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Eagerly he joined the singers And was left mute, Not knowing their song. -- Author Unknown
Eros Turannos
-- Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869 - 1935) She fears him, and will always ask What fated her to choose him; She meets in his engaging mask All reasons to refuse him; But what she meets and what she fears Are less than are the downward years, Drawn slowly to the foamless weirs Of age, were she to lose him. Between a blurred sagacity That once had power to sound him, And Love, that will not let him be The Judas that she found him, Her pride assuages her almost, As if it were alone the cost. -- He sees that he will not be lost, And waits and looks around him. A sense of ocean and old trees Envelops and allures him; Tradition, touching all he sees, Beguiles and reassures him; And all her doubts of what he says Are dimmed of what she knows of days -- Till even prejudice delays And fades, and she secures him. The falling leaf inaugurates The reign of her confusion; The pounding wave reverberates The dirge of her illusion; And home, where passion lived and died, Becomes a place where she can hide, While all the town and harbor side Vibrate with her seclusion. We tell you, tapping on our brows, The story as it should be, -- As if the story of a house Were told, or ever could be; We'll have no kindly veil between Her visions and those we have seen, -- As if we guessed what hers have been, Or what they are or would be. Meanwhile we do no harm; for they That with a god have striven, Not hearing much of what we say, Take what the god has given; Though like waves breaking it may be, Or like a changed familiar tree, Or like a stairway to the sea Where down the blind are driven. >>>ToP The following poem was discovered in the Creative Writing > Poetry section of http://www.litkicks.com Number 10355 It's also
in Simon Grady's home page http://home.clear.net.nz/pages/sigh
the six billion year
queue for life
-- Simon Grady
whether our skull or our ribs contain a deity is un certain we waited patiently six billion years witnessing algae, fish, ferns & dinosaurs mammoths, sabre-tooths & primates) to take our brief sojurn only to fight & watch television
The following poem was discovered in the Creative Writing > Poetry section of http://www.litkicks.com Number 10394 My
Afternoon With Sarah
-- Heartstarter205 Her name had been Sarah something, said the red-headed cop as he picked through a tote plucked from a ditch festive with Phlox and Anemone and sweet Valeriana tall enough to sweep our knees. Down the sloped bank strolled two laughing men dressed in train authority gray that matched the gravel bedding the tracks for miles north and south. Every few feet they stooped and stood, stooped and stood- red plastic flags remembered the path of their ritual. Yards beyond a bicycle twisted into a U smiled, spoke teeth jutted in unfamilar angles from rim sockets. Its chrome caught the Tuesday sun and spit it back in darts that skittered across the blue hoods of idling state cruisers parked along an access road grown thick with the curious- they hung in knots behind troopers whose bored stance belied grim faces, their chitters slung as low as the sam browne belts strung out like a black-patent fence. Avid eyes jockeyed for chinks in a chino wall. Books scattered between beginning and end, chemistry, calculus, english and french- lofty subjects lifting pages to an eastern breeze. A volume of Frost trapped itself in Hummingbird Vines that grew in pink perfusion around the crossing posts. No one saw me slip it in the pocket of my turn-out coat. No one knows that I'll come back on days when the weather is fine, sit cross-legged on a bank with Phlox and Anemone and sweet Valeriana brushing my back while I read each poem out loud- Her name had been Sarah something. My Papa's Waltz -- Theodore Roethke (1908 - 1963) The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother's countenance Could not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle; At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle. You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard with dirt, Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt. More poems by Ricky Rappaport
Friesem can be found in:
(parentheses) poems for the 21st century Kipod Press, Israel 2006, ISBN 965-90971-0-7 And in: http://www.rickyfriesem.com a lesson -- Ricky Rappaport Friesem "We cull them every year," he said and pointed to the fawn-brown line across a distant hill whose summer green so dazzled me I found it hard to see what he was pointing at until a dog barked loudly and at once the line became a silver stream of startled deer in flight as one long and undulating creature with but a single purpose Run! "Cull?" The wavy line drew close enough for me to see the quiver passing through the frightened herd, now startled once again. By us. They veered and streamed away. A thousand nimble hoofs whose patter echoed like soft rain across the rolling hills. "Yes, cull." he said. "We have to. Don't you see? Or else they'll all die out in no time." "Cull? You mean you kill them off so they won't die?" "Die out," he said impatiently. "They multiply so fast, they'd soon all starve to death. That's how fast it is," he shrugged, and walked away. I stay to watch the fleeing herd and wonder when our cull will come. And where to run? August 