
1315 - 7 Street SW

An exciting mix of fiction, poetry, film, and theatre!

Performers: Colin Martin, W. Mark Giles, Ian Samuels, Swallow a Bicycle,

Jon Paul Fiorentino (Guest Artist - Montreal)

Host: Jen Kunlire

*

Event G: Exploding Concert!

Saturday, July 4, 9:30 PM, $8

Arrata Opera Centre
1315 - 7 Street SW

Bands: Clinton St. John with The Ogden Owls

***
CONTACT: Laurie Fuhr, Managing Editor, Filling Station Magazine 403.999.2566 blowout.fs@gmail.com

ABOUT BLOW-OUT & FILLING STATION MAGAZINE: Since 1996, Filling Station Magazine has been an innovative locally-based non-profit literary and arts magazine with national distribution. Blow-Out started in 2004 to celebrate the diverse literary and arts talent in Calgary.

SPONSORS: Filling Station gratefully acknowledges ALBERTA FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS, ARRATA OPERA CENTRE, CALGARY ARTS DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY, CANADA COUNCIL FOR THE ARTS, CJSW RADIO, NoD MAGAZINE, PAGES BOOKS ON KENSINGTON, PK SOUND, STEAMWHISTLE, & all our volunteers!

Poetry in Vitro....I Lost Count

2009-05-31T17:50:00.004-04:00

The Sealed Fountain

I'm in a room.
It's smaller than I thought
it would be.
The verticals, though closed
allow slivers of sunlight to hit
the wooden slats on the floor, to form
parallel bars of incandescence.

In the corner is a futon
that has seen better times.
I am sitting on a folding chair
at the center of my world.
I am a sealed fountain spewing.

Oooooh......Aaaaaah!

2009-05-31T17:03:00.008-04:00

By the way this blog is four years old....Believe it, or not!

Whoop...dee...dooo!

I Close my Eyes Only for a Moment ... and the Moment's Gone

2009-05-18T12:25:00.003-04:00

INTERMEZZO

2009-05-17T18:45:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure that I'm a poet anymore. I'm not sure of too many things these days. I mean the inkling or creative urge to write doesn't seem to surface much anymore. It seems stifled by the logic that I have very little to show for several years of devotion to poetry. My detractors will be saying at this point that I finally have seen the light and that thankfully I'm not writing poetry anymore. Perhaps they were right all along. I have very little in the way of proof to the contrary.

And although I am sure that a workshop - whether online or real time - would probably definitively resolve the question as to whether I was meant to write poetry or not, I am at a loss as to why I am not participating in a workshop at this time. I was saddened to see that the Gazebo had become a derelict. This has left me with no creative place to go online. I long for a time when I would visit an online poetry workshop and revel in how a writer or reader could completely misconstrue the gist of a poem or worse yet MY poem.

I have been reading about bloggers who are changing directions. I believe that Sandra Beasley is right on when she asserts:

A blog just...waits. Like a plant waiting to be watered. Except if this plant dies, you can't just surreptitiously pitch it down your building's trash chute in the dead of night, swearing to yourself that you'll do better next time. It's a little more public.... Blogs aren't the place for firm conclusions, at least not for me. I see them as organic structures, plants with dirty, messy, unstoppable roots. You can feed them, or tear 'em out by those roots when the time comes.

Yes...no argument here. I've tried to tear this blog out by the roots but have been unable to destroy what has now turned into a four year labor of love???? There is a part of me in every post and yet I'm no longer that person that wrote this blog four years ago when I could barely keep up with responses to the blog or ideas for another post. Turning to Facebook hasn't worked for me. It hasn't reignited my interest in poetry. That lack has been translated into my recent posts and I get the feeling that people come back to this blog out of a morbid curiosity and no longer to read what I have to say.

The odd thing is that I keep getting invitations to submit my work, but I don't know quite what to say. My shoulders hunch and the air seeps out of my lungs till the last breath.

I'm in a... Billy Joel - "State of Mind"

2009-05-17T11:23:00.013-04:00

On Aging:

"I'm not a looking back kind of person. What I've realized about turning 60 is I'm not just one age, I'm every age I've ever been. Sometimes I'm 11, sometimes 16, sometimes I'm 25, sometimes I'm 42, sometimes I'm in my 50s. I'm all over the place. And it comes in handy, especially in this line of work."

On Being a Musician:

"I don't think there will ever be a time when I stop being a musician. Possibly not being a performer, possibly not recording anymore, but I will always be a musician."

I guess that also holds true for a poet. Whether they write anymore or ever get published again, they'll always be poets.

And Now....Some Canadian Content - Neil Young

2009-05-16T20:02:00.005-04:00

"It's better to burn out than to fade away."

.......................................Neil Young

Nine Through Twelve

2009-05-15T15:05:00.000-04:00

You Begin
Margaret Atwood

You begin this way:
this is your hand,
this is your eye,
that is a fish, blue and flat
on the paper, almost
the shape of an eye.
This is your mouth, this is an O
or a moon, whichever
you like. This is yellow.

