Sunday, January 27, 2008

The Big Boots Of Pain, Anne Sexton




There can be certain potions
needled in the clock
for the body's fall from grace,
to untorture and to plead for.
These I have known
and would sell all my furniture
and books and assorted goods
to avoid, and more, more.

But the other pain
I would sell my life to avoid
the pain that begins in the crib
with its bars or perhaps
with your first breath
when the planets drill
your future into you
for better of worse
as you marry life
and the love that gets doled out
or doesn't.

I find now, swallowing one teaspoon
of pain, that it drops downward
to the past where it mixes
with last year's cupful
and downward into a decade's quart
and downward into a lifetime's ocean.
I alternate treading water
and deadman's float.

The teaspoon ought to be hearable
if it didn't mix into the reruns
and thus enlarge into what it is not,
a sea pest's sting turning promptly
into the shark's neat biting off
of a leg because the soul
wears a magnifying glass.
Kicking the heart
with pain's big boots running up and down
the intestines like a motorcycle racer.

Yet one does get out of bed
and start over, plunge into the day
and put on a hopeful look
and does not allow fear to build a wall
between you and an old friend
or a new friend and reach out your hand,
shutting down the thought that
an axe may cut it off unexpectedly.
One learns not to blab about all this
except to yourself or the typewriter keys
who tell no one until they get brave
and crawl off onto the printed page.

I'm getting bored with it,
I tell the typewriter,
this constantly walking around
in wet shoes and then, surprise!
Somehow DECEASED keeps getting
stamped in red over the word HOPE.
And I who keep falling thankfully
into each new pillow of belief,
finding my Mercy Street,
kissing it and tenderly gift-wrapping my love,
am beginning to wonder just what
the planets had in mind on November 9th, 1928.
The pillows are ripped away,
the hand guillotined,
dog shit thrown into the middle of a laugh,
a hornets' nest building into the hi-fi speaker
and leaving me in silence,
where, without music,
I become a cracked orphan.

Well,
one gets out of bed
and the planets don't always hiss
or muck up the day, each day.
As for the pain and its multiplying teaspoon,
perhaps it is a medicine
that will cure the soul
of its greed for love
next Thursday.


Anne Sexton


Friday, January 25, 2008

Don't Hold Back, The Potbelleez



don't hold back
is there anybody out there?
feeling something

engage me, let me breathe the courage of your actions
don't hold back, make it before the good
the truth is, i am not your cure but i can help you
find a way to reconcile the dark

don't hold back
is there anybody out there?
feeling something

don't hold back
is there anybody out there?
feeling something

stay right there, ‘cos i want to watch you taking off your morning
and putting on that midnight smile for me
your chasing, the slow motion belief that you are dreaming
and running from the things that make you feel

don't hold back
is there anybody out there?
feeling something

don't hold back
is there anybody out there?
feeling something!


.



May Angels Lead You In - At Peace, Heath Ledger

~ Be at Peace ~

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Do You Know About the Raintree?, Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda


Do you know about the world’s broad belt?
They say that in
Brazil at the equator
birdsong fills the heart of the Catrimani
River. Its bed, teeming with diamonds
and gold, grows fat with this riot of light.

Do you know about the beehive tombs in Greece?
Lower yourself by rope into the dark secret.
If the rope breaks, let your eyes adjust
to blindness. They say there is a sun
behind your lids. Climb its ascending
rays back to the earth’s roar.

Do you know about the rainbow fish?
Solid black, they ruled the waters
before earthquakes opened their coffers,
turquoise, topaz, amethyst, jade
plummeting into the rivers where
the eyes of the dark fish shimmered
as they fed on the earth’s rainbow.

Do you know about the hidden mountains?
They say that in
Tanzania and Kenya
the mountains warred. Kilimanjaro
and
Mt. Kenya pushed their broad
shoulders too high into sky.
Now, whenever they nudge God’s throne,
his angry breath shrouds their peaks.

Do you know about waters of the Grotto?
You will find the pool off the coast
of
Italy on Capri. Lie down
in the boat’s bottom to enter
the cave’s mouth, then feast on
a blue mirror that butterflies
carry here on their wings: pieces
of sky they gather learning to fly.

