Poems & poem-like things – Page 575

July 22, 2016August 22, 2016 by Jean Morris

Louise Labé – Sonnet XXIV (her last)

This entry is part 3 of 7 in the series Louise Labé

Don’t scorn me, Ladies, just for having loved.
Yes, I have felt a thousand torches’ fire,
a thousand sorrows, thousand biting pains.
Yes, I have spent a lot of time in tears…
look, think before you start maligning me –
if I’ve done wrong I’m suffering for it now,
don’t make things worse than they already are.
You’d do well to remember Love appears
unbidden, needs no Vulcan to inflame
your ardour or Adonis leading you astray –
its merest whim can leave you overcome.
Think you’re immune, strangers to violent
passion as you are? So sure you’re not like me?
Beware: you could be all the more undone.

Ne reprenez, Dames, si j’ay aymé:
Si j’ay senti mile torches ardentes,
Mile travaus, mile douleurs mordentes:
Si en pleurant, j’ay mon tems consumé,

Las que mon nom n’en soit par vous blamé.
Si j’ay failli, les peines sont presentes,
N’aigrissez point leurs pointes violentes:
Mais estimez qu’Amour, à point nommé,

Sans votre ardeur d’un Volcan excuser,
Sans la beauté d’Adonis acuser,
Pourra, s’il veut, plus vous rendre amoureuses:

En ayant moins que moy d’ocasion,
Et plus d’estrange & forte passion.
Et gardez vous d’estre plus malheureuses.

Thank you, Louise Labé, for continuing to surprise and engage me across the centuries.

July 21, 2016July 20, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Urban tumbleweed

Up and to my office, and then walked to Woolwich, reading Bacon’s “Faber fortunae,”1 which the oftener I read the more I admire. There found Captain Cocke, and up and down to many places to look after matters, and so walked back again with him to his house, and there dined very finely. With much ado obtained an excuse from drinking of wine, and did only taste a drop of Sack which he had for his lady, who is, he fears, a little consumptive, and her beauty begins to want its colour. It was Malago Sack, which, he says, is certainly 30 years old, and I tasted a drop of it, and it was excellent wine, like a spirit rather than wine.
Thence by water to the office, and taking some papers by water to White Hall and St. James’s, but there being no meeting with the Duke to-day, I returned by water and down to Greenwich, to look after some blocks that I saw a load carried off by a cart from Woolwich, the King’s Yard. But I could not find them, and so returned, and being heartily weary I made haste to bed, and being in bed made Will read and construe three or four Latin verses in the Bible, and chide him for forgetting his grammar. So to sleep, and sleep ill all the night, being so weary, and feverish with it.

up and down
to many places

a sack which begins
to want its color

like a spirit of water
returned to the yard

the heart has read
a true grammar in it

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 20 July 1663.

July 21, 2016July 20, 2016 by Luisa A. Igloria

Lam-ang washes himself in the river

When the hero as suitor stops
to bathe himself in the river,
we don’t know for sure

if it is to meet a ritual
requirement, or simply from
the desire to present

himself in the best possible way
to the girl and her parents.
However it is, the epic narrates

that as he rises from the waters,
all the fish float belly-up to the surface,
not one having survived the stink.

Which is to say, beware when love
goes disguised as valor and vice-
versa; beware the performance

preceding some virtue. It always takes
time for the consequences to clear,
for the water to return to normal.

July 20, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Medicine dream

(Lord’s day). Lay very long in pleasant dreams till Church time, and so up, and it being foul weather so that I cannot walk as I intended to meet my Cozen Roger at Thomas Pepys’s house (whither he rode last night), to Hatcham, I went to church, where a sober Doctor made a good sermon. So home to dinner alone, and then to read a little, and so to church again, where the Scot made an ordinary sermon, and so home to my office, and there read over my vows and increased them by a vow against all strong drink till November next of any sort or quantity, by which I shall try how I can forbear it. God send it may not prejudice my health, and then I care not. Then I fell to read over a silly play writ by a person of honour (which is, I find, as much as to say a coxcomb), called “Love a la Mode”.
And that being ended, home, and played on my lute and sung psalms till bedtime, then to prayers and to bed.

in a dream a doctor
made me drink

any bear may heal
which is to say love

and that being ended
time

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 19 July 1663.

July 20, 2016July 18, 2016 by Luisa A. Igloria

Rest Cure

The Reclining Buddha welcomes you
to his abode as you enter through
the back door. Yes, thirst

is a significant symptom and salt
a dream more potent than water.
It makes bitter fruit sweeter,

can sometimes take away the sting
of thorns. The Medicine Buddha
wants to know if you still dream

in more than one language, if you
remember the first taste placed
on your tongue after you emerged,

frail and wracked, out of a month-
long fever. You’ve heard of cures
for lassitude and sadness,

for anger, lovesickness,
boredom. You can have them all
as long as you drink only one

spoonful out of the right
pewter cup. Lie as still
as you can, look straight

up at the ceiling. Now do you
remember pressed fleur-de-lis
patterns on rose gold tile,

blue tilting shadows under the deck
umbrella? You may remember the voices
that came and hovered over you, brought

morsels of rice to your lips,
precious crust that caramelized
at the bottom of the rice pot.

