Octavio Paz

As One Listens To The Rain

Listen to me as one listens to the rain,
not attentive, not distracted,
light footsteps, thin drizzle,
water that is air, air that is time,
the day is still leaving,
the night has yet to arrive,
figurations of mist
at the turn of the corner,
figurations of time
at the bend in this pause,
listen to me as one listens to the rain,
without listening, hear what I say
with eyes open inward, asleep
with all five senses awake,
it's raining, light footsteps, a murmur of syllables,
air and water, words with no weight:
what we are and are,
the days and years, this moment,
weightless time and heavy sorrow,
listen to me as one listens to the rain,
wet asphalt is shining,
steam rises and walks away,
night unfolds and looks at me,
you are you and your body of steam,
you and your face of night,
you and your hair, unhurried lightning,
you cross the street and enter my forehead,
footsteps of water across my eyes,
listen to me as one listens to the rain,
the asphalt's shining, you cross the street,
it is the mist, wandering in the night,
it is the night, asleep in your bed,
it is the surge of waves in your breath,
your fingers of water dampen my forehead,
your fingers of flame burn my eyes,
your fingers of air open eyelids of time,
a spring of visions and resurrections,
listen to me as one listens to the rain,
the years go by, the moments return,
do you hear the footsteps in the next room?
not here, not there: you hear them
in another time that is now,
listen to the footsteps of time,
inventor of places with no weight, nowhere,
listen to the rain running over the terrace,
the night is now more night in the grove,
lightning has nestled among the leaves,
a restless garden adrift-go in,
your shadow covers this page. 

Octavio Paz

Bill Knott

Dream Amid Bed-Woods
Bill Knott

You must pull down sheets from these linen trees,
Blankets too, a pillowcase in full leaf,
But can’t: to snooze amidst their fruits, beneath
The sheath of that composite canopy’s

Roost, you must raise yourself past hammock heights—
Up where its deepest roots feel doubly sapped,
The dormitory orchard might lie wrapped
And ripe with you, whose foliage still invites

More lure of surface sleep. But must you trust
The ease in these boughs, the sway of whose loft
So often now wakes vows to never rest,

To somehow remain alow, to resist
All berth above: you must push off this soft
Palleted grove, this tall, forest mattress.

Just a poetry page

http://conjunctions.com/archives/c62-mc.htm

NO!!!!!!

Not Again, Never.  Stop it NOW!  In total shock over this, it may seem small but it isn't.

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/someones-handing-leaflets-eastern-ukraine-telling-jews-register-173828220.html

http://time.com/67272/ukraine-jew-register-donetsk/

Going Back

Now and then I think about them

the shadow people, those ones

I never really knew

I relive the love, hate, dramatic

fever bubbling just below

that surface we called reality.

The stuff of consumption

sucked stars right out

out of a velvet sky

blew them back out

into milky ways nowhere

close to what we knew before.

The madness of it all

the endless pits into which to fall

the devil with his cold hands

welcomed any quick descent

until something else

at the surface tugged

and I clung

eyes focused toward

stars distorted upside-down

in a sea of glass.

Debbie Calverley

Two Poems by Maureen McLane

What's the Matter

Why the low mood,
the picking at food?
Maybe it's the weather.

Maybe it's hormones.
Explanation's cheap
but sometimes hits the mark.

I am the target
of mysterious arrows
I myself let sling.

O that's your fantasy
of omnipotence.
You make everything 

your thing.
All day I stayed in bed.
It seemed someone else
must have been alive

have done what I did.
Failed to do
what I failed to.

It's still in my head
those things I did
and said and cared for

doing but it's all gone
white like green hills
in certain light

as Dante says the hillsides
can go white
in the middle of a new life.
 

Even Those

Even the places
the sun doesn't reach
in the deepest woods
are hot. Even the places

that never dry—the mosses
creeping everywhere
a damp carpet underfoot—
are dry. Even the quietest

places you've never been
are disquieted by your cry.
Even those places.