Do you know about the raintree?
There’s a tree, invisible, with a broad
canopy in the sky. The earth sings to it
whenever it’s thirsty. They say
if the song’s loud enough to rise,
the ripest blooms will break off
their branches and rinse earth’s
green cathedral in firstlight and last.


Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda


Wednesday, January 16, 2008

for Benjamin, by me*voila, flickr style...


for Benjamin, originally uploaded by me*voila.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

I Have A Need For Your Voice, Miguel Hernández




I have a need for your voice,

a longing for your company,

and an ache of melancholy

for the absence of signs of arrival.


Patience requires my torment,

the urgent need for you, heron of love,

your solar mercy for my frozen day,

your help, for my wound, I count on.


Ah, need, ache and longing!

Your kisses of substance, my food,

fail me, and I’m dying with the May.


I want you to come, the flower of your absence,

to calm the brow of thought

that ruins me with its eternal lightning.



Miguel Hernández

(XII: From ‘El Rayo Que No Cesa’)


Saturday, January 12, 2008

cartwheels at dusk


cartwheels at dusk, originally uploaded by jodi_tripp.




free free free






Thursday, January 10, 2008

The Ultimate Ride

A Selection of 3 Poems, Rainer Maria Rilke


The Inner Rose


Where is there for this inner

an outer? Upon which hurt

does one lay such fine linen?

And which heavens are reflected within them,

upon the interior seas

of these open roses, these carefree ones, see:

how loose in looseness

they lie, as if a trembling hand

could never tip them over.

They can hardly hold themselves

erect; many allow themselves

be filled all too full and flow

over from inner space

into the days, which, ever

more and more full, close in upon themselves,

until the entire summer becomes

a chamber, a chamber in a dream.



Archaic Torso of Apollo

We do not know his unheard of head,

in which the seeing of his eyes ripened. But

his trunk still glows like a thousand candles,

in which his looking, only turned down slightly,


continues to shine. Otherwise the thrust of the

breast wouldn't blind you, and from the light twist

of the loins a smile wouldn't flow into

that center where the generative power thrived.


Otherwise this stone would stand half disfigured

under the transparent fall of the shoulders,

and wouldn't shimmer like the skin of a wild animal;

it wouldn't be breaking out, like a star, on
all its sides: for there is no place on this stone,

that does not see you. You must change your life.



The Island I The North Sea ("The Shallows")

The next tide will erase the way through the mudflats,

and everything will be again equal on all sides;

but the small, far-out island already has its

eyes closed; bewildered, the dike draws a circle


around its inhabitants who were born

into a sleep in which many worlds

are silently confused, for they rarely speak,

and every phrase is like an epitaph

for something washed up on shore, unknown,
that inexplicably comes to them and remains.
And so it is, from childhood on, with everything

described in their gaze: things not applying to them,
too big, too merciless, sent back too many times,

which exaggerates even more their aloneness.


Rainer Maria Rilke


Live Everything, Rainer Maria Rilke



I want to beg you, as much as I can,
to be patient toward all that is unresolved
in your heart and to try to love the questions
themselves like locked rooms and like books
that are written in a very foreign tongue.
Do not seek the answers, which cannot
be given you because you would not be able
to live them.

And the point is to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps you will then gradually,
without noticing it, live along
some distant day into the answer.


Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)

More Rilke


Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Mermaid Song, Kim Addonizio

I couldn't resist another Kim Addonizio poem, this one .. reaches.
More of the talented Kim soon.


Mermaid Song

for Aya at fifteen


Damp-haired from the bath, you drape yourself
upside down across the sofa, reading,
one hand idly sunk into a bowl
of crackers, goldfish with smiles stamped on.
I think they are growing gills, swimming
up the sweet air to reach you. Small girl,
my slim miracle, they multiply.
In the black hours when I lie sleepless,
near drowning, dread-heavy, your face
is the bright lure I look for, love's hook
piercing me, hauling me cleanly up.


Kim Addonizio




What Do Women Want?, Kim Addonizio

I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what's underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.
I want to walk like I'm the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment
from its hanger like I'm choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,
and I'll wear it like bones, like skin,
it'll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.



Kim Addonizio


Sunday, January 6, 2008

The Red Shoes, Clarissa Pinkola Estes


The Red Shoes, an excerpt from the book 'Women who Run with The Wolves'.