Outside the window
is the rain, green
because it is summer, and beyond that
the trees and then the world,
which is round and has only
the colors of these nine crayons.

This is the world, which is fuller
and more difficult to learn than I have said.
You are right to smudge it that way
with the red and then
the orange: the world burns.

Once you have learned these words
you will learn that there are more
words than you can ever learn.
The word hand floats above your hand
like a small cloud over a lake.
The word hand anchors
your hand to this table,
your hand is a warm stone
I hold between two words.

This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,
which is round but not flat and has more colors
than we can see.

It begins, it has an end,
this is what you will
come back to, this is your hand.

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

Acquainted With the Night
Robert Frost

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain --and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

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

Chicago
Carl Sandburg

Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I
have seen your painted women under the gas lamps
luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it
is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to
kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the
faces of women and children I have seen the marks
of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who
sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer
and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing
so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job,
here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the
little soft cities;

Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning
as a savage pitted against the wilderness,

Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building,
breaking,
rebuilding,

Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with
white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young
man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has
never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse,
and under his ribs the heart of the people,

Laughing!

Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of
Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog
Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with
Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

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

Because We Are Not Taken Seriously
Stephen Dunn

Some night I wish they'd knock,
on my door, the government men,
looking for the poem of simple truths
recited and whispered among the people.
And when all I give them is silence
and my children are exiled
to the mountains, my wife forced
to renounce me in public,
I'll be the American poet
whose loneliness, finally, is relevant,
whose slightest movement
ripples cross-country.
And when the revolution frees me,
its leaders wanting me to become
"Poet of the Revolution," I'll refuse
and keep a list of their terrible reprisals
and all the dark things I love
which they will abolish.
With the ghost of Mandelstam
on one shoulder, Lorca on the other,
I'll write the next poem, the one
that will ask only to be believed
once it's in the air, singing.

-----------------------------------------
N.B.: I'll come back later and explain my choices

19th Century Macchiaioli Artist: Silvestro Lega

2009-05-15T11:52:00.019-04:00

The Macchiaioli were a group of Italian painters from Tuscany, active in the second half of the nineteenth century, who, breaking with the antiquated conventions taught by the Italian academies of art, painted outdoors in order to capture natural light, shade, and colour. The Macchiaioli were forerunners of the Impressionists who, beginning in the 1860s, would pursue similar aims in France. One of the most notable artists of this movement was Silvestro Lega (8 December 1826 - 21 September 1895).

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

From top to bottom and left to right:

1. Le Rose Della Primavera

2. Un Dopo Pranzo (Il Pergolato): 1860

3. Ritrattto di Giueseppe Garabaldi: 1861

4. Autoritratto - 1859-1860

5. Il Canto di Uno Stornello: 1867

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

*source wikipedia

Live Long & Go See It

2009-05-09T05:57:00.000-04:00

Some More Bad News

2009-05-08T21:00:00.005-04:00

I missed the opportunity to take this workshop with a poet I admire:

THE MUSIC OF THE SENSES: MAKING YOUR POETRY VIVID

Workshop leader: Mary di Michele

How admirable!
to see lightning and not think
life is fleeting.
- Basho

Whether it’s a wildly imaginative simile, Roo Borson comparing the sunset to an armful of dying flamingoes or a plain yet penetrating image like Issa’s farmer pulling radishes pointing the way with a radish, imagery is at the heart of poetry. It is the single aspect of poetry that can easily be translated. It is the music of the senses. All our perceptions are communicated, indeed filtered, through language. But we stop seeing the particularity of things in all their colours and textures when words become overly familiar; we accept the grey carton without tasting the eggs. Poetry seeks to revitalize language and our senses by stripping away familiar associations with words and the things they point to. Basho, a 17th century Japanese poet said that a poem works through plainness and oddness; Russian theorists in the 20th century called it defamiliarization, making the commonplace seem strange or new; poets of disparate ages and cultures seem to agree that this essential tension between what we think we know and what is suddenly revealed is poetry’s way of illuminating existence, of seeing the world in new ways.

Imagery is what makes writing ‘vivid;’ it is cultivated by poets but serves prose writers too so a study of how it works, or a refresher course, is useful for all writers and at all levels. In this class we will examine how images work in poetry and in your poems. By closely reading the poems of great image-makers among classic and contemporary poets we will learn to identify what makes an image vivid and memorable. We will learn to spot and weed out common errors in writing like clichés and mixed or muddled images.

In our sessions participants will: 1) share and respond to each other’s work each week, 2) on occasion try some writing exercises, and 3) discuss poetics regularly. Questions about publication will be addressed at the last class. For the first meeting participants are asked to bring 12 copies of either a poem of their own or a poem by someone else with images that they would like to discuss.

For the sheer pleasure of reading it and because it also provides a useful anthology at the back, Kenneth Koch: "Making Your Own Days" is recommended reading.

