Month: July 2017

“daylong, nightlong, interminable grind”

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Reading Pornography in Old Age
–Howard Nemerov

Unbridled licentiousness with no holds barred,
Immediate and mutual lust, satisfiable
In the heat, upon demand, aroused again
And satisfied again, lechery unlimited.

Till space runs out at the bottom of the page
And another pair of lovers, forever young,
Prepotent, endlessly receptive, renews
The daylong, nightlong, interminable grind.

How decent it is, and how unlike our lives
Where “Fuck you” is a term of vengeful scorn
And the murmur of “sorry, partner” as often heard
As ever in mixed doubles or at bridge.

Though I suspect the stuff is written by
Elderly homosexuals manacled to their
Machines, it’s mildly touching all the same,
A reminiscence of the life that was in Eden

Before the Fall, when we were beautiful
And shameless, and untouched by memory:
Before we were driven out to the laboring world
Of the money and the garbage and the kids

In which we read this nonsense and are moved
At all that was always lost for good, in which
We think about sex obsessively except
During the act, when our minds tend to wander.

Photo by Dmitri Popov on Unsplash

“this unique distance from isolation”

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Talking in Bed
–Philip Larkin
Talking in bed ought to be easiest,
Lying together there goes back so far,
An emblem of two people being honest.
Yet more and more time passes silently.
Outside, the wind’s incomplete unrest
Builds and disperses clouds in the sky,
And dark towns heap up on the horizon.
None of this cares for us. Nothing shows why
At this unique distance from isolation
It becomes still more difficult to find
Words at once true and kind,
Or not untrue and not unkind.

Photo by Quin Stevenson on Unsplash

“tired of indiscriminate ecstasy”

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My Imperialism
–Ryuichi Tamura

I sink into bed
on the first Monday after Pentecost
and bless myself
since I’m not Christian

Yet my ears still wander the sky
my eyes keep hunting for underground water
and my hands hold a small book
describing the grotesqueness of modern white society

when looked down at from the nonwhite world
in my fingers there’s a thin cigarette –
I wish it were hallucinogenic
though I’m tired of indiscriminate ecstasy

Through a window in the northern hemisphere
the light moves slowly past morning to afternoon
before I can place the red flare, it’s gone:
darkness

Was it this morning that my acupuncturist came?
a graduate student of Marxist economics, he says he changed
to medicine to help humanity, the animal of animals, drag itself peacefully to its deathbeds
forty years of Scotch whisky’s roasted my liver and put me
into the hands of a Marxist economist
I want to ask him about Imperialism, A Study –
what Hobson saw in South Africa at the end of the nineteenth century
my yet push me out of bed
even if you wanted to praise imperialism
there aren’t enough kings and natives left
the overproduced slaves had to become white

Only the nails grow
the nails of the dead grow too
so, like cats, we must constantly
sharpen ours to stay alive
Only The Nails Grow – not a bad epitaph
when K died his wife buried him in Fuji Cemetery
and had To One Woman carved on his gravestone
true, it was the title of one of his books
but the way she tried to have him only
to herself almost made me cry
even N, who founded the modernist magazine Luna
while Japan prepared to invade China
got sentimental after he went on his pension;
F, depressed
S, manic, builds house after house
A has abdominal imperialism: his stomach’s colonized his legs
M’s deaf, he can endure the loudest sounds;
some people have only their shadows grow
others become smaller than they really are
our old manifesto had it wrong: we only looked upward
if we’d really wanted to write poems
we should have crawled on the ground on all fours –
when William Irish, who wrote Phantom Lady, died
the only mourners were stock brokers
Mozart’s wife was not at his funeral

My feet grow warmer as I read
Kotoku Shusui’s Imperialism, Monster of the Twentieth Century, written back in 1901
when he was young N wrote “I say strange things”
was it the monster that pumped tears from his older eyes?