MAUREEN MCLANE

This Blue 

Open Book

Open Book

Time was, your hands were on me night and day.
(The thrill along my spine!) Of course I flipped
for you, from A to Z and back to A,
not once suspecting our romantic script
was doomed (and how), you fickle, shallow fool.
You've traded everything you shared with me—
defining moments, leisurely, old school—
for quickies with your laptop, your PC, 
your iPad, iPhone, iDon't-Give-a-Damn:
amid their breathless litany of news,
blogs, tweets, directions, recipes and spam,
they will, at any moment that you choose,
look up a word (or dozens!) in a flash.
Well, here's a definition I find merry:
Comeuppance (noun): when all your gadgets crash,
and you crawl back to me—your dictionary.

MELISSA BALMAIN
Walking in on People

Proof

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/citys-worst-winter-since-98----1898-254004961.html

Spring? Worst winter in Manitoba since 1898 - so ready...

Snow Bank of the Year - March 28, 2014

at my parents place

Collect Call - Ash Bowen

Somewhere out there, an operator plugged in
            the wire of your voice to the switchboard

of Arkansas where I am
            happy to accept the charges—an act so antique

                         I think of Sputnik beeping
overhead, lovers petting in Buicks

            and glowing with the green of radium dials.
Bur what you've called to say is lost

            in the line's wreckage of crackle and static.
The night you went away

            the interstate glowed red beneath the flaring
                         fins of your father's Cadillac.

Now this collect call
            from outer space & what you've called to say
                         is clear at last: Among stars

lovers come and go easy as you please. It's the gravity
            of Earth that makes letting go so hard.

ASH BOWEN

Politicians discussing global warming Sculpture: Issac Cordal

Immunity (an older poem of mine)

                             That night the Poets declared

                                   we were no longer free to dream;

                                   I dreamt of you 

                                   even though I knew

                                   I would die for it.

                                   _____________

                                   Debbie Calverley

It's Raining Inside James Schuyler

Not tearing the umbrellas inside out
not even blowing them side to side
just getting wetness wetter
and then the rain dwindles
but the sun has a shimmer
like it's missing the rain
and every once in a while
the trees in the park let down
a drenching
like they have to admit:
Oh I almost forgot about the rain.
So many Aprils.
And then the rain is back
in strings
like hair from a horse's tail.
Oh good. Weather everywhere.
Inescapable weather.
Even in everybody's
buttonholes: weather.
And someone has put an umbrella over
Gertrude Stein
in Bryant Park
where she squats
like a toad.
Blossoms drift past and cigarette
ash in the rain
and somewhere in a pond
koi swirl against koi like
they're rehearsing
to be a kimono.
The koi look
like they've been scrubbed
by a brick
which is why I won't leave
this little metal table
with its legs
modeled on insects
among insects.
And now it's raining
in the sunlight.
And the afternoon has a new
nip in it.
Chill April.
Rain lands on my neck
and slips further,
little geraniums of rain.
That's all right.
Long ago a rain drop
fell from a leaky ceiling
into my eye
and I lived for that.
And then walking not slow
there is my friend
decades since we've seen each other
and he knows me instantly.
The same raincoat, he says.

LEE UPTON

Now this is cake.....

River - Forrest Gander

River

     from Eiko & Koma

Taut current, throughstricken
with night, starlit,

and both of them
facing off. En-
igma tipped to
distortion— *

She floats on swirled
obsidian current. Their
sightlines swim across
each other. Stars
don't look away
from the unfolding,

the going alluvial,
she against his
tenderness.
 
*cutaway:
          to the blanks in her face-slots

FORREST GANDER

A Blast from the Past!

For instance - The Chandelier Lounge - Cosmo

La la las veeeeeegas

Ok, this place is over the top, you just have to close your eyes and pretend it's not real because it isn't!  Madness I say, madness!  Love the orange bits though....

