Finding Flowers

Now I dreamt of you sleeping and dreaming,
beside me, in my bed, and of how it all was,
nothing happened except you sleeping and dreaming,
beside me, in my bed, and my looking at you,
and seeing how inexorably and all-pervasively
beautiful you were, how you were: all sleep and
dream and time, which gave itself ample time,
and how I knew that this immaculate waking
needs no kisses of shushing nostalgia,
when we think we’re dreaming of dreams
and religiously do the work, unseen by anyone.

by Pieter Boskma
from Het violette uur
publisher: Prometheus, Amsterdam, 2008
translation: 2012, Paul Vincent

Thanks 3quarksdaily!

To his lost lover
     by Simon Armitage

Now they are no longer
any trouble to each other

he can turn things over, get down to that list
of things that never happened, all of the lost

unfinishable business.
For instance… for instance,

how he never clipped and kept her hair, or drew a hairbrush
through that style of hers, and never knew how not to blush

at the fall of her name in close company.
How they never slept like buried cutlery –

two spoons or forks cupped perfectly together,
or made the most of some heavy weather –

walked out into hard rain under sheet lightning,
or did the gears while the other was driving.

How he never raised his fingertips
to stop the segments of her lips

from breaking the news,
or tasted the fruit

or picked for himself the pear of her heart,
or lifted her hand to where his own heart

was a small, dark, terrified bird
in her grip. Where it hurt.

Or said the right thing,
or put it in writing.

And never fled the black mile back to his house
before midnight, or coaxed another button of her blouse,

then another,
or knew her

favourite colour,
her taste, her flavour,

and never ran a bath or held a towel for her,
or soft-soaped her, or whipped her hair

into an ice-cream cornet or a beehive
of lather, or acted out of turn, or misbehaved

when he might have, or worked a comb
where no comb had been, or walked back home

through a black mile hugging a punctured heart,
where it hurt, where it hurt, or helped her hand

to his butterfly heart
in its two blue halves.

And never almost cried,
and never once described

an attack of the heart,
or under a silk shirt

nursed in his hand her breast,
her left, like a tear of flesh

wept by the heart,
where it hurts,

or brushed with his thumb the nut of her nipple,
or drank intoxicating liquors from her navel.

Or christened the Pole Star in her name,
or shielded the mask of her face like a flame,

a pilot light,
or stayed the night,

or steered her back to that house of his,
or said “Don’t ask me how it is

I like you.
I just might do.”

How he never figured out a fireproof plan,
or unravelled her hand, as if her hand

were a solid ball
of silver foil

and discovered a lifeline hiding inside it,
and measured the trace of his own alongside it.

But said some things and never meant them –
sweet nothings anybody could have mentioned.

And left unsaid some things he should have spoken,
about the heart, where it hurt exactly, and how often.

"The Pillow"

The pillow said:
at the end of the long day
only I know
the confident man’s confusion,
the nun’s desire,
the slight quiver in the tyrant’s eyelash,
the preacher’s obscenity,
the soul’s longing
for a warm body where flying sparks
become a glowing coal.
Only I know
the grandeur of unnoticed little things;
only I know the loser’s dignity,
the winner’s loneliness
and the stupid coldness one feels
when a wish has been granted.


by Mourid Barghouti

translation Radwa Ashour
from Midnight and Other Poems
Publisher: Arc Publications, Todmorden, Lancashire, 2009


When I read this for the first time, I thought "I don't want to be dignified, for dignity only shows itself in defeat. It is a remedy for failure."

"Dactylitis"

Periosteal reaction

to adjacent tendonitis

is occasionally evident

radiographically.

J.D. Salinger is dead

Hide not thy tears on this last day

Your sorrow has no shame;

To march no more midst lines of gray;

No longer play the game.

Four years have passed in joyful ways — Wouldst stay those old times dear?

Then cherish now these fleeting days,

The few while you are here.

By J.D. Salinger

NYTimes

"I must retire now"

I must retire now to the sandbox,
to make cloud castles of sand
to steel them with lettered might
while seated squarely in this box;
prolix castles too vast, too sandy
to stand and bear their weight.
They cannot escape
the lashing waves of one life.

