Who I hyperventilated at

Trevi, a handsome fountain at the end of an aqueduct. Now too many men with roses or too many women throwing pennies over their shoulders sloped with hope. Ancient statues looking blindly on one almost with a foot in the water all the closed up windows too much overspray- I made a run for it down the cobblestones chest heaving anything for dry land

It's Not Love

like it was before. It’s an animal that waits haunches tensed in the forest in the night eyes listening for that deep rustle a gleam of something eluding the catch crack of branch anticipation of a meal something to devour a quick spill of blood

There is a Library of Strangers in Dublin - Phil Hall

Phil Hall

  there is a library of strangers in Dublin
Phil Hall

  there is a library of strangers in Dublin
Kraków Iqaluit Constantinople Petticoat Junction
  I have borrowed two silences from — the best sleep of my life
& light moving in a Stan Brakhage film

  far away at home at last
I could not be reached breached or dissuaded
  I slept forever & took forever to wake up & when I did
there goes your mime teacher all in white

  light was archeologizing a patchwork quilt on a bed
dusting each snag as if there were no budget constraints
  the approach of the children & the long-eared goat
was a Latin declension enacted

  there is a library of strangers in Dublin
the Troy-warrens of its archives boustrophedonic
  silence stoops to eyeball each shard & tag it
light tests its white hands against walls in the air

  (distracted indifference from the old goat & the children) 

Some Emily Dickinson

THEY say that “time assuages”,—
  Time never did assuage;
An actual suffering strengthens,
  As sinews do, with age.
Time is a test of trouble,
  But not a remedy.
If such it prove, it prove too
  There was no malady.— Emily Dickinson

The Prisoner - Lorca

Federico Garcia Lorca
b. June 5, 1898 Translated by A. S. Kline

The Prisoner

Through the indecisive
branches
went a girl
who was life.
Through the indecisive
branches.
She reflected daylight,
with a tiny mirror,
which was the splendour,
of her unclouded forehead.
Through the indecisive
branches.
In the dark of night,
lost, she wandered,
weeping the dew,
of this imprisoned time.
Through the indecisive
branches.

Crutches - Nikki Giovanni

Crutches
Nikki Giovanni
b. June 7, 1943

it's not the crutches we decry
it’s the need to move forward
though we haven’t the strength
women aren’t allowed to need
so they develop rituals
since we all know working hands idle

the devil
women aren’t supposed to be strong
so they develop social smiles
and secret drinking problems
and female lovers whom they never touch
except in dreams

men are supposed to be strong
so they have heart attacks
and develop other women
who don’t know their weaknesses
and hide their fears
behind male lovers
whom they religiously touch
each saturday morning on the basketball court
it’s considered a sign of health doncha know
that they take such good care
of their bodies

i'm trying to say something about the human condition
maybe i should try again

if you broke an arm or leg
a crutch would be a sign of courage
people would sign your cast
and you could bravely explain
no it doesn’t hurt—it just itches
but if you develop an itch
there are no salves to cover the area
in need of attention
and for whatever guilt may mean
we would feel guilty for trying
to assuage the discomfort
and even worse for needing the aid

i really want to say something about all of us
am i shouting           i want you to hear me

emotional falls always are
the worst
and there are no crutches
to swing back on

Up and Over It

Peter's Song

There’s an ocean between

our two springs

between the roses

one red one white

between a sound in the shell

and an ear that listens

to rhythms repeated

through a chorus of time

somehow we’ve floated

through the tide's rip

over divisions of land

together apart

at last we have learned

to navigate this swim

A Request

Bury me in a shallow grave
so the orange of my dress
creeps up into the rain
towards an empty headstone 
ode to a  poet
who may one day write.

Mango

He devoured the fleshy orange mango of her heart with gluttony a wild beast half crazy from drought. He didn’t care that he ripped her thin skin to get to the fruit. No- he sucked out her juice and spit out what no longer pleased him; left her remains to rot in the sun.

Poem by Jack Spicer

“Any fool can get into an ocean . . .”
Jack Spicer

Any fool can get into an ocean
But it takes a Goddess
To get out of one.
What’s true of oceans is true, of course,
Of labyrinths and poems. When you start swimming
Through riptide of rhythms and the metaphor’s seaweed
You need to be a good swimmer or a born Goddess
To get back out of them
Look at the sea otters bobbing wildly
Out in the middle of the poem
They look so eager and peaceful playing out there where the water hardly moves
You might get out through all the waves and rocks
Into the middle of the poem to touch them
But when you’ve tried the blessed water long
Enough to want to start backward
That’s when the fun starts
Unless you’re a poet or an otter or something supernatural
You’ll drown, dear. You’ll drown
Any Greek can get you into a labyrinth
But it takes a hero to get out of one
What’s true of labyrinths is true of course
Of love and memory. When you start remembering.

My Vocabulary Did This to Me:
The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer

Please read - this is sick

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/man-beheaded-bus-passenger-wins-escorted-trips-community-211857168.html

Poetry Ku

what good is poetry
blood drops bloom
on a pure white page

What I Do

Leave books out in the rain until pages swell like water on the knee hard to move or bend Dust infrequently until all I can see of the cat are her paw prints ghosting across the table top Forget the house-keys in the door latch and the poem that wakes me in the middle of the night to discuss the notion of ‘sticky not sweet’ something about a gull’s wings the sudden tack of mid-flight I hug everyone but you

Friends are the bestest

The Sky at Night

A belated excursion to
the stone collection
of our feelings

Little left here
worth showing
alas

Is there
from an anthropological perspective
a need for love

Or merely for
yearnings easy
to disappoint

Which stars
go down
as white dwarfs

What relation
does a heavy heart bear
to the art of comedy

Does the hunter
Orion have answers
to such questions

Or are they
too closely guarded
by the Dog Star 

W.G Sebald

Reunion

           As the popular girl walks among us with the microphone,
most of our stories are about loss,
or include exquisitely precise
medical and pharmaceutical details,
as if the words could suture the wounds, or save us even one last breath.
           I came to dance with the Puerto Rican women
of my class of 1967, and to remember a few pals lost in the war,
who had been so beautiful, you were happy just to look upon them,
and one more boy
lost to his own drunken wildness
under a moon who doesn't remember us.
           It's not a going back we long for, but a staying still
for one incomparable moment, all the lost loves' faces
spinning in the mirrored ball.



BRUCE WEIGL

The Abundance of Nothing 

Confidence Trick

Caught in a world of wrong intentions she trips over a man next to the curb reading an outdated paper about a war that never ceased. She tries to tell him it’s no longer true gives up right after he kisses her. The next day she believes the news too rolls up her truths and follows him to an alley where everyone lies dead.  She curls up beside them knows nothing about the fact that his war was never hers at all. Against the curb he lies waiting for another victim to trip across his graceless world.  In the alley, bodies steam into a cold April morning.

Hospital 1 - Flew Over the Ku's Nest

outside blooms green inside grimy windows collapsed veins plume smell of purple cabbage

REALLY?!

http://news.sympatico.ca/unusualnews/five_charged_after_chinese_teen_sells_kidney_to_buy_iphone/9e2b2845