Mary di Michele was born in Italy and raised in Canada. She is the author of two novels and eight books of poetry, including Luminous Emergencies, short-listed for the Trillium Prize and Debriefing the Rose, short-listed for the QWF's A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry. She teaches in the creative writing program at Concordia. Her latest book, Tenor of Love (2005), a novel, was published in Canada and the U.S. and translated into Serbian and Italian.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This would have fit the bill nicely for this poet gone AWOL!

Two For Tuesday on a Friday

2009-05-08T14:59:00.001-04:00

Another Poem That Changed Things --

2009-04-18T09:54:00.006-04:00

In 2002 I remember reading the work of an online poet that I admired in The Adirondack Review. I wanted very much to replicate the feat as I felt that their review (TAR) had some fine poetry. In the fall of 2003 they were kind enough to publish: "Place Du Canada", which I still feel is one of the better poems I have written. It's one of the few poems that I've penned which makes a political statement and espouses views which I still believe in. If any of you have read Mordechai Richler's now infamous (at least in these parts) article "O Quebec!" in the New Yorker: May 30, 1994 you might understand whereof I speak. Anyway "this is all she wrote":

PLACE DU CANADA

What might this town square have looked like
in another era - when this bench was not here;
its green slats supporting the weight of a culture

that we tried to bring with us, when we docked
at Pier 21, but could not fit in our suitcases
without handles. Now I sit in the mapled shade
and consider. Where would we have put it?

The plaque below the statuary is a reminder
that the Father's of Confederation had fought
for the sole possession of this land. When
Montreal fell during a revolutionary war,

Quebec's allegiances were for the taking,
but would not become another Cajun state -
the francophone roots showing through
the bleached bones of an English presence.

Our flag flutters above the tips of trees,
the red and white - minus the blue.

------------------------------------------
First published in the “Adirondack Review” – Fall 2003 Vol. V, No. 2

Segue Into an Explanation of Sorts

2009-04-16T18:18:00.003-04:00

There is a good reason why I include this poem by Billy Collins. Collins made poetry accessible and fun. He made me realize that a poet didn't have to take themselves so seriously to be successful. Poetry need not be all "sullen craft". That there is room for self-deprecation and parody. In sharp contrast to the poetry heavies Collins came across sort of as the "Woody Allen" of poetry. Even his physical presence kind of reminded me of the comedic director. His sardonic wry humour is unmistakeable even in the way he entitles his poems i.e.: Reading an Anthology of Chinese Poems of the Sung Dynasty,I Pause To Admire the Length and Clarity of Their Titles ; I Chop Some Parsley While Listening to Art Blakey's Version of "Three Blind Mice"; & Another reason why I don't keep a gun in the house.

His poetry made me realize that I could incorporate my sense of humour (if you want to call it that) and still be considered a serious poet. Somehow, when I think about the term "serious poet" the term seems to be a walking contradiction. Poets seem to so serious that they're funny. I'll come back to this when I stop laughing...

Of Course There's Always Billy

2009-04-14T17:01:00.002-04:00

Introduction to Poetry
Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

More Poems That Changed... - A Couple by Strand

2009-04-10T13:15:00.002-04:00

Eating Poetry
Mark Strand

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.

Keeping Things Whole
Mark Strand

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

Yeah I Know... I Know...Whatever Happened to the Other 29 Poems That Changed my Life?

2009-04-04T13:45:00.011-04:00

Poem Number Two

It isn't often that any piece of art really speaks to you. Check that -- not only speaks to you but swears at you in archaic languages. So when you come across anything that strums your inner being like a cello you had better take note. Such was the case when I encountered this poem back in my freshman year in highschool. Albeit I was no "lonely teenage broncing buck -- with a pink carnation and a pickup truck," I could easily connect with this poem:

From Childhood's Hour
Edgar Allan Poe

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then—in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life—was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent or the fountain,
From the red cliff or the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed my flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

Poem Number Three

Somewhere in the fray of literary pursuit I came across another example of narrative poetry that made a mark on tabula rasa. Stuck (at the time) in the formal verse universe I took Byron to task by reading The Prisoner of Chillon. What follows is an excerpt and in particular a stanza which seemed to transcend (at least for this reader at that point in time) its literal implication:

XIV
It might be months, or years, or days -
I kept no count, I took no note -
I had no hope my eyes to raise,
And clear them of their dreary mote;
At last men came to set me free;
I ask'd not why, and reck'd not where;
It was at length the same to me,
Fetter'd or fetterless to be,
I learn'd to love despair.
And thus when they appear'd at last,
And all my bonds aside were cast,
These heavy walls to me had grown
A hermitage - and all my own!
And half I felt as they were come
To tear me from a second home:
With spiders I had friendship made,
And watch'd them in their sullen trade,
Had seen the mice by moonlight play,
And why should I feel less than they?
We were all inmates of one place,
And I, the monarch of each race,
Had power to kill - yet, strange to tell!
In quiet we had learn'd to dwell;
My very chains and I grew friends,
So much a long communion tends
To make us what we are: - even I
Regain'd my freedom with a sigh.