2002 to ruth -- Ricky Rappaport Friesem The Moabite who was not born of us. Walk swiftly, Ruth, and don't look back for nothing good can come of this insanity. Love of green eyes and gentle smile has drawn you to this rocky land whence springs hate whose depths are far beyond your scope to fathom. Ruth, Ruth, my love heed me and turn back now to rainy lanes and teddy bears and passions cooled by mists of far more temperate climes. October 2000 my sin -- Ricky Rappaport Friesem My grandfather would stride down autumn streets swept gold and russet by a wind so strong it flung his prayer shawl wildly around his legs (it was the long and heavy kind, rich ivory and black with knotted fringes thick enough to braid). He'd march, straight-backed with shoulders squared, his arms swinging briskly back and forth. From time to time his hands would shoot up to his head to keep the gusts from carrying off his skull cap, God forbid! He wasn't old, my Zeide, old only then to me, a little girl of eight or so who dragged behind him, far behind, so no one seeing us would guess that we two were a pair. Forgive me, Zeide. You were proud. And I was so ashamed. Yom Kippur, October 2003 . (First published in Poetica, July 2004) monday morning -- Ricky Rappaport Friesem 5a.m. The baby cried all night. It's all most time to go to work. We might as well get up. If you run out to by fresh rolls and cheese I'll cut the salad for a proper meal to make up for the sleepless night. Go on. I'll set the table just for two now she's asleep, at last. We interrupt this broadcast . . . 5a.m. Thank God you're home. I didn't close my eyes all night picturing you both in some dim discotheque with music loud enough to wake the dead. No matter, now you're here I'll heat up some milk to settle you and help you get some sleep. You have at least two hours before school. But where's your sister? We interrupt this broadcast . . . 5a.m. No, don't get up. I don't have time to eat. I'll grab a coffee on the train and drink it on the way to help me stay awake and work on all the stuff I dragged home in my briefcase. But don't forget to wake the kids in time for school. See you tonight. We interrupt this broadcast to announce a bomb . . . In Terr Upt In tear up And the week is just beginning! a prayer -- Ricky Rappaport Friesem Dead is dead. But please let me die in bed. (Plain dead) Not crimson-pool and carmine-puddle Dead. Not concrete-spattered window-shattered red gobs of scarlet Dead. A dripping gore-fruit harvest from the trees just budding in the April mist. "April is the cruelest month," he wrote. But in his Wasteland Only rocks were red. April 2002 The following
poem was discovered
in the Creative Writing > Poetry section of http://www.litkicks.com Number
10666
Outside
Fitzgerald's
-- violet9ish "Honey, if you're standing on this porch, you're not normal." The drag queen tells me this out front of the club. She rests against the wall, like a high school girl who has gotten used to her breasts and high heels but not the attention. She smiles when I agree and we laugh. Her lips frame teeth white and even as God or an orthodontist could make them. The crinkles at her eyes let her age speak against skin the color of California dreams. I want to ask what her name is, but then I think how different we are. I came into this world screaming past my mother's hipbone. She sprung full-formed from the mind of a man she later consumed. the nutcracker - Pat Wine she didn’t arrive she happened and the inevitability of her was no help at all and for all the grim efficiency she made a messy job of it hovering so long then finally taking that melancholy pain wracked form she squeezed and squeezed and squeezed until the shell exhausted cracked and he dribbled out of it and vanished therapy - Pat Wine sinking into herself as the cacophony bubbled about her down down down until the center where lurked the phantom of that day when trust was killed and love profaned and talent died and at last she knew she really knew the name of the demon that owned her soul to don - pat wine o don don't you remember that velvet autumn day when you turned to face the wind and naked trembled in the silver sun as the salt spray wet your skin you heard the whirr of angle wings on that velvet autumn day so many years ago but you went another way stumbling through the waste in those faded homespun robes simpering to the orgy never asked for reasons never wondered why just spent it all on a placebo did you love yourself enough or maybe far too much when you took the paw of cain and followed in that coven as the wine went tepid and sour and rotten in your core now old man sitting sadly by the sea did you never feel the pain or hear the cacophonous dissonance in your verticillate brain as you spent it all that way oh don without your capital what are you become ghosts - Pat Wine serpents from the past rear like crystal phalli clinking in the attic oozing down the stairway rustling through the refuse in the apartments of my grief expanding, ephemeral clouds gray tumors eating time they tug at the beard of my father then greasy shapes of anger wake policemen in my brain and closing the door behind shrink to blackness again the prodigal - Pat Wine he came to these conclusions that the prayer didn’t matter since the idol didn’t care and the darkness that crouched in the temple could light no beacon for his way so he wandered in stark desolation after vacua for his rage but a bird of winter led him to the lake of nevermore that that dark and misty water quench the venom that ate his soul and lifting her ice-blue veil she smiled her breath upon him and kissed the drowning from his eyes