July 19, 2016 by Dave Bonta

To have and to hold

Up and to my office, where all the morning, and Sir J. Minnes and I did a little, and but a little business at the office. So I eat a bit of victuals at home, and so abroad to several places, as my bookseller’s, and then to Thomson the instrument maker’s to bespeak a ruler for my pocket for timber, &c., which I believe he will do to my mind. So to the Temple, Wardrobe, and lastly to Westminster Hall, where I expected some bands made me by Mrs. Lane, and while she went to the starchers for them, I staid at Mrs. Howlett’s, who with her husband were abroad, and only their daughter (which I call my wife) was in the shop, and I took occasion to buy a pair of gloves to talk to her, and I find her a pretty spoken girl, and will prove a mighty handsome wench. I could love her very well.
By and by Mrs. Lane comes, and my bands not being done she and I posted and met at the Crown in the Palace Yard, where we eat a chicken I sent for, and drank, and were mighty merry, and I had my full liberty of towzing her and doing what I would, but the last thing of all; for I felt as much as I would and made her feel my thing also, and put the end of it to her breast and by and by to her very belly — of which I am heartily ashamed. But I do resolve never to do more so.
But, Lord! to see what a mind she has to a husband, and how she showed me her hands to tell her her fortune, and every thing that she asked ended always whom and when she was to marry. And I pleased her so well, saying as I know she would have me, and then she would say that she had been with all the artists in town, and they always told her the same things, as that she should live long, and rich, and have a good husband, but few children, and a great fit of sickness, and 20 other things, which she says she has always been told by others.
Here I staid late before my bands were done, and then they came, and so I by water to the Temple, and thence walked home, all in a sweat with my tumbling of her and walking, and so a little supper and to bed, fearful of having taken cold.

a pair of hands
could love very well

all felt and feel
end and band

how her hands ask
always to marry

always to live
and have 20 other things

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 18 July 1663.

July 19, 2016July 19, 2016 by Luisa A. Igloria

peripherals

This entry is part 4 of 9 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Summer 2016

those shoes
dangling by their laces
high on an electric wire

the wedding band, the glass eye
that rolled under the bleachers
at a crowded concert

once, the pink semicircle
of dental lowers caught in the maw
of the grocery store’s automatic doors

somewhere underground, plots
of joint- and finger bones, gold
teeth, winking in the dark

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

July 18, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Forestry

Up, and after doing some business at my office, Creed came to me, and I took him to my viall maker’s, and there I heard the famous Mr. Stefkins play admirably well, and yet I found it as it is always, I over expected. I took him to the tavern and found him a temperate sober man, at least he seems so to me. I commit the direction of my viall to him.
Thence to the Change, and so home, Creed and I to dinner, and after dinner Sir W. Warren came to me, and he and I in my closet about his last night’s contract, and from thence to discourse of measuring of timber, wherein I made him see that I could understand the matter well, and did both learn of and teach him something. Creed being gone through my staying talking to him so long, I went alone by water down to Redriffe, and so to sit and talk with Sir W. Pen, where I did speak very plainly concerning my thoughts of Sir G. Carteret and Sir J. Minnes. So as it may cost me some trouble if he should tell them again, but he said as much or more to me concerning them both, which I may remember if ever it should come forth, and nothing but what is true and my real opinion of them, that they neither do understand to this day Creed’s accounts, nor do deserve to be employed in their places without better care, but that the King had better give them greater salaries to stand still and do nothing.
Thence coming home I was saluted by Bagwell and his wife (the woman I have a kindness for), and they would have me into their little house, which I was willing enough to, and did salute his wife. They had got wine for me, and I perceive live prettily, and I believe the woman a virtuous modest woman.
Her husband walked through to Redriffe with me, telling me things that I asked of in the yard, and so by water home, it being likely to rain again to-night, which God forbid. To supper and to bed.

from timber I learn
a thin plain thought

which I may remember
if ever it should come forth

in a true place
to stand still and do nothing

and I have a little wine
like rain for supper

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 17 July 1663.

July 18, 2016 by Luisa A. Igloria

Only let the body find the chime

In the country,
we save all the bits

of leftover string, the fat
that drips from the sides

of rusted nails. Waste not,
sings the crooked bird

in the clock that tells
the time a hundred ways—

or waste away.
In the afternoons,

when the sun begins to drop
through the thin atmosphere,

we sit on the porch
and begin our real work:

someone has to do it,
someone has to find the hollow

reeds through which the wind,
strafing through, might make

a different kind of sound
from the ones we know.

In response to Via Negativa: Open air cure.

July 17, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Audiophile

Up and dispatched things into the country and to my father’s, and two keggs of Sturgeon and a dozen bottles of wine to Cambridge for my cozen Roger Pepys, which I give him. By and by down by water on several Deall ships, and stood upon a stage in one place seeing calkers sheathing of a ship. Then at Wapping to my carver’s about my Viall head. So home, and thence to my Viall maker’s in Bishopsgate Street; his name is Wise, who is a pretty fellow at it. Thence to the Exchange, and so home to dinner, and then to my office, where a full board, and busy all the afternoon, and among other things made a great contract with Sir W. Warren for 40,000 deals Swinsound, at 3l. 17s. 0d. per hundred. In the morning before I went on the water I was at Thames Street about some pitch, and there meeting Anthony Joyce, I took him and Mr. Stacy, the Tarr merchant, to the tavern, where Stacy told me many old stories of my Lady Batten’s former poor condition, and how her former husband broke, and how she came to her state.
At night, after office done, I went to Sir W. Batten’s, where my Lady and I [had] some high words about emptying our house of office, where I did tell her my mind, and at last agreed that it should be done through my office, and so all well. So home to bed.

I give my viol head
to my viol maker

his name is wise
who deals in sound

a pitch merchant
here for some high words

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 16 July 1663.