Poem Number Four

Well highschool was a literary awakening of sorts. It was a time when I was introduced to many of the classics. Steinbeck's The Pearl, Shakespeare's MacBeth, Orwell's 1984--- the list went on. And I remember quite vividly Mr. Palesch's (my Sec III english teacher) avid love of poetry. He revelled in presenting us with literary conundrums. Thanks to him I was introduced to a certain Mr. Cummings and I could not believe my eyes or my ears for that matter.

Spring is like a perhaps hand

by E. E. Cummings

III

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

30 Poems That Changed My Life

2009-04-01T11:56:00.012-04:00

Well here I am again with much less fanfare and a little more estranged from poetry than I've been in some time. Albeit, I have not been immersed in ars poetica for the last while... (in its stead) I have been pursuing other personal interests. I thought that this month of April which in the past I usually dedicated to my own poetry I might post some of the poetry which over the course of my life had affected me (for better or worse).

The first selection is a poem that I first read in the third or fourth grade (at St. Rita's Elementary - a now defunct primary school in Montreal thanks to the effect of Bill 101 and an out-migration of anglos from Quebec in the late seventies and eighties). I was asked by my english teacher - Mr. Simcoe - to recite it to an audience. It was my first exposure to poetry and even though I did not comprehend the full extent of the poem's significance (even then) I enjoyed the cadence, pace and the inflection of sounds produced by this piece. It might be a bit pedantic by my current standards & poetic sensibilities, but it did serve the purpose of setting me on the road to find out:

The Highwayman
(Alfred Noyes: 1880-1958)

The wind was a torrent of darkness upon the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight looping the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding--
Riding--riding--
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn door.

He'd a French cocked hat on his forehead, and a bunch of lace at his chin;
He'd a coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of fine doe-skin.
They fitted with never a wrinkle; his boots were up to his thigh!
And he rode with a jeweled twinkle--
His rapier hilt a-twinkle--
His pistol butts a-twinkle, under the jeweled sky.

Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard,
He tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred,
He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter--
Bess, the landlord's daughter--
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

Dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked
Where Tim, the ostler listened--his face was white and peaked--
His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,
But he loved the landlord's daughter--
The landlord's black-eyed daughter;
Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say:

"One kiss, my bonny sweetheart; I'm after a prize tonight,
But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light.
Yet if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,
Then look for me by moonlight,
Watch for me by moonlight,
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way."

He stood upright in the stirrups; he scarce could reach her hand,
But she loosened her hair in the casement! His face burnt like a brand
As the sweet black waves of perfume came tumbling o'er his breast,
Then he kissed its waves in the moonlight
(O sweet black waves in the moonlight!),
And he tugged at his reins in the moonlight, and galloped away to the west.

He did not come in the dawning; he did not come at noon.
And out of the tawny sunset, before the rise of the moon,
When the road was a gypsy's ribbon over the purple moor,
The redcoat troops came marching--
Marching--marching--
King George's men came marching, up to the old inn-door.

They said no word to the landlord; they drank his ale instead,
But they gagged his daughter and bound her to the foot of her narrow bed.
Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets by their side;
There was Death at every window,
And Hell at one dark window,
For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride.

They had bound her up at attention, with many a sniggering jest!
They had tied a rifle beside her, with the barrel beneath her breast!
"Now keep good watch!" and they kissed her. She heard the dead man say,
"Look for me by moonlight,
Watch for me by moonlight,
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though Hell should bar the way."

She twisted her hands behind her, but all the knots held good!
She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!
They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years,
Till, on the stroke of midnight,
Cold on the stroke of midnight,
The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!

The tip of one finger touched it, she strove no more for the rest;
Up, she stood up at attention, with the barrel beneath her breast.
She would not risk their hearing, she would not strive again,
For the road lay bare in the moonlight,
Blank and bare in the moonlight,
And the blood in her veins, in the moonlight, throbbed to her love's refrain.

Tlot tlot, tlot tlot! Had they heard it? The horse-hooves, ringing clear;
Tlot tlot, tlot tlot, in the distance! Were they deaf that they did not hear?
Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,
The highwayman came riding--
Riding--riding--
The redcoats looked to their priming! She stood up straight and still.

Tlot tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot tlot, in the echoing night!
Nearer he came and nearer! Her face was like a light!
Her eyes grew wide for a moment, she drew one last deep breath,
Then her finger moved in the moonlight--
Her musket shattered the moonlight--
Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him--with her death.

He turned, he spurred to the West; he did not know who stood
Bowed, with her head o'er the casement, drenched in her own red blood!
Not till the dawn did he hear it, and his face grew grey to hear
How Bess, the landlord's daughter,
The landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.

Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,
With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high!
Blood-red were his spurs in the golden noon, wine-red was his velvet coat
When they shot him down in the highway,
Down like a dog in the highway,
And he lay in his blood in the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.