Once there was a poor motherless child who had no shoes. But the child saved cloth scraps wherever she found them and over time sewed herself a pair of red shoes. They were crude but she loved them. They made her feel rich even though her days were spent gathering food in the thorny woods until far past dark.

But one day as she trudged down the road in her rags and her red shoes, a gilded carriage pulled up beside her. Inside was an old woman who told her she was going to take her home and treat her as her own little daughter. So to the wealthy old woman’s house they went, and the child’s hair was cleaned and combed. She was given pure white undergarments and a fine wool dress and white stockings and shiny black shoes. When the child asked after her old clothes, and especially her red shoes, the old woman said the clothes were so filthy, and the shoes so ridiculous, that she had thrown them into the fire, where they were burnt to ashes.

The child was very sad, for even with all the riches surrounding her, the humble red shoes made by her own hands had given her the greatest happiness. Now, she was made to sit still all the time, to walk without skipping, and to not speak unless spoken to, but a secret fire began to burn in her heart and she continued to yearn for her old red shoes more than anything.

As the child was old enough to be confirmed on The Day of The Innocents, the old woman took her to an old crippled shoemaker to have a special pair of shoes made for the occasion. In the shoemaker’s case there stood a pair of red shoes made of finest leather that were finer than fine; they practically glowed. So even though red shoes were scandalous for church, the child, who chose only with her hungry heart, picked the red shoes. The old lady’s eyesight was so poor she could not see the color of the shoes and so paid for them. The-old shoemaker winked at the child and wrapped the shoes up.

The next day, the church members were agog over the shoes on the child’s feet. The red shoes shone like burnished apples, like hearts, like red-washed plums. Everyone stared; even the icons on the wall, even the statues stared disapprovingly at her shoes. But she loved the shoes all the more. So when the pontiff intoned, the choir hummed, the organ pumped, the child thought nothing more beautiful than her red shoes.

By the end of the day the old woman had been informed about her ward’s red shoes. “Never, never wear those red shoes again!” the old woman threatened. But the next Sunday, the child couldn’t help but choose the red shoes over the black ones, and she and the old woman walked to church as usual.

At the door to the church was an old soldier with his arm in a sling. He wore a little jacket and had a red beard. He bowed and asked permission to brush the dust from the child’s shoes. The child put out her foot, and he tapped the soles of her shoes with a little wig-a-jig-jig song that made the soles of her feet itch. “Remember to stay for the dance,” he smiled, and winked at her.

Again everyone looked askance at the girl’s red shoes. But she so loved the shoes that were bright like crimson, bright like raspberries, bright like pomegranates, that she could hardly think of anything else, hardly hear the service at all. So busy was she turning her feet this way and that, admiring her red shoes, that she forgot to sing.

As she and the old woman left the church, the injured soldier called out, “What beautiful dancing shoes!” His words made the girl take a few little twirls right there and then. But once her feet had begun to move, they would not stop, and she danced through the flower beds and around the corner of the church until it seemed as though she had lost complete control of herself. She did a gavotte and then a csárdás and then waltzed by herself through the fields across the way.

The old woman’s coachman jumped up from his bench and ran after the girl, picked her up, and carried her back to the carriage, but the girl’s feet in the red shoes were still dancing in the air as though they were still on the ground. The old woman and the coachman tugged and pulled, trying to pry the red shoes off. It was such a sight, all hats askew and kicking legs, but at last the child’s feet were calmed.

Back home, the old woman slammed the red shoes down high on a shelf and warned the girl never to touch them again. But the girl could not help looking up at them and longing for them. To her they were still the most beauteous things on the face of the earth.

Not long after; as fate would have it, the old woman became bed ridden, and as soon as her doctors left, the girl crept into the room where the red shoes were kept. She glanced up at them so high on the shelf. Her glance became a gaze and her gaze became a powerful de sire, so much so that the girl took the shoes from the shelf and fastened them on, feeling it would do no harm. But as soon as they touched her heels and toes, she was overcome by the urge to dance.