I must retire now, dear friend,
for castles are crumbling
fine dust to the incessant wind.
In the morning light, sand layered
on sand, and later, without notice or care,
decay undoes what builds the mind
its rotting hands sculpt and boil
the castle immensity to grain.

I'm sorry, dear friend, for I must retire
and tend the castles towering
beyond the overhead bulbs
that bleach the eyes white.
I can't see you any more, dear friend,
for the castles need tending,
and the lashing waves
lick and dissolve my words.

- Atticus Plumm

John Keats, The Poet - Y.

An article, "Who killed John Keats?" in the Times Literary Supplement reads "A letter by Keats's old friend makes clear how much 'sensative-bitterness' the poet felt after attacks on him by critics."

And now the letter, published Friday July 27, 1821, five months after Keats’s death, in the Morning Chronicle:


JOHN KEATS, THE POET.

To the EDITOR of the MORNING CHRONICLE.

Sir, I find by the Daily Papers, that the young Poet, John Keats, is dead. I shall feel gratified if you will allow a few remarks from his School-fellow and Friend, a place in your Paper.

It appears that Mr. Keats died of decline at Rome, whither he had retired to repair the inroads which the rupturing of a blood vessel had made upon his constitution.

It is not impossible that his premature death may have been brought on by his performing the office of nurse to a younger brother, who also died of decline; for his attention to the invalid was so anxious and unwearied, that his friends could see distinctly that his own health had suffered in the exertion. This may have been one cause, but I do not believe it was the sole cause. It will be remembered that Keats received some rough and brutal usage from the Reviews about two years since; particularly from the Quarterly, and from a Northern one; which, in the opinion of every gentlemanly and feeling mind, has rendered itself infamous from its coarse pandarism to the depraved appetites of gossips and scandal-mongers. To what extent the treatment he received from those writers operated upon his mind I cannot say; for Keats had a noble – a proud – and an undaunted heart; but he was very young, only one and twenty. He had all the enthusiasm of the youthful poet burning in him – he thought to take the great world by the hand, and hold its attention while he unburthened the overflowings of an aspiring and ardent imagination; and his beautiful recasting of “The Pot of Basil” proves that he would have done so had he lived. But his ardour was met by the torpedo touch of one whose “Blood is very snow-broth;” and the exuberant fancies of a young and almost ungovernable fancy were dragged forward by another, and exhibited in gross and wanton caricature. It is truly painful to see the yearnings of an eager and trusting mind thus held up to the fiend-like laugh of a brutal mob, upon the pikes and bayonets of literary mercenaries. If it will be any gratification to Mr. Gifford to know how much he contributed to the discomfort of a generous mind, I can so far satisfy it by informing him, that Keats has lain awake through the whole night talking with sensative-bitterness of the unfair treatment he had experienced; and with becoming scorn of the information which was afterwards suggested to him; “That as it was considered he had been rather roughly handled, his future productions should be reviewed with less harshness.” So much for the integrity and impartiality of criticism! This charge would no doubt be denied with high and flouncing indignation; but he told me he had been given to understand as much, and I believe him. If the object of this hint was to induce the young Poet to quit the society of those whom he had chosen for his friends, and who had helped him in pushing off his boat from shore, it shows how little his character was known to his assailants. He had a “little body,” but he too had a “mighty heart,” as any one of them would have discovered, had the same impertinences been offered to him personally which were put forth in their anonymous scandal-rolls. Keats’s great crime was his having dedicated his first production to Mr. Leigh Hunt. He should have cowered under the wings of Mr. Croker, and he would have been fostered into “a pretty chicken.”

I remember his first introduction to Mr. Hunt, and the pleasure each seemed to derive from the interview. I remember with admiration, all that Gentleman’s friendship and disinterestedness towards him – disinterestedness, which would surprise those only who do not know him. I remember too, his first introduction to Mr. Haydon; and when in the course of conversation that great artist asked him, “if he did not love his country,” how the blood rushed to his cheeks and the tears to his eyes, at his energetic reply. His love of freedom was ardent and grand. He once said, that if he should live a few years, he would go over to South America, and write a Poem on Liberty, and now he lies in a land where liberty once flourished, and where it is regenerating.