Poems are commodities without exchange value
but we’re forced to invade new territory
by crises of poetic overproduction

We must enslave the natives with our poems
all the ignorant savages under sixty
plagued by a surplus of clothes and food –
when you’re past sixty
you’re neither a commodity
nor human

Photo by Elijah Hiett on Unsplash

“where shall we put our hope?”

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The cyclical nature of perception and improbable rehabilitation of historical figures (take a look at the youth of Russia venerating and admiring Stalin) makes me take a look at this poem by Finn Pentti Saarikoski. He writes ironically: “Marx’s mistake is Lenin/as Stalin is Lenin’s mistake/but Stalin didn’t make mistakes.” Today, it is just as likely that a young person with no tangible connection to history would read this and think, “Yes, of course. Stalin was a great leader.” (By the way, read Svetlana Alexievich‘s Secondhand Time: An Oral History of the Fall of the Soviet Union for more insight.)

from The Dance Floor on the Mountain
–Pentti Saarikoski
XXIV Winter solstice
And the bees cling to each other
in the hive center
where Jesus is born a honey-scented child

The sun is setting
a scarlet winterball like a fatbellied man
our neighbor, the carpenter
will be rolling into bed

On the first day of year
I place two white porcelain jugs spout to spout
after thinking all night long
about Marx’s mistake

Marx’s mistake is Lenin
as Stalin is Lenin’s mistake
but Stalin didn’t make mistakes.

I construct a snowman
a sad fascist in the yard
so some image of this winter will remain
our neighbor the carpenter
bends his knee and takes a snap

A heavy snowfall
should mean a rich harvest

I’ll build
a cold church for the fascist
a warm one for Jesus

When with summer’s first ill-natured wind
the guests gone
we come down the mountain
with no protection but each other’s limbs
where shall we put our hope?

XXVI On St Stephen’s Day
I sit in their kitchen
drink some beer and listen to language
that’s their affair, their memories
and I scare: I say something
but it clatters
from mouth to floor like a horseshoe.

Photo by Nathan Wolfe on Unsplash

be a bit elemental

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Elemental
–DH Lawrence
Why don’t people leave off being lovable
Or thinking they are lovable, or wanting to be lovable,
And be a bit elemental instead?

Since man is made up of the elements
Fire, and rain, and air, and live loam
And none of these is lovable
But elemental,
Man is lop-sided on the side of the angels.

I wish men would get back their balance among the elements
And be a bit more fiery, as incapable of telling lies
As fire is.
I wish they’d be true to their own variation, as water is,
Which goes through all the stages of steam and stream and ice
Without losing its head.

I am sick of lovable people,
Somehow they are a lie.

Photo by Mandy Beerley on Unsplash

slugs

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Connoisseuse of Slugs
–Sharon Olds
When I was a connoisseuse of slugs
I would part the ivy leaves, and look for the
naked jelly of those gold bodies,
translucent strangers glistening along the
stones, slowly, their gelatinous bodies
at my mercy. Made mostly of water, they would shrivel
to nothing if they were sprinkled with salt,
but I was not interested in that. What I liked
was to draw aside the ivy, breathe the
odor of the wall, and stand there in silence
until the slug forgot I was there
and sent its antennae up out of its
head, the glimmering umber horns
rising like telescopes, until finally the
sensitive knobs would pop out the ends,
delicate and intimate. Years later,
when I first saw a naked man,
I gasped with pleasure to see that quiet
mystery reenacted, the slow
elegant being coming out of hiding and
gleaming in the dark air, eager and so
trusting you could weep.

Photo (c) 2010 Karen Neoh used under Creative Commons license.

drunk as drunk on turpentine

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Drunk as drunk…
–Pablo Neruda
Drunk as drunk on turpentine
From your open kisses,
Your wet body wedged
Between my wet body and the strake
Of our boat that is made of flowers,
Feasted, we guide it – our fingers
Like tallows adorned with yellow metal –
Over the sky’s hot rim,
The day’s last breath in our sails.

