Category: Poems & poem-like things

What is pleasure? The gardener leaning into the rake to loosen the soil, to make circles nested within circles: does he think that is pleasure? And the bell that interrupts the thickly padded silence? If I said monk instead of gardener, does the sense of pleasure increase? If I said the drone of planes instead of bell? Is pleasure the animal panting over its kill, digging into the dead thing’s flanks? And the rush of wind and heat as the runners crest the hill, the sound of what could have been fireworks going off just beyond the line?

In response to Via Negativa: Credo.

which is not to say either of them makes sense,
which is not to say one might be excused but not the other—
So when the bodies were brought home,
the women sat on the ground, tore their hair,
and wailed in unison—
for they deserved nothing less.
Lock me to sleep, discharge me numb—
Who was burned or hammered, whose flesh was torn from bone?
What has happened, what has been done?
I think of rooms in a gallery where it is raining.
So much water, so much rain that pours and pours
in sheets from the ceiling—
But how terrible that no one ever gets wet.

* ~ from Lucia Perillo’s “The Second Slaughter”

In response to Via Negativa: Somnambulist.

(A cento)

The word gets around
but my hands, beside yours in the sunlight, can’t refrain—

Your silver smile, your jackpot laugh,
bright gifts—

If you dream of a poet, someone will cry.
If you dream of a flower, it is nothing.

My pencil, Venus Velvet No. 2,
It was the end of a terrible winter and, when I awoke, I had sky in my mouth.

In response to Via Negativa: Basho Remix (2).

~ Sources: Basho (via Dave Bonta); Leslie Marmon Silko, from a July 28 1979 letter to James Wright; Deryn Rees-Jones, “From the Songs of Elizabeth So;” Carol Ann Duffy, from “Treasure;” Eliot Weinberger, from An Elemental Thing; Gjertrud Schnackenberg, from “Venus Velvet No. 2;” Cecilia Woloch, from “Postcard from Akhmatova’s Bed”

(after Elmer Borlongan‘s photograph with the same title; dedicated to all victims of the Boston Marathon bombing)

The birds started singing before five. Morning shuddered into light, cool air.
What animal rolled up its shirtsleeves and pilfered the lock of the cage, its hair
matted as night, its breath the color of knives? Smoke and bombs in the street,

screams, broken glass. The saint, in her lifetime, hardly wore shoes on her feet.
She walked the streets to touch the sick and dying, the young and old; the cat
licking its wounds in the alley, mewing for a bowl of milk— Anyone who forgot

how the moon could spill its honey to overshadow the lamps by the bay;
and still there will be more. Wreckage and debris, charred ashes that grey
each stone on the ground. In a stampede, dust the color of gold.

O love, o neighbor, o stranger huddled in fear and waiting for parole:
how much more we belong to each other. How we wait to be consoled.

In response to small stone (237).

is not that it lacks the patience of light,
but that it thinks it can do without.
But give it six months of winter, a stack

of cards all labeled bad luck or misfortune,
and see what happens: the money for finishing
the house gambled away at the casino, the drunken

exchange and swindle; sudden hail wiping out
orchards of fruit that would have been shipped
to market. Wind, rain, flood; drought, dust

storm, avalanche. The constant emptying of coffers
as soon as they have filled, the constant moving
from one house to another that I don’t own.

How long am I expected to be bedfellows
with darkness? O I do not want for purpose:
I have purposed from the time I fell in love

with the shape of this life. And I don’t want
only the quick pleasure of what lasts more
briefly than a night. I can hide more

than six seeds under my tongue at once,
but I would rather roam at will. Don’t let the gold-
tipped rushes vanish in the distance, don’t let the water

disappear with the road. Isn’t darkness really harder
to cultivate? That’s what I tell myself it means,
when you trace the edge of my cheek with your hand.

In response to Via Negativa: Feckless.