I hope his friends and admirers (for he had both, and warm ones) will raise a monument to his memory on the classical spot where he died; and that Canova, the Roman, will contribute that respect, so amply in his power, to the memory of the young Englishman, who possessed a kindred mind with, and who restamped the loveliest of all the stories of his great countryman, – Boccaccio.

And now farewel, noble spirit! You have forsaken us, and taken the long and dark journey towards “that bourne from whence no traveller returns;” but you have left a memorial of your genius which “posterity will not willingly let die.” You have plunged into the gulf, but your golden sandals remain. The storm of life has overblown, and, “the rest is silence.”

“Fear no more the heat of the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages.

* * * * * *
Quiet consummation have,
And renowned be thy Grave.”

Y.

"Having a coke with you"

Thank you 3QD

"Lipid Lectures"

The lecture starts droning
and the kids stop chatting
and the heads begin to drop;
and a small pattering of keys
babble and yak to each other
like gnats, drowning the drone.
Then a key point is mouthed
to an ocean of Powerpoint light
projected before a rapt lecture hall
that alternatively nods
and nods off;

Which starts a thousand manic fingers
over laptop keyboards,
building a subtle crescendo,

a tingle in a sleeping foot,

an ocean wave
washing over the shore,

or the sound of pebbles
raked from the beach
on a wave's long regress.

Then it's pulled back
into the pulsating sea of a void
where knowledge goes
to procreate and die,
and the scattered key clicking
ticks and resumes,
like countless cockroaches
in basement cracks.

I've found a dent in the ground
concave and wet

so i reached down to feel its ridge
around the far edge

and it hit me,
a coconut on the parietal

crushed, juiced
fed by gravitous and inertial raw.

Let me rephrase the question:
when a steppenwolf
battles today's banality,

the admissions office tells him
to fill out an application?

"My Soul I Hold"

My soul I hold
in my hand, heavy as a plate,
a heaving rack of slate,
glabrous, matte-glossed,
and in my other a hammer
to lay the sweating rock to rest.


Between my hairy fingers
a cut of felt now lies limply,
drooping through the cracks
like pearled honey drops
leaking from a bear bottle;
tender memories poke the sore
for the emptiness they reveal
the elation gone, a trough
in its place, the cracks in between.


by Timidy Cole

"Poem"

I remember once, when you were ahead of me walking through the main square, after you had dropped a scoop of ice cream, pistachio it should have been, onto the solid black coffee stone sitting at the bottom of that porcelain thimble and had sat there sipping, taken out of space and time, your face like a child seen hiding the secret mirth of a stolen cookie; and you had already postulated to the air (i just so happened to hear) that you feared the seagulls would impale us on their beaks (those bags of flying pools genetically shallow; don't worry i said they are just jealous) and we already tried to lounge languidly on those large concrete jackstones that some giant tumbled into the sea but I feigned cool because you weren't looking; it was then, passed the port where the fish were gutted and the squid were peeled and the manta rays were wacked against the undulating concrete punished for some crime unknown, their thousand eyes bulging and lifeless; it was as we walked back with the sun at our backs back through the square heavy with milling people and with beggars parading their wizened palms and broken backs, there that the smile set from your magnetic countenance that beguiles those lost planets orbiting the uncharted star. I remember once, when the smile set, that I was lost suddenly in the unknown sea, calm and deep, a sky of a sea, with neither stars nor sense to guide me and I threw these tired hands soaked with salt and rubbed raw with the sands of one too many dunes, sent them as a weed pushes from the earth to rotten air, sent them without sending them and you saw, because you looked at me, your tender eyes flying into mine like two seagulls big and brown with glistening heads and sharpened beaks and I saw the shadow of a smile shimmer, a time of long ago echoed in the present, felt but not touched, heard but not listened to. I remember, when that smile set, the last yawn of the morning.