And still on a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
When the road is a gypsy's ribbon looping the purple moor,
The highwayman comes riding--
Riding--riding--
The highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.

Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard,
He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred,
He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter--
Bess, the landlord's daughter--
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

Two For Tuesday - I'm Back....

2009-03-17T14:03:00.002-04:00

Louise Bogan : Poet Laureate : 1945-1946

2009-02-23T16:36:00.001-05:00

The Frightened Man

In fear of the rich mouth
I kissed the thin,--
Even that was a trap
To snare me in.
Even she, so long
The frail, the scentless,
Is become strong,
And proves relentless.
O, forget her praise,
And how I sought her
Through a hazardous maze
By shafted water.

--------------------------------
from Body of this Death: Poems (1923)

Love That Dirty Water...

2009-02-10T18:58:00.001-05:00

Poetry in Vitro - Vol 4, No. 1

2009-02-07T13:42:00.004-05:00

Just Suppose

That words have lost their cognitive significance.
That what is spoken registers
as the burble of roiling waters.
That what is written appears a cross-
hatching background to the visual stimuli
that scrapes the retinal dreams of social upheaval.

I have scored silence on three fronts

I have spilt principal on guilty pleasures.

I have built means out of jelly-bean sprigs.

Scream that lofty scream,
but leave my welcome mat unturned

Leave this place – my place – my private place.
I have run out of things to say.

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

The Day the Music Died

2009-02-04T13:22:00.005-05:00

On February 3, 1959, a small-plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa, United States killed three American rock and roll musicians: Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, as well as the pilot, Roger Peterson.

Flight arrangements were made with Roger Peterson, 21, a local pilot who worked for Dwyer Flying Service in Mason City, Iowa. A fee of $36 per person was charged for the single engine Beechcraft Bonanza B35 (V-tail), registration N3794N (later reassigned). The Bonanza could seat three passengers in addition to the pilot.

Richardson had developed a case of the flu during the tour and asked one of Holly's bandmates, Waylon Jennings, for his seat on the plane; Jennings agreed to give up the seat. When Holly learned that Jennings wasn't going to fly, he said, "Well, I hope your ol' bus freezes up." Jennings responded, "Well, I hope your ol' plane crashes." This exchange of words, though made in jest at the time, haunted Jennings for the rest of his life.

Ritchie Valens had never flown in a small plane before, and asked Holly's remaining bandmate on the plane, Tommy Allsup, for the seat. Tommy said "I'll flip ya for the remaining seat." Contrary to what is seen in biographical movies, that coin toss did not happen at the airport shortly before takeoff, nor did Buddy Holly toss it. The toss happened at the ballroom shortly before departure to the airport, and the coin was tossed by a DJ who was working the concert that night. Valens won a seat on the plane.

Dion DiMucci of Dion & The Belmonts, who was the fourth headline performer on the tour, was approached to join the flight as well; however, the price of $36 was too much. Dion had heard his parents argue for years over the $36 rent for their apartment and could not bring himself to pay an entire month's rent for a short plane ride.

In 1988, Ken Paquette, a Wisconsin fan of the 1950s era, erected a stainless steel monument depicting a steel guitar and a set of three records bearing the names of each of the three performers. The monument is located on private farmland, about one quarter of a mile west of the intersection of 315th Street and Gull Avenue, five miles north of Clear Lake. A separate monument for pilot Peterson was added in 2008.

He also created a similar stainless steel monument to the three musicians located outside the Riverside Ballroom in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where Holly, the Big Bopper and Valens played on the night of February 1, 1959. This second memorial was unveiled on July 17, 2003.

*source - Wikipedia

W.D. Snodgrass (1926 - 2009)

2009-01-22T13:21:00.002-05:00

April Inventory

The green catalpa tree has turned
All white; the cherry blooms once more.
In one whole year I haven't learned
A blessed thing they pay you for.
The blossoms snow down in my hair;
The trees and I will soon be bare.

The trees have more than I to spare.
The sleek, expensive girls I teach,
Younger and pinker every year,
Bloom gradually out of reach.
The pear tree lets its petals drop
Like dandruff on a tabletop.

The girls have grown so young by now
I have to nudge myself to stare.
This year they smile and mind me how
My teeth are falling with my hair.
In thirty years I may not get
Younger, shrewder, or out of debt.

The tenth time, just a year ago,
I made myself a little list
Of all the things I'd ought to know,
Then told my parents, analyst,
And everyone who's trusted me
I'd be substantial, presently.

I haven't read one book about
A book or memorized one plot.
Or found a mind I did not doubt.
I learned one date. And then forgot.
And one by one the solid scholars
Get the degrees, the jobs, the dollars.

And smile above their starchy collars.
I taught my classes Whitehead's notions;
One lovely girl, a song of Mahler's.
Lacking a source-book or promotions,
I showed one child the colors of
A luna moth and how to love.

I taught myself to name my name,
To bark back, loosen love and crying;
To ease my woman so she came,
To ease an old man who was dying.
I have not learned how often I
Can win, can love, but choose to die.