February Blues

The city is a tired eye

swaddled scarf

a pulled down hat

Wind an unchained mongrel

its relentless grip

clamped onto bones

Snow banks form a frozen surf

car exhaust fog low hung

over a sea of yellow headlights

We are the cave people

dark and gutteral

in search of hibernation

in wait for that morning

when the sun outstretched

extends the evening

Debbie Calverley

Track

Track

Tomas Tranströmer

translated by Robert Bly

2 A.M. moonlight. The train has stopped

out in a field. Far off sparks of light from a town,

flickering coldly on the horizon.

As when a man goes so deep into his dream

he will never remember he was there

when he returns again to his view.

Or when a person goes so deep into a sickness

that his days all become some flickering sparks, a swarm,

feeble and cold on the horizon

The train is entirely motionless.
2 o’clock: strong moonlight, few stars.

Lisa Ampleman

Mouth: To Say

To say a word, we put it in our mouths.
       It may roll between the teeth
or hum on the palate. Love, after all, starts
       on tongue against teeth and ends on lips.
To communicate once meant to take communion.
       I take the wafer into my mouth:
speech. Silence as it melts on my tongue.
       Your speaking hums in your chest
when my ear is to it. There's a wasp nest
       under my porch. They fly home at dusk,
but you know how to suss them out.
       And in my kitchen, plaster cracks on
one discolored wall. Is it water damage?
       Is the house settling? You put your hand
on my wall, say It doesn't look like water—
       (water, which begins on pursed lips).
The cracked pipe in the wall seals up.
       The glass of water we share is cold.
You kiss my mouth, which tastes like your mouth.

LISA AMPLEMAN

Full Cry 

Quote

"When writers die they become books, which is, after all,
not too bad an incarnation."                                           —Jorge Luis Borges

A Sacred Unhappiness

There’s a few things I want to say

about the un in happiness

and why it’s sacred to be.

His love came boiling up like

like the sea rolling and boiling

up until I noticed him there

I just hadn’t before.  Only sand

no footprints, a sharp breeze

out of the north-west -

that was it.  I had walked there

forever next to the rolling

boiling sea thinking

nothing of the whole thing or

what might come out of it

until he emerged all covered

with sea-weed and barnacles

a short stint on the shore he

said I never walk here.

That was a happy day and

the wind shifted to southerly

no bite at all only that switch

and bait over skin an awareness

that all is somehow right not wrong

until that moonless night

when he slipped away

I awoke to see the curtains

blowing in the wind

distinctly north-west

shivering I again became

un, a little waif in the world

sacred, nevertheless.

The passionate are immobilized.

The case-hardened undulate over walls

of the library, in more or less expressive poses.

The equinox again, not knowing

whether to put the car in reverse

or slam on the brakes at the entrance

to the little alley. Seasons belong

to others than us. Our work keeps us

up late nights; there is no more joy

or sorrow than in what work gives.

A little boy thought the raven on the bluff

was a winged instrument; there is so little

that gives and says it gives. Others

felt themselves ostracized by the moon.

The pure joy of daily living became impacted

with the blood of fate and battles.

There’s no turning back the man says,

the one waiting to take tickets at the top

of the gangplank. Still, in the past

we could always wait a little. Indeed,

we are waiting now. That’s what happens.

from Where Shall I wander:  New Poems, by John Ashbery

Jose Emilio Pacheco RIP

http://ca.omg.yahoo.com/news/jose-emilio-pacheco-one-mexico-39-foremost-poets-015849976.html

For S

Things by Their Name . . .

And if they do not have one?
What is the name of this sadness
you get from the three ascending notes
of The Death of Ase, in this music?

Careful, it is not called The Sadness.
You will have to go the long way
to name it
because it does not exist outside the notes
but nevertheless
the notes are not it. 

Circe Maia

translated from the Spanish by Jesse Lee Kercheval

Deb & Jane - Barbados 2014

I hear Winnipeg is colder than Mars……..

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/winnipeg-deep-freeze-as-cold-as-uninhabited-planet-1.2479967

Question to the Audience ….

