Thursday, January 19, 2012

sometimes a friend takes your hand in the dark...




Song for Connie

BY BILL BERKSON
The sun met the moon at the corner
           noon in thin air
Commotion you later
           choose to notice
Love shapes the heart
           that once was pieces
You take in hand
           the heart in mind
Your fate’s consistent
           alongside mine
Unless a mess
           your best guess
That is right, thanks, the intimate
           fact that you elect it
At corners, dressed or naked, with lips taste        
           full body, time thick or thin, fixated
Love, take heart
           as heart takes shape
And recognition
           ceases to be obscure
One line down the center
           another flying outward enters
Bill Berkson, "Song for Connie" from Portrait and Dream: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 2009 by Bill Berkson.  Reprinted by permission of Coffee House Press.

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

What the Bones Know 




What the Bones Know 

BY CAROLYN KIZER
Remembering the past
And gloating at it now,
I know the frozen brow
And shaking sides of lust
Will dog me at my death
To catch my ghostly breath.
 
          I think that Yeats was right,
          That lust and love are one.
          The body of this night
          May beggar me to death,
          But we are not undone
          Who love with all our breath.
 
                     I know that Proust was wrong,
                     His wheeze: love, to survive,
                     Needs jealousy, and death
                     And lust, to make it strong
                     Or goose it back alive.
                     Proust took away my breath.


                                  The later Yeats was right
                                 To think of sex and death
                                 And nothing else. Why wait
                                 Till we are turning old?
                                 My thoughts are hot and cold.
                                 I do not waste my breath.
 

Monday, January 2, 2012

A Song

Willy Ronis



A Song

Love, thou art best of Human Joys,
    Our chiefest Happiness below;
All other Pleasures are but Toys,
Musick without Thee is but Noise,
       And Beauty but an empty show.

Heav’n , who knew best what Man wou’d move,
    And raise his Thoughts above the Brute;
Said, Let him Be, and Let him Love;
That must alone his Soul improve,
       Howe’er Philosophers dispute.


something told me to wait...



Proud Flesh

This is the photography of Sally Mann




“It’s not a lack of confidence because I can’t argue with the fact that I’ve taken some good pictures,” Sally says. “But it’s just a raw fear that you’ve taken the last one.” – Sally Mann


Sunday, January 1, 2012

What I want





I want to live beyond your scorn...
to be touched in those places only you can touch.



What I Want


I want
I want
I want a look that does not make fun of my lungs
I want a spring that has not matured
I want to share a Spring
I am the queen of my heart thanks love
I want when I wake up sleepers participant
I want a spring that does not want the summer
And a spring that takes me by surprise
To soothe my moods
I want the blood which is not without injury
And injuries not blinded by the blood
I want
I want
I want the darkness to reveal themselves to me
And a light that I do not discover
I want to exile a way that the return does not cross
I want a free Iliad Odyssey
I want poems that go beyond the shame of surprise
In consumption and other poems
That nestle in the shadow of words
I want a word that takes care of my silence
and peace which are equivalent excuse and pity
I want a question that does not take my answers
I want a father who does not forget me and a father that I forget
I want
I want
I want a race between freedom and sighs
I want to celebrate the kings who lost their crown
I want birds that do not jeopardize their wings
In the hermitage of the grain
I want a language that does not disturb the future
I want a polished stone in the silence of the well
I want to laugh at the roots of despotism branches
I want a howl that will shake up the wolves
I want high roofs to small towns
I want to thunder that does not deal kindly
In a flash of lightning and not rush into the clouds
I want
I want
I want to hold the ashes of a fire
I want a word that sounds collide
I want a long winding attracts dreams
I want all Arab women who hope to love
And men loyal to their man's name
I want
I want
I want the streets like ships and space
Where my soul can remember of my flesh
Abdul Rahman al-Touhmazi 1946 (Samarra, Iraq)

Photography by, Evgeniy Shaman