The Springs of Bartholin*
- Ghommoride Plakatis When mired midst dull, banal clods Who render all to turgid rods As though they be some minor gods, How should one begin To preach a joy like Bartholin? Are there words that can recapture That dark, delicious, tingling rapture That I have known When bowed or prone Before the Throne Of Bartholin? Bartholin’s that special cave Where, once, I idled when a slave And vast, euphoric, spasmic waves Burnt my brain and iced my skin As I savored the flavor I found therein, The grog of the Springs of Bartholin. It’s such a sad and dreary waste To pass through in such mindless haste That leaves no time nor thought to taste The sap that seeps in Bartholin. Yet, we know, some do so sin, Go boldly there and enter in And never pause to touch the lip, Dip the tongue or sample a sip, Never delight in the delicate drip That lurks in the Grotto of Bartholin. They only poke and plumb the treasure; Take their bland and transient pleasure; Then, thinking they’ve had the fullest measure, Laughing leave from Bartholin. To her the cave was quite mundane, Unclean perhaps, surely profane, And I . . . a little bit insane. But visions lurked behind my eyes: Bewitching, coral, tufted prize And strong, convergent, cream-smooth thighs. How she’d smile her wicked, lascivious grin, Lightly laughing pinch my chin And offer a treat at Bartholin. O! The nights I'd dream and pine To kneel again at that lustful shrine And bend the spine to taste the wine, (Scent of perfume, perchance with brine), That seeps so deeply there within The sumptuous Temple of Bartholin. And hear once more those soft commands, And feel the tug of imperious hands Roughly twined amid the strands To spur compliance with outrageous demands. And labor so to coax the flow That slightly grows before the throe That blesses those who worship in The wanton Cathedral of Bartholin. *ehe From the Song of Songs which is Solomon’s
Awake, O north wind, And come thou south; Blow upon my garden, That the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, And eat his precious fruits. . . . I would cause thee to drink of spiced wine, Of the juice of my pomegranate. Equestrienne
- Ghommoride Plakatis Crop tucked under her arm She's ready for her ride. Why does the horse recline? With hauteur and elegant charm She advances to his side. The steed remains supine? Bare-loined she straddles the mount, Reclaiming her rightful place, And, grasping its hair like reins, She rides his up-turned face. The following poem was discovered in the Creative Writing > Poetry section of http://www.litkicks.com Number 10739 -- The Fish The darkness of her raincloud eyes A promise of a sweet surprise An end to all my golden lies When I am thirty one I’ll worship at her altar fair And leave my soul in tatters there Back through the door without a care And break into a run I’ll find her in an autumn dream With breath of sigh and thigh of cream And golden braids of hair that gleam And I will come undone And once again I’ll be alone And for my sins I will atone And cold I’ll be right to the bone With memory of sun. This poem seems to so well describe almost any period of recent history. I, and I believe many others, have often wondered what provoked Yeats to write it. Therefore, I present the following excerpt from "W.B. Yeats: An Examination of Civilization and Barbarity" by in_earth. This link http://www.litkicks.com/BeatPages/page.jsp?what=YeatsBarbarityCivilisation will take you to the complete article. -- GB In "The Second Coming" we receive Yeats’ philosophy of history: "Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world." What, indeed, can we say about this? The four lines chime universal – they appeal to a grand pattern, a cosmological vision. Plus, this is the second coming, so eternal recurrence is added in to the conceptual cocktail – with a dialectical twist – we have, according to Yeats, reached an antithetical moment, a reversal or trans-valuation of values. . . . "The Second Coming" is clearly a prophet’s nightmare, Ezekiel-like in its potency and vividness. However, one must remain rooted in the many alternative paths of interpretation. These lines also represent Yeats’ singular subjective life. He is growing old, the poet’s gyre indeed is widening, and the external progress around Yeats threatens his inner core convictions. The ever-renewing literary issue of an old order being confronted by a new order has resulted in an archetypal poetic response – a prophetic posture, and a warning of decay. This is the attitude of a poet in decay (surrounded by it, and also being it), which can be linked to his ideology’s decay, his aristocracy becoming ruin. We may, however, see the poem as primarily a representation of Yeats’ life force approaching its inevitable end. One may read "The Second Coming" as Yeats finding concrete historical symbols (objective correlatives) for his own interior life, and this reading would explain the extraordinary bias presented in this poem. (Yeats, we might add, like T. S. Eliot, had been under mental strain during these turbulent years.) |
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