Pinned by the sun between solstice
And equinox, drowsy and tangled together
We drifted for months and woke
With the bitter taste of land on our lips,
Eyelids all sticky, and we longed for lime
And the sound of a rope
Lowering a bucket down its well. Then,
We came by night to the Fortunate Isles,
And lay like fish
Under the net of our kisses.

Original
Borracho como ebrio de trementina
De tus besos abiertos,
Su cuerpo mojado encajado
Entre mi cuerpo mojado y la traca
De nuestro barco que se hace de las flores,
Festejado, nos guían – nuestros dedos
Como sebos adornadas con metal amarillo –
Durante borde caliente del cielo,
Último aliento del día en nuestras velas.
Fijado por el sol entre el solsticio
Y equinoccio, somnolencia y enredados juntos
Nos dejamos llevar por meses y nos despertamos
Con el sabor amargo de la tierra en los labios,
Párpados todo pegajoso, y anhelábamos cal
Y el sonido de una cuerda
La reducción de un cubo por su bien. Entonces,
Llegamos por la noche a las Islas Afortunadas,
Y poner a pescado
Debajo de la red de nuestros besos

Photo by Erwan Hesry on Unsplash

a comparison

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A Comparison
–Ágnes Nemes Nagy
One who rows a storm at the inception,
quadriceps aching to the uttermost,
who strains to push away that rock, the footboard,
whose right hand loses, all of a sudden,
substance and effort as the oar bends backward
appropriated from a fractured handle,
whose liberated body then
convulses – can get my meaning.

Photo by David Cohen on Unsplash

the world when I tremble in love

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Angel in the Deluge
-Rosario Murillo

Today it rains all over the world and we are two
you and I
a man and a woman
like all the men and all the women
searching for the ark to ride out the storm.
We are two in the night and our bodies
are rays laying siege to the shadow.
Today it rains all over the world
and you and I are birds
imagining the security of the nest
the pillow beneath the head
the branch of basil on the window.
Today it rains all over the world
and you and I
are the entire world
the rich in a music box
the world in a smile
the world in a bottle
the world when I tremble in love
when I surrender to your embrace
when I get near, when I see myself in your eyes
the world when you transform me into earth.

Today it rains corazón, it’s raining
and for me, life hurts.

Original
ANGEL EN EL DILUVIO
Hoy llueve en todo el mundo y somos dos
vos y yo
un hombre y una mujer
como todos los hombres y todas las mujeres
buscando el arca para sobrellevar la tormenta.
Somos dos en la noche y nuestro cuerpos
son rayos asediando las sombras.
Hoy llueve en todo el mundo
y vos y yo somos pájaros
imaginando la certeza del nido
la almohada bajo la cabeza
el ramo de albahaca en la ventana.
Hoy llueve en todo el mundo
y vos y yo
somos el mundo entero
el mundo en una caja de música
el mundo es una sonrisa
el mundo en una botella
el mundo cuando tiemblo en el amor
cuando me rindo al abrazo
cuando me acerco, cuando me veo en tus ojos
el mundo cuando me vas haciendo de tierra.
Hoy llueve, corazón, está lloviendo
y a mí me duele la vida.

Photo by Michał Grosicki on Unsplash

fear made wise by anger

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It’s the 4th of July, and what’s more American than a whole lot of assholes claiming they need guns to “defend themselves”? Against what, I don’t know. But good timing.

Not my first Robert Lowell rodeo.

Violence
–Robert Lowell
From the first cave, the first farm, the first sage,
inalienable our human right to murder —
“We must get used,” they say, “to the thought of guns;
we must get used to seeing guns; we must
get used to using guns.” Guns too are moral. Guns
failed Che Guevara, Marie Antoinette,
Leon Trotsky, the children of the Tsar:
chivalrous ornaments to power. Tom Paine said
Burke pitied the plumage and forgot the dying bird.
How can a plucked bird live? Whoever puts
arms in the hands of the people is a criminal,
arms given the people are always used against the people;
the only guns that will not kill the owner
are forged by insight… fear made wise by anger.

Photo by Diana Feil on Unsplash