Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
“When the bee comes to your house, let her have beer.
You may want to visit the bee’s house someday.” ~ Congolese
Or it may be that the honey in the cells
has foamed to froth, has risen above
walls that could no longer contain
that sweet— So the hand that tried
to stay the overflow withdrew, gold-
sheathed. May such abundance visit
your heart today: not rue, not pity.
In response to Via Negativa: A beer thinker's guide to life.
That place where all unease collects, distills
its gritty sediments, like clumps of leaves
at the bottom of a cup— Inscrutable, they sit
unsifted, waterlogged, composting once
green hopes— Divine is often the verb
used to describe what shapes they’ll spell;
when heat has blanched and water cooled,
what futures might yet unspool—
In response to Marly Youmans: The gulf of night---.
Although it is often said that a work is protected by copyrestriction, this is strictly not true. A work is protected through the existence of lots of copies and lots of curators.
[…]
Free and open source software has demonstrated the ethical and practical value of the opposite of copyrestriction, which is not its absence, but regulation mandating the sharing of copies, specifically in forms suitable for inspection and improvement. This regulation most famously occurs in the form of source-requiring copyleft, e.g., the GNU General Public License (GPL), which allows copyrestriction holders to use copyrestriction to force others to share works based on GPL’d works in their preferred form for modification, e.g., source code for software. However, this regulation occurs through other means as well, e.g., communities and projects refusing to curate and distribute works not available in source form, funders mandating source release, and consumers refusing to buy works not available in source form.
Today, ambiguous rain. Clouds that screen the view— dark, light, broody, indecisive. Through my fourth floor office window at noon, the screech of tires carrying from the boulevard. Water scales and fish-tails down the panes. Who sees our faces from this height, behind refracting layers? I too am often pulled in several directions, though this is how most of it should go— the daily work taken up and borne, repeated, repeating. Long hours, hot taste in the mouth, the tremble in the tired and fevered wrists. My children’s godmother writes: This is how we made our way: one suitcase in each hand, an envelope with letters of introduction; a nondescript address, a name. A taxi ride at midnight after a 21-hour flight. The driver pointing out the monument— a spire gleaming across the river; bridge, underpass, and finally a chain-linked driveway at the destination: Good luck, lady, this as far as I can take you. At such an hour the long view of years has not yet kindled. Bills and change, counted out. Pockets full of change that can be used at pay phones, even for long distance; that could buy fruit from a corner store, toiletries, water. The little metal wheels clattering as you pulled your luggage in the dark.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
of the realm
real
even when plucked
from a magician’s ear
or exchanged
for better weather
its very ununiqueness
gives it value
its modularity
makes it fit to toss
edged in ridges
like a worn gear
it’s what one does
to new phrases
hoping they’ll
gain currency
mettle tested
between the teeth
unreal moon
eyelid for a corpse
legal
tender
Under the leaves, a chorus
like strings: Don’t flinch.
Don’t join in. …something
that I know so thoroughly I can’t
imagine or describe it, though it fills
my eyes. And the birds with those long
white necks? Lust— like love lost—
was the catalyst: exquisitely expedient,
unchanged. Then heat. Then rain—
all uncontained.
*A Cento is a poem made up of parts from other works; late Latin, from Latin, patchwork garment; perhaps akin to Sanskrit kanthā, patched garment; first known use: 1605 (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
Source texts of lines in this cento: Deborah Paredez, “Wife’s Disaster Manual;” John Koethe, “Book X;” Billy Collins, “Report from the Subtropics” (Poetry, September 2012)
Also see another cento I wrote in July 2012.
In response to small stone (137).
Yeah, so “Love after 40” got upgraded by a decade and envideoed. The 1912 vaudeville clip is in the public domain, and comes courtesy of the Prelinger Archive of ephemeral film. The music by Mick Kelley (A.K.A. Ecklecticmick) is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported licence. It’s a revamped “electroswing” version of an Ella Fitzgerald tune, “When I Get Low I Get High.” Rachel Rawlins kindly agreed to do the reading. It must be said that neither she nor I have yet to dress and act quite like the characters in the film, though I suspect that that’s kind of what some young people see when they catch sight of our graying hair and deeply uncool mannerisms.
In the depths of the freezer case at Four Seasons
Asian Grocery, a tray of cooked, frozen grubs:
the cashier tells me they are really
the carcasses of silkworms, harvested
in the hundreds, maybe thousands,
after they die from their labors
spinning threads that women
in Chiang Mai or Dalat will unravel
as strands of silk… So many bodies
burrowed in hive-like baskets—
What would you do for the promise
of wings rising over a bamboo porch?
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
“Could it be, …that radiance tires of itself?” ~ D. Bonta
Albumen sheen, not the asphalt that is
bitumen— Yes to radish-tinted, textured,
coarse linen; or to carded fibers not yet
dipped in dye. I hanker for the simple:
effortless grace unaware of itself,
flaws braided into the weave;
grain stenciled without apology or
hurt across the surfaces of wood…
Impossible to list, catalog,
jot down all occurrences
known to us, of white— Ecru, stucco,
lace formed by webs of frost on cold
mornings; iridescent inner lining,
nacre coating the dark lips of mollusks.
Overlay of primer on blank canvas,
patience before the first drawn breath of
qi. (Not that radiance hasn’t been appropriated,
reduced to cliche, some current and marketable
shorthand.) Still, I understand— How
tiresome it must be to wear the same
unblemished habit, always be the pearlized
vellum that stones must try to skip across.
Wanting has more variegated colors;
exits are rarely lettered in pastel.
You know the garish red of Stop and Danger signs; and
zebra stripes that tell us where to cross the street.
In response to Via Negativa: Fulgurite.
