Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Bleeding

 
"Stop bleeding    said the knife
I would if I    could said the cut.
Stop bleeding    you make me messy with the blood.
I'm sorry    said the cut.
Stop or    I will sink in farther said the knife.
Don't    said the cut.
The    knife did not say it couldn't help it but
it    sank in farther.
If    only you didn't bleed said the knife I wouldn't
have    to do this.
I know    said the cut I bleed too easily I hate 
 
 
that I    can't help it I wish I were a knife like   
you and    didn't have to bleed.
Well    meanwhile stop bleeding will you said the knife.
Yes you    are a mess and sinking in deeper said the cut I   
will have    to stop.
Have you    stopped by now said the knife.
I've almost    stopped I think.
Why must you    bleed in the first place said the knife.
For the same    reason maybe that you must do what you   
must do said    the cut.
I can't stand    bleeding said the knife and sank in farther.
I hate it too said    the cut I know it isn't you it's   
me you're lucky to be    a knife you ought to be glad about that.
Too many cuts around    said the knife they're
messy I don't know how    they stand themselves.
They don't said the cut.
You're bleeding again. 
 
 

 

No I've stopped said the cut    see you are coming out now the
blood is drying it will rub    off you'll be shiny again and clean.
If only cuts wouldn't bleed    so much said the knife coming
out a little.
But then knives might become    dull said the cut.
Aren't you still bleeding a    little said the knife.
I hope not said the cut.
I feel you are just a little. 
Maybe just a little but I can    stop now.
I feel a little wetness still    said the knife sinking in a   
little but then coming out a    little.
Just a little maybe just enough    said the cut.
That's enough now stop now do    you    feel better now said the knife.
I feel I have to bleed to   feel I   think said the cut.
I don't I don't have to    feel said    the knife drying now
becoming shiny."
 
 by May Swenson
 
 

 


 All photography by Francesca Woodman.

 
 
 

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Above all...





just love
and be loved.


when you have forgotten Sunday: the love story

by Gwendolyn Brooks

—And when you have forgotten the bright bedclothes on a Wednesday and a Saturday,
And most especially when you have forgotten Sunday—
When you have forgotten Sunday halves in bed,
Or me sitting on the front-room radiator in the limping afternoon
Looking off down the long street
To nowhere,
Hugged by my plain old wrapper of no-expectation
And nothing-I-have-to-do and I’m-happy-why?
And if-Monday-never-had-to-come—
When you have forgotten that, I say,
And how you swore, if somebody beeped the bell,
And how my heart played hopscotch if the telephone rang;
And how we finally went in to Sunday dinner,
That is to say, went across the front room floor to the ink-spotted table in the southwest corner
To Sunday dinner, which was always chicken and noodles
Or chicken and rice
And salad and rye bread and tea
And chocolate chip cookies—
I say, when you have forgotten that,
When you have forgotten my little presentiment
That the war would be over before they got to you;
And how we finally undressed and whipped out the light and flowed into bed,
And lay loose-limbed for a moment in the week-end
Bright bedclothes,
Then gently folded into each other—
When you have, I say, forgotten all that,
Then you may tell,
Then I may believe
You have forgotten me well.
 
 

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Rotting Symbols by Eileen Myles

 
"Soon I shall take more
I will get more light
and I'll know what I think
about that

Driving down Second Ave. in a car
the frieze of my hand
like a grandmother
captured in an institution
I know I'll never live here again etc.
many many long years ago
Millions of peeps in the scrawl
the regular trees
the regular dog snort &
dig. In the West Village
you could put on a hat
a silly hat & it's clear
whereas over here
20 years passed
that rotting hat
it's loyalty to someone or something
that's really so gone
the moment clenched
like religion or government.
Wait a minute. I prefer
umm a beatle's cap
when it's really really old
neighborhood devoted to that.
 
 
Poetry is a sentimental act
everything spring she said
being surrounded by so much rot.
Pages & pages
mounds of them that I'm in
not some library but in your
little home, like you.
Every season I know I'm leaving
I'm as loyal as the cross
to this smeltering eccentricity
down by the river with Daddio
toss your ball in the river
in the future over bridges
they say you have to imagine
the 20th century. All these buildings were colored
a blasted interior
scarlet curtains rattling day
cobwebs on inexplicable machinery
a theater once dwelled here
all I see is rotting ideas
the epics I imagined
the unified cast of everyone
eating turkey together
on a stage
my idea
like waters towers popping up
feeling mellow
not exactly nothing all this time
but the buildings that are absolute
gone that I never
described. You can't kill
a poet. We just get erased &
written on. It aches in
my brain, my back
this beauty I'm eating my toast
everyone I knew you would
be dead tomorrow
& you were. The composing camera
infatuated with the shovel
on the lid & the pile
of rocks. He is not aging
same Alexandrian
blond in Bini-bons
the sirens are gods
when I lifted my head
from my swarming difficulty
You were so marvelous
bringing those toys to my feet
in between the invisibility of
the constant production & consumption
the network of that
& apart from the mold.
You survived."
 
 
All Photography by Arthur Leipzig

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Numbers





"I get magic
     (sometimes I get more
        than I bargain for)

but I don’t get
     numbers.

Numbers do worse
than humiliate
     or elude me

they don’t add up.

I am no algebra tart
     ravished
by the meretricious music
      of the spheres.

My eyes and nose
never streamed
  with incontinent ecstasy
    through geometry classes
as my disastrous triangles
    collapsed in a cacophony
        around me.

Perhaps it’s a failing
          to grasp
             or even want
the utterly perfect number
        burning through my retina
like the utterly perfect  morning.

Instead I peer
        with nauseating vertigo
into the deep dark pitch
        of numbers
like an exhausted mammoth
        dangerously tottering
            on the edge
               of a bottomless mystery."









Written by Dorothy Porter.