I have not learned there is a lie
Love shall be blonder, slimmer, younger;
That my equivocating eye
Loves only by my body's hunger;
That I have forces true to feel,
Or that the lovely world is real.

While scholars speak authority
And wear their ulcers on their sleeves,
My eyes in spectacles shall see
These trees procure and spend their leaves.
There is a value underneath
The gold and silver in my teeth.

Though trees turn bare and girls turn wives,
We shall afford our costly seasons;
There is a gentleness survives
That will outspeak and has its reasons.
There is a loveliness exists,
Preserves us, not for specialists.

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

Trouble

2009-01-21T07:00:00.003-05:00

Miles From Nowhere on a Two For Tuesday

2009-01-20T18:56:00.003-05:00

Quotes & Quotables

2009-01-17T14:16:00.002-05:00

“We work in the dark—we do what we can—we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------Henry James

Playing in the Traffic

2009-01-15T20:59:00.002-05:00

The Band

2009-01-11T16:19:00.002-05:00

The Liminal Poet

2009-01-05T17:04:00.011-05:00

It's no secret that I have not been writing & publishing much poetry lately. However, I'm glad to announce that my poem "My Father's Hand" which has held a special place in my heart regardless of my poetic sensibilities has found a home. Darryl Salach, editor of The Toronto Quarterly has graciously agreed to publish it in the next issue. It's a print journal that has just been started up. This is what issue one looks like:

The first issue of The Toronto Quarterly is now available through lulu.com. Please click on the link to order a copy of The Toronto Quarterly Issue 1:

http://www.lulu.com/content/3888882

There is a great interview with Hollace Metzger in our first issue. She is a talented poet/photographer and painter who left the United States, moving to Paris to find her true self. Also in this issue are poets such as John Dorsey, A.D. Winans, Penn Kemp, Geraldine Green, Desi Dinardo, R.D. Armstrong, Melanie Pierluigi, Jim Johnstone and many more. There are also music and book reviews along with samplings of photography from Tammy Hanlon and Kelly Hayner and more!

P.S.: My poem "My Father's Hand" should be appearing in Toronto Quarterly Issue 2

Poetry in Vitro - Vol 3, No. 12... (or)... Look at What my Muse Dragged in!

2009-01-02T19:11:00.011-05:00

The Resident Poet Wears Prada

“Who is this woman with the feverish grin?”
--------------------------------------------------Unknown -- to Everyone But Me

She collects designer tissue boxes
and perfumed candle containers.
She knows Emily – fucking - Dickinson’s
Poem 54 ad verbatim and has spoken
at length on the agony of her art form.

She claims that anguish is good
medicine for the lack of creative juices.
But she wouldn’t know pathos if it came up
and bit her Pilates - perfected posterior.
Be still for her poetry is in all the right places...

The literary journal she edits is called:
The Fear of Open Spaces. Her Facebook
list of friends is a who’s who compendium
of literati – she’s well connected -
to the lack of the introspective.

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

Margaret Atwood

2008-12-30T21:35:00.003-05:00

Night Poem

There is nothing to be afraid of,
it is only the wind
changing to the east, it is only
your father------the thunder
your mother------the rain

In this country of water
with its beige moon damp as a mushroom,
its drowned stumps and long birds
that swim, where the moss grows
on all sides of the trees
and your shadow is not your shadow
but your reflection,

your true parents disappear
when the curtain covers your door.
We are the others,
the ones from under the lake
who stand silently beside your bed
with our heads of darkness.
We have come to cover you
with red wool,
with our tears and distant whispers.

You rock in the rain's arms,
the chilly ark of your sleep,
while we wait, your night
father and mother,
with our cold hands and dead flashlight,
knowing we are only
the wavering shadows thrown
by one candle, in this echo
you will hear twenty years later.

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

Merry Xmas

2008-12-24T15:58:00.001-05:00

No Time

2008-12-17T19:05:00.001-05:00

This Ain't No Charlie Brown

2008-12-11T17:26:00.002-05:00

Wither Whithers?

2008-12-05T23:07:00.001-05:00

Some CPR With CCR

2008-12-04T17:04:00.001-05:00

Should Poets Retire?

2008-12-03T20:58:00.003-05:00

Athletes do it - and I don't mean using steroids. Professionals from most walks of life do it. So why shouldn't poets meet mandatory conditions for retirement? What if the creative spark blows out and does not rekindle in phoenix-life fashion? Might this happen at any age or is it age-specific? (Have I asked enough questions already?)

Is there an age when one's poetic acuity wanes? The mind after all, much like its fleshy counterpart declines in later years. Are some more established (perhaps over-established) poets rehashing old rhetoric - much like a one-trick pony? Difficult to say isn't it, since the creative process cannot be quantifiably studied, measured and/or defined. What triggers a creative episode in one poet might very well have no effect in another.

I had better stop thinking about this as it is over-taxing my brain and giving me migraines. I'm ready for my cup of cocoa. Just thinking out loud....