Is someone out there translating my entire blog into Russian??  I happened to follow the url trail and there it was, completely in Russian.  If so, let me know.

Thanks
Deb

Happy New Year!

Rise and Fall

Rise and fall of the waves
where one ends the other begins

Rise and fall of the sun
a ghostly moon coasts the night

Men and women rise and fall
where one ends the other begins

such is life.

Debbie Calverley

A Poem is Worth A Thousand Words

Late Apology

The bees came by the hundreds
and by the hundreds was she stung,

their little shell-bodies working like a net.

And when I saw her dead in the creek
(bee queen of my dream)

it was the first time I feared being found
face down dead like a coward.

ALLISON SEAY

-29C - One Week to Go until I wake up to this….

U2 - Fast Cars (Jacknife Lee Mix)

From "Wood's Lot" - how true…..

Has the Image Killed the Imagination?
Professor Ben O'Loughlin
Inaugural Lecture
The Department of Politics and International Relations
Royal Holloway University of London

Try to imagine the future. You can’t. You’re reading this. The screen has you trapped. Another image is catching your eye now too. The image is crowding out the future, a continuous drain on attention. Politics is dreams, goals, plans. It needs the future. Without time to imagine, what is left of politics?

Backdoor Broadcasting Company
Academic Podcasts

via —synthetic_zero

http://web.ncf.ca/ek867/wood_s_lot.html

Quote of the Day

When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

John F. Kennedy

First Snow

Girls

They' were the ones 
with the numbers
one through ten
they paraded themselves 
in the ring
holding the numbers high

It just goes to show -
you and I
we never stood a chance.

Debbie Calverley

Quote

"The person who said time heals all wounds didn't know what the hell he was talking about"

Survivor - Jonestown Massacre

Zig Zag

Through alleys of avoidance
streets shiny with rain
footsteps ever closer
can't allow the catch

Every step disconnects
unleashes the dog
unbridles the mare
unclips the wings

The mind undoes 
such thoughts of absence
memories spill their stories
to the dark

A face forgotten reflected
in a puddle time distorted
with confusion as to how
it rips away

hearts in pieces

-Debbie Calverley

November Blues

What do you say
when you don't know what to write
or how to write it ?

What do you say
when you no longer know
who you're writing for?

What do you say 
when all there is to say
has been said?

Tell me, do you hear the wind
in the sycamore tree
the one where I carved your name?

Is anything left?
Tell me.

Debbie Calverley

Christmas 2001

His father was dead.

The ground was frozen
and he was trying to plant a tree
after drinking a half bottle of whiskey
he had found in the house
on top of the drinks at the party.

He had quietly stumbled out
around 1 am without telling a soul
and wandered until finding the place
deserted and dark as if lying in wait.
Crying a little, his face to the window

he spotted the tree, the one his dad
had wanted to plant so he left the house
resolved to put it in the ground
and unlocked the shed to find the spade.
The ground was too cold

and he chopped and chopped
to no avail, only ice splintered
and shook his arms until they trembled.
It was close to Christmas, 2001
when I knew him well.

Snow began to fall in great white flakes.
He was somebody.
He was nobody.

His father was dead.
He was trying to plant a tree.

Lou

Letter Not Sent

We could have been friends -
if you hadn't been lost
in the smell of her raven hair
her eyes like two lost lockets
full of black and white photographs
letters penned by hand
poems she never knew how to write.

So, do you still have
Neruda's poems?
The fountain pen?
That first bottle of ink?

I should have known 
when I saw you drop it -

that everything precious
can be replaced.

Faint Music

Maybe you need to write a poem about grace.