And so out the door she danced, and then down the steps, first in a gavotte, then a csárdás, and then in big daring waltz turns in rapid succession. The girl was in her glory and did not realize she was in trouble until she wanted to dance to the left and the shoes insisted on dancing to the right. When she wanted to dance round, the shoes insisted on dancing straight ahead. And as the shoes danced the girl, rather than the other way around, they danced her right down the road, through the muddy fields, and out into the dark and gloomy forest.

There against a tree was the old soldier with the red beard, his arm in a sling, and dressed in his little jacket. “Oh my,” he said, “what beautiful dancing shoes.” Terrified, she tried to pull the shoes off, but as much as she tugged, the shoes stayed fast. She hopped on one foot and then the other trying to take off the shoes, but her one foot on the ground kept dancing even so, and her other foot in her hand did its part of the dance also.

And so dance, and dance and dance, she did. Over highest hills and through the valleys, in the rain and in the snow and in the sunlight, she danced. She danced in the darkest night and through sunrise and she was still dancing in twilight as well. But it was not good dancing. It was terrible dancing, and there was no rest for her.

She danced into a churchyard and there a spirit of dread would not allow her to enter. The spirit pronounced these words over her “You shall dance in your red shoes until you become like a wraith, like a ghost, till your skin hangs from your bones, till there is nothing left of you but entrails dancing. You shall dance door to door through all the villages and you shall strike each door three times and when people peer out they will see you and fear your fate for themselves. Dance red shoes, you shall dance.”

The girl begged for mercy, but before she could plead further; her red shoes carried her away. Over the briars she danced, through the streams, over the hedgerows and on and on, dancing, still dancing till she came to her old home and there were mourners. The old woman who had taken her in had died. Yet even so, she danced on by, and dance she did, as dance she must. In abject exhaustion and horror, she danced into a forest where lived the town’s executioner. And the ax on his wall began to tremble as soon as it sensed her coming near.

“Please!” she begged the executioner as she danced by his door.

“Please cut off my shoes to free me from this horrid fate.” And the executioner cut through the straps of the red shoes with his ax. But still the shoes stayed on her feet. And so she cried to him that her life was worth nothing and that he should cut off her feet. So he cut off her feet. And the red shoes with the feet in them kept on dancing through the forest and over the hill and out of sight. And now the girl was a poor cripple, and had to find her own way in the world as a servant to others, and she never, ever again wished for red shoes.



Clarissa Pinkola Estes




Saturday, January 5, 2008

Run to Old (Animation)

so, what's the goal at the end?


Thursday, January 3, 2008

Stillborn, Sylvia Plath

plath.jpg


Stillborn

These poems do not live: it's a sad diagnosis.
They grew their toes and fingers well enough,
Their little foreheads bulged with concentration.
If they missed out on walking about like people
It wasn't for any lack of mother-love.

O I cannot understand what happened to them!
They are proper in shape and number and every part.
They sit so nicely in the pickling fluid!
They smile and smile and smile and smile at me.
And still the lungs won't fill and the heart won't start.

They are not pigs, they are not even fish,
Though they have a piggy and a fishy air -
It would be better if they were alive, and that's what they were.
But they are dead, and their mother near dead with distraction,
And they stupidly stare, and do not speak of her.


Sylvia Plath



Beverly Hills Bohemian

Say fuck, he said
they love it—over and over
the obscene and obstinate,
it tickles them all across
their two-dollar intellectualism.
it will make them think you are
ghetto and have yet to climb the wall.
all the things they never are
yet pretend to always be.
so wear a golden nipple ring,
bend over so they all can see,
look at them with contempt,
to satisfy their ivory guilt.
and then read the graffiti of your poetry,
drop the sonnets and the anthologies,
and say fuck, fuck, fuck
over and over and over again
they’ll love it.


Leo Victor Briones ©




Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Poem from 'Notebook', Jim Morrison

.

Scour the mind w/diamond
brushes. Cleanse into Mandalas.
Memory keeps us wicked & warm.
The Time temple. Who'll go 1st?
Cloaked figures huddled by walls.
A head moves clocklike slowly.
I'm coming. Wait for me.

Jim Morrison



note: little pieces of Jim's poetry will be scattered throughout this blog. If you would like to read more of Morrison, scroll down to the bottom of this site below and eat your heart out.

Jim Morrison


Recital on a plane, Jim Morrison (Poem)