John Steffler

2008-11-27T14:19:00.003-05:00

The Green Insect

John Steffler

I had a green insect, a kind that had never before been
----- seen,
descendant of an ancient nation, regal, rigid in ritual.

It would sun itself on my windowsill, stretching its legs
one by one, its hinged joints, its swivel joints, its
----- claws, unfolding and folding its Swiss army knife implements.
It was ready for a landing on the moon.

Around my page it marched itself like a colour guard.
It halted, and its segments fell into place, jolting all
------ down the line.

It uncased its wings which glistened the way sometimes very
------ old things glisten: tortoiseshell fans, black veils,
------ lantern glass.

It was a plant with a will, an independent plant, an early
------invention wiser than what we've arrived at now.
It was a brain coiled in amulets for whom nature is all
------hieroglyphs.

People gawked, and a woman pointed a camera, and I
-------hesitated, but -- I did -- I held the insect up by its
-------long back legs like a badge, like my accomplishment,
and the air flashed, and the insect twisted and fought,
-------breaking its legs in my fingertips, and hung

lunging, fettered with stems of grass,

and I laid it gently down on a clean page,
but it wanted no convalescence,

it ripped up reality, it flung away time and space,

I couldn't believe the strength it had,

it unwound its history, ran out its spring in kicks and
------ rage, denied itself, denied me and my ownership,
------ fizzed, shrank, took off in wave after wave of murder,
------ and left nothing but this page faintly stained with
------ green.

Excerpt from a Letter to... an Old Poet?

2008-11-25T12:51:00.002-05:00

"Read as little as possible of literary criticism - such things are either partisan opinions, which have become petrified and meaningless, hardened and empty of life, or else they are just clever word-games, in which one view wins today, and tomorrow the opposite view. Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism. ... - Always trust yourself and your own feeling, as opposed to argumentations, discussions, or introductions of that sort; if it turns out that you are wrong, then the natural growth of your inner life will eventually guide you to other insights. Allow your judgments their own silent, undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be forced or hastened. Everything is gestation and then birthing. To let each impression and each embryo of a feeling come to completion, entirely in itself, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one's own understanding, and with deep humility and patience to wait for the hour when a new clarity is born: this alone is what it means to live as an artist: in understanding as in creating. "

---------------------------------------------------------Ranier Maria Rilke

The Letter

2008-11-24T06:49:00.000-05:00

"...A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it. So, dear Sir, I can't give you any advice but this: to go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create. Accept that answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it. Perhaps you will discover that you are called to be an artist. Then take the destiny upon yourself, and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what reward might come from outside. ..."

-----------------------------------------------------------------Rainer Maria Rilke

Grasshopper, Snatch the Pebble From my Hand...

2008-11-23T21:26:00.003-05:00

"...You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you - no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple "I must," then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. ..."

----------------------------------------------------------------Rainer Maria Rilke

Hook, Line & Sinker

2008-11-23T19:16:00.002-05:00

Carmelita

2008-11-21T17:56:00.001-05:00

Off the Cuff

2008-11-18T06:16:00.000-05:00

I don't usually ad lib my posts - but there've been a few things on my mind lately that I'd like to share. I'm not sure whether this is going to be a rant or even where this is going. Bear with me. As some of you have noted - I have not, as of late, been "as engaged” with poetry as I've been in the past. Actually, I asked poetry to marry me. Bought a ring. Got down on one knee. She said yes, but jilted me at the altar. I'm kinda out there on the rebound - but I'll survive.

Then there's the fact that I've become rather disenchanted with this whole blogging spiel. I mean why should anybody give a crap that I post a poem or music clip or commentary or what you usually come across on poetry blogs: self-aggrandizement. There's enough hot air out in the blogosphere to fill the Hindenburg all over again and then some. Everybody is trying to sound so "deep" but all I keep hearing and reading out there are hollow words. Then when you actually find something on a blog that you want to comment on and do - God forbid if you disagree with the blogger. You're shunned like the proverbial plague. I don't do "brown-nosing" very well I'm afraid. If that means that I am destined to become a pariah in this literary community. So be it!

Strange, I thought that artists in the guise of poets and writers in general welcomed different perspectives. I was led to believe that they welcomed voices of dissent. Voices that were different from the common and that differed from their own. Voices that marched to the beat of a different drum. Is there no room for a poet that does not twist and pivot to the beat? Is there no room here for the stick which will not bend to the stream? Is there no place for a would-be poet that is not published? Must poets only be measured by the prizes and awards that they garner?

In 1901, Joseph Conrad, Thomas Hardy and Leo Tolstoy were all overlooked by the judges who awarded the first Nobel Prize for literature to Sully Prudhomme. Anybody read any Prudhomme recently? Literary awards have become so enormously important to writers and publishers that as Ellen Seligman of McClelland & Stewart says, “If a book isn't on a list, there's a sense in which it doesn't exist." (Well I guess that my poetry does not exist then. It is a figment of my poetic imagination.)

