#poetry
REMEMBER MY FRIENDS !
Hell lies to me!
When I listen to the radio more than my heart.
Hell lies to me!
When instead of doves I see crows.
Hell lies to me!
When my reality is no longer woven by me,
And I have traded my love for fear.
@laurentvitureau
#poesie #poème #poetry #artofwords #words #mots #quotes #creativite #sagesse #wisdomquotes #love #amour #lucidité #revolution #apocalypse
Ancient and Forgotten
In deep, velvet night, we see
ages lost, visions, gone.
Lost in ancient mystery,
musing, in reverie,
of past peoples, overseas;
call of forgotten homes,
far away.
Wind strained sails, on freedom’s song,
carried you to my shore,
to break bonds that held us, long;
build new ties, kind and strong;
bind hands and lives, make us one,
as dreamed in mystic lore,
and foretold.
From the land of the river,
to the isle of the sea,
etesian gusts would never
hold your wild endeavour,
to find your fated treasure,
as you came home to me,
and your life.
By burning firebrand, witnessed,
we pledged a wordless oath –
in blood, both sealed and promised
as ancient Gods had wished;
beneath kind stars, that whispered
their blessings on us both,
we clasped hands.
Can we, again, hear beating,
of waves on that, far shore?
Know hands, that bled, still bleeding?
Hearts, that laughed, now keening
for days, lost, save in dreaming,
of all that was, before
time’s parting?
© Simon J Ashcroft, 2024
Green Burial Unsonnet
by