Hildebrandt Trumble

"Your Goodbye"

And I read your goodbye
anonymously, my insides
sinking slowly, unbelieving,
down deep into a sinkhole
that I was not there;
and the dewy-eyed sun rises
everyday, Hope dawning on my sheets,
a reddish glow spreading from my thorax
begging you to remember;

but your sheet was painfully void,
highlighting the blank charade
with pregnant words sprinkled
lithely on my page:
seagulls, orange marmalade, wild gestures
but no brief hint of mine
as if our time reared not the smallest leaf,
(leaving only that which my mind enshrines
and sings to those sorrowing birds)
none of the wise words uttered before death;
remember, remember what you whispered
through the waves' soft mist?
or the little boy outside who tried to sell us
children's shoes, meandering from table to table,
remember? I am like him, pandering
to a girl with too many shoes;

for sailing with sails unfurled
saying what æther fills my lungs
what wakes my dreams from slumber
would burst the seams and cost too much to bare;
so i choose this, i prefer this,
this plebeian oblivion.
Yet we know that children grow
that shoes get worn and weary
and new ones take their place;
then, it seems, the shoe-panderer,
though breathless and fallen
by a melancholy fit, will find
a quiet corner to sit and breath
and review the feast and the wine and
the many-crowned carouse.


Viduus Moore

"Poem"

If Time be a stream
bittered by the wet rocks
swept into sand,
the sorrowful current,
then let me be a beaver
hungry with impatience
and this damned clubtail (dragging like a thick willow clinging to the water)
to stop its flow, to live,
to feel a moment's repose
in this loveliness
forlorn.
These months,
these long weeks
illimitable day hours
like patterns in the cove's
bank or tears on a
glistening face, they pass
unseen. The innocent Moon
and its bed of stars slide
in vain, for my thoughts are
water, both moving and unmoving,
filling the stream bed.


Marcel Xavier

"NOBLESSE OBLIGE"

I always put on a whole-slick tuxedo
when I jump off tall buildings so

when I'm sprawl in the streetdust
that passersby can say, "Oh no: and just

when he was at the height of his success;
look at that tux—now that's the way to dress."



Bill Knott (his blog)(you can also download his books free(!) from here)

"BEDDYBYE" by Knott

Just hope that when you lie down your toes are a firing-squad

"Lovelade"

The sea is the cargo of empty ships
Moon bears the sun when it’s gone
My face with the trace of your lips
Will fare from now on and on


Bill Knott (you can download his books free(!) from here)

"What would happen"

What would happen if the sun never shone?
he, against the splintered boards
rubbing two palms by the concave waves
drip drip dripping salt into the red,
he lives here now, and asks

Don't you miss the warmth
of its blinding smile, ringing the vast,
that soars through air wisteria-soaked
the blazing arms to the very towers that beg the sun,
the one, that sun
that will never shine again?

"I think of you"

In the airport
waiting with lost beetles
eyes, suspicious, lash out;
our leggy model saunters by
which makes me laugh and turn to my side
to tell the closest; but there was no one,
and I think of you.

Fingers lash the strings
like crashing crests to the shore
and the bow whistling the burnished box
of wood and glue, sweating,
what might have been and what has been
are nothing; the beauty of music,
and I think of you.

I see you in the clarity of stars in the night black,
and they purr pure gold from afar.
I see you twice in the shimmering sparks of the ocean
deep from the hustle-bustle life brimming with nothing
worse than nothing, everything;
hiding in your castle town, your own kingdom
of hypnotized monkeys, and the gate stays shut;
below, the branches of the fig
and the quince intertwine, but the fruit do not touch;
I cling to these like ink to paper
and think of naught but you.

"Tonight I can write"

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write for example, 'The night is full of stars
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like these I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think I do not have her, to feel I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to a pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.

That is all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her.

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.

Surely I no longer love her, but how I once loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.

Another's. She will be another's. As she once belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

Surely I no longer love her, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short and forgetting so long.

Because on nights like these I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her.

Though this be the last pain she makes me suffer
and these the last verses I write for her.


Pablo Neruda