There was a time when writers weren't obliged to take literary prizes seriously. They understood the politics, the bargaining, the subjectivity and the sheer dumb luck that invariably goes into these decisions. Today the writer seems (IMHO) to take these awards too seriously. Your work must win prizes or at the very least be on a short (even long will do in a pinch) list of also-rans.Well, I have made no such lists. And you won't likely be seeing my name bandied about by publishers as an "also-ran".

I write poetry: bad or good, it's all I've got. It gives me pleasure to write and sometimes even to read it. Apparently, it's also given a few readers some pause. That's enough for me. If that makes me irrelevant in the literary world or even in this on-line poetic community - well then that's fine too! Somehow I'd lost track of what this is really all about - the poetry. It doesn't matter if I publish it or not - what matters is that it communicates something - anything.

I'm stepping off the soap box before I get pushed off. Thanks.

I am the Walrus

2008-11-12T22:18:00.000-05:00

Yes We Can

2008-11-05T14:12:00.001-05:00

Don't Think Twice...It's All Right

2008-11-02T19:42:00.005-05:00

It ain't no use in turning on your light, Babe -
That light I never knowed.
And it ain't no use in turning on your light, Babe -
I'm on the dark side of the road.
Still I wish there was something you would do or say
To try and make me change my mind and stay.
We never did too much talking anyway.
So don't think twice. It's all right.

Going Once ... Going Twice... Gone

2008-11-01T22:58:00.001-04:00

Badfinger

2008-10-27T20:02:00.002-04:00

Palin - somethin'

2008-10-22T16:53:00.004-04:00

This from Wordsmith:

This week's theme: Words that appear to have been coined after the 2008 US presidential candidates.

Palinode

MEANING:
noun: A poem in which the author retracts something said in an earlier poem.

Ummm....................Sounds just about right!

Ball of Confusion

2008-10-19T13:36:00.003-04:00

Poetry in Vitro - Vol 3, No. 11

2008-10-17T07:04:00.003-04:00

Going...going...gone.........

Pablo Neruda

2008-10-16T21:07:00.006-04:00

Nothing But Death

(by Pablo Neruda - translated by Robert Bly )

There are cemeteries that are lonely,
graves full of bones that do not make a sound,
the heart moving through a tunnel,
in it darkness, darkness, darkness,
like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves,
as though we were drowning inside our hearts,
as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul.

And there are corpses,
feet made of cold and sticky clay,
death is inside the bones,
like a barking where there are no dogs,
coming out from bells somewhere, from graves somewhere,
growing in the damp air like tears of rain.

Sometimes I see alone
coffins under sail,
embarking with the pale dead, with women that have dead hair,
with bakers who are as white as angels,
and pensive young girls married to notary publics,
caskets sailing up the vertical river of the dead,
the river of dark purple,
moving upstream with sails filled out by the sound of death,
filled by the sound of death which is silence.

Death arrives among all that sound
like a shoe with no foot in it, like a suit with no man in it,
comes and knocks, using a ring with no stone in it, with no
finger in it,
comes and shouts with no mouth, with no tongue, with no
throat.
Nevertheless its steps can be heard
and its clothing makes a hushed sound, like a tree.

I'm not sure, I understand only a little, I can hardly see,
but it seems to me that its singing has the color of damp violets,
of violets that are at home in the earth,
because the face of death is green,
and the look death gives is green,
with the penetrating dampness of a violet leaf
and the somber color of embittered winter.

But death also goes through the world dressed as a broom,
lapping the floor, looking for dead bodies,
death is inside the broom,
the broom is the tongue of death looking for corpses,
it is the needle of death looking for thread.

Death is inside the folding cots:
it spends its life sleeping on the slow mattresses,
in the black blankets, and suddenly breathes out:
it blows out a mournful sound that swells the sheets,
and the beds go sailing toward a port
where death is waiting, dressed like an admiral.

--------------------------------------------------------------
Neruda & Vallejo: Selected Poems. (Robert Bly)
Beacon Press - 1993

Poetry That Sings

2008-10-15T06:30:00.002-04:00

She's not a girl who misses much
Do do do do do do do do
She's well acquainted with the touch of the velvet hand
Like a lizard on a window pane.

The man in the crowd with the multicoloured mirrors
On his hobnail boots
Lying with his eyes while his hands are busy working overtime
A soap impression of his wife which he ate
And donated to the national trust.

Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.
It's getting hard to be someone but it all works out,
It doesn't matter much to me.
Let me take you down, 'cause I'm going to strawberry fields.
Nothing is real and nothing to get hungabout.
Strawberry fields forever.

No one I think is in my tree, I mean it must be high or low.
That is you can't you know tune in but it's all right,
That is I think it's not too bad.
Let me take you down, 'cause I'm going to strawberry fields.
Nothing is real and nothing to get hungabout.
Strawberry fields forever.

Autumn Colors in the Hood

2008-10-13T06:35:00.002-04:00