Monthly Archives: April 2016

Wikipedia Poem, No. 184

undestiny-01

“Thus, in a brazen urn, the water’s light / Trembling reflects the sun’s and moon’s bright rays, / And, darting here and there in aimless flight, / Rises aloft, and on the ceiling plays.” Virgil

 

here the line and air does
perhaps begin its final gasp

clinching couplets in asymmetry
life as genre generates the poem

a poem in the first
the first the first

the first forms of air
do perhaps begin the line

the forms generate breath
the central event divides

form breaks from
soul except equal

in a way ends preceding
with a less emphatic pause

the two lines arranged
bodies with life and air

“Reader!” there it was
bodies symmetrically

Wikipedia Poem, No. 183

dd-qt-01-01-diog

That book “marks the beginning of a new dedication. I needed the invigoration of unfamiliar languages and new landscapes, and I worked to find a clarity of prose that might serve as an equivalent to the clear light of those Aegean islands. The Greeks made an art of the alphabet, a visual art, and I studied the shapes of letters carved on stones all over Athens. This gave me fresh energy and forced me to think more deeply about what I was putting on the page.” Don DeLillo

 

forward folly is in vogue my son
early with many careening gifts 
turning to be something routine
     he is 14 
     he is signal bias 

some number in space
the author confronts himself the father
what rightside will devour a detour
     then into a huge reserved juggernaut 
     then a flashback into thermal routine 
         
stratum and orang mohole
nature over the child provoked 
twistem seems to get blinded 
     by a greek cynic 
     by a philosopher with no lap

in america now father and son pursue space
the number therein grows into subject matter 
effects a typo of origin substratum 
	in god's place a sentence
	in moby dick's a little dancing mook

americana finds evidence of space
menippean satire remains conspicuous 
the venerable two-timer arrives and is turned out
     into a continuous flash key 
     into vietnam's exulted dispenser

“God’s Grandeur” by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1918)

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Wikipedia Poem, No. 182

 

mfstare

“If only your arms were green, you could have two small lawns!” Ron Padgett

 

          i’ve 
   been 
in here i don’t fit in 
new 
       york 
took me about a week i don’t know 
          where 
         i don’t see people 
        and occasionally fail 
as 
     a 
      person because i 
don’t 
see people who are 
obsessed by 
       their 
lives are 
    like i don’t fit 
    in 
here i don’t 
know i don’t 
    know 
where i 
had totally failed 
as a person because
        i had to 
recover from 
the delusion i failed as a person because 
i don’t know where i had my 
photo taken 
i don’t know where 
      i don’t 
        see people who are like i don’t know i 
         don’t see people and 
         it took 
   me about about a 
week i don’t 
         see people who are like i don’t 
         see 
      people
Sources: 
Moshfegh, Ottessa, and Kristine McKenna. Certain Age. 
   Harper’s Magazine Foundation, May 2016. Web. 27 Apr. 2016.
Padgett, Ron. "Survivor Guilt." Best American Poetry 2015. 
   Eds. Sherman Alexie and David Lehman. New York: Scribner, 2015. 106-107. Print.

Wikipedia Poem, No. 181

asd-tt-01

PSALMA

 

Parataxic wolves
The main predators of raccoon dogs
Kill large numbers
In spring and summer
Attacks have been reported in autumn, too.

in tartarstan wolf predators pray
to goshawks and white-tailed eagles

In Tartarstan, wolf predation
Is responsible for more than half
Of raccoon dog deaths.
In northwestern Russia
It accounts for far more.

raccoon dog pups dream
of reportage in autumn too

Red foxes kill raccoon dog pups
And have been known to bite adults
To death. Both foxes and Eurasian badgers
Compete with raccoon dogs for food
And kill them if raccoon dogs enter their burrows.

golden eagles bite spring burrows
predators of predators in autumn

Eurasian lynxes rarely attack due to
Their low numbers. Birds of prey
Golden eagles, white-tailed eagles,
Goshawks and eagle owls take
Raccoon dogs in one fell swoop.

foxes rarely attack due to the volume
of tartarstan wolf prayers golden eagles

 

Source: “Raccoon dog.” Wikipedia. N.p.: Wikimedia Foundation, 21 Apr. 2016. Web. 26 Apr. 2016.

Wikipedia Poem, No. 180

Untitled-2222-01

“The smallest girl / in the wild kid’s gang / submitted her finger / to his tomahawk idea — // It hurt bad, dropping off.” Les Murray

a word augustus?
on cities and positions
capability of technique

we are the same
original champions
success in superville

devices we composed in sophistry
this particular route through memory
our warehouses mine back rooms

methods of ariel
hawksquill studies
forget-me-not the mind’s sireling

desirings sprayed above dubbed imagery
from contact with einstein the words
of augustus sink to obscure paradise

Wikipedia Poem, No. 179

trimboko

“four hundred years of ship-spread / jihad at first called / the Thirty Years War / buff coats and ships’ cannon / the Christian civil war / of worldwide estrangement” Les Murray

 

brothel
or doggerel
brothel wherever more

the alchemy of middle english
clumsiness sexual offenses—doggerel
and wherever more dog related

doggerel promises
as bad poetry as
unkempt premises

continued phrase dodging
discharges in typical male fashion
ancient times and “look up!”

dog killer like
middle english clumsiness
or the banal differences

of dice games
goods and services
a sixteenth century demigod

old church
slang imprisonment
for the offense

Wikipedia Poem, No. 178

Processed with VSCO with a6 preset

“Wreckt, in deep danger, he shook once his head, / returning to meditation. And word had sped / all from the farthest West / that Henry was desired: can he get free / of the hanging menace, & this all, and go?” Berryman

 

the 
   most 
       powerful image absence 
realized in stillness

    the greek herákleion
and giant glabrum 
        bearing pinnate hairs 
gives 
fennel and common hogweed
they produce insects
between june 
      and serrate referring to 
    striate forms 

a reminder concludes 
witnessing 
a people serviced in destruction and
recitation
      
entire 
      worlds l'shana 
       haba'ah couched in desire to rebuild
a third time ushers in 

    this world 
        lovely
    who could
have himselves

conserve children 
no god for thanking
         volunteers agree to be long 
 
    that's 
a shield 
again why do young return home
       
or did you 
honey the ancient 
hospital 
      to succinctly form 

time indicates gore silences the gorge
time gores silence
quiet gorge

Wikipedia Poem, No. 176

dropsy1-01

“What the soul contributed was in a dream, touched very lightly, and merely licked and sprinkled, as it were, by the soft impression of the senses.” Montaigne

 

surname maudelen
from the early middle english fem.
proper name of a repentant sinner

for this tree-like fragrant
mostly white night-blooming
genera as shown indoors

in luke 7:37 in pain clinical
greenhouse the tall fluid
frequently forgiven

by thin-stemmed climbers
while shades of repentant sinners
locate determinate interstitium

Wikipedia Poem, No. 175

Print

Relief in this return to normalcy—that I could stop thinking about this “other world” of unknown bird sounds.

 

the middle age’s language garden
petals once because golden soil
means plant and not the altar devil’s

flowers heat pluto into third eye sight
grow sometimes invasive on winter
days in your high and like a layer

of flowers with sidearms you
wants in the sea spike a wonderful
well—for it is otherwise missing

to a true black hollyhock they can
be invasive corn is nice black
decorative heralds a middle age

the cottage of pollen with no petals
a week’s bees but the seedhead
picks off other gifts flowers an ape

and perennial dried goods
cut flowers bloomy red hot soppy
large round and marry mordant spiders