When everything broken is broken,   

and everything dead is dead,

and the hero has looked into the mirror with complete contempt,

and the heroine has studied her face and its defects

remorselessly, and the pain they thought might,

as a token of their earnestness, release them from themselves

has lost its novelty and not released them,

and they have begun to think, kindly and distantly,

watching the others go about their days—

likes and dislikes, reasons, habits, fears—

that self-love is the one weedy stalk

of every human blossoming, and understood,

therefore, why they had been, all their lives,   

in such a fury to defend it, and that no one—

except some almost inconceivable saint in his pool

of poverty and silence—can escape this violent, automatic

life’s companion ever, maybe then, ordinary light,

faint music under things, a hovering like grace appears.

As in the story a friend told once about the time   

he tried to kill himself. His girl had left him.

Bees in the heart, then scorpions, maggots, and then ash.   

He climbed onto the jumping girder of the bridge,   

the bay side, a blue, lucid afternoon.

And in the salt air he thought about the word “seafood,”

that there was something faintly ridiculous about it.

No one said “landfood.” He thought it was degrading to the rainbow perch

he’d reeled in gleaming from the cliffs, the black rockbass,   

scales like polished carbon, in beds of kelp

along the coast—and he realized that the reason for the word   

was crabs, or mussels, clams. Otherwise

the restaurants could just put “fish” up on their signs,   

and when he woke—he’d slept for hours, curled up   

on the girder like a child—the sun was going down

and he felt a little better, and afraid. He put on the jacket   

he’d used for a pillow, climbed over the railing   

carefully, and drove home to an empty house.

There was a pair of her lemon yellow panties

hanging on a doorknob. He studied them. Much-washed.   

A faint russet in the crotch that made him sick   

with rage and grief. He knew more or less

where she was. A flat somewhere on Russian Hill.   

They’d have just finished making love. She’d have tears   

in her eyes and touch his jawbone gratefully. “God,”   

she’d say, “you are so good for me.” Winking lights,   

a foggy view downhill toward the harbor and the bay.   

“You’re sad,” he’d say. “Yes.” “Thinking about Nick?”

“Yes,” she’d say and cry. “I tried so hard,” sobbing now,

“I really tried so hard.” And then he’d hold her for a while—

Guatemalan weavings from his fieldwork on the wall—

and then they’d fuck again, and she would cry some more,   

and go to sleep.

                        And he, he would play that scene

once only, once and a half, and tell himself

that he was going to carry it for a very long time

and that there was nothing he could do

but carry it. He went out onto the porch, and listened   

to the forest in the summer dark, madrone bark

cracking and curling as the cold came up.

It’s not the story though, not the friend

leaning toward you, saying “And then I realized—,”

which is the part of stories one never quite believes.   

I had the idea that the world’s so full of pain

it must sometimes make a kind of singing.

And that the sequence helps, as much as order helps—

First an ego, and then pain, and then the singing.

Robert Hass

Flower that Drops Its Petals

from The Black Flower and Other Zapotec Poems

Natalia Toledo

Flower that Drops Its Petals

I will not die from absence.
A hummingbird pinched the eye of my flower
and my heart mourns and shivers,
does not breathe.
My wings tremble like the long-billed curlew
when he foretells the sun and the rain.
I will not die from absence, I tell myself.
A melody bows down upon the throne of my sadness,
an ocean springs from my stone of origin.
I write in Zapotec to ignore the syntax of pain,
ask the sky and its fire
to give me back my happiness.
Paper butterfly that sustains me:
why did you turn your back upon the star
that knotted your navel?

Spot the Cat

For S

My friend, she wants to live
on an International Space Station
so that she can write poetry
without that feeling of gravity

she would sit facing the stars
as far from earth as possible
the set of her shoulders determined
to never again look back.

For One Whose Love Has Gone

          There was a crack
    in ecstasy; it split the oak
with flameless fire.
A raptor left good bones
in the divided tree (the spine?
  of a mouse?) & then flew off
     for a muffled sanctuary . . .

Some say get
     over it, but there you are,
surrounding it. Slant sun
     shines in. Bring it along,
bone-reader, bring the banquet.

               F O R   C N

Brenda Hillman

The Laughing Heart

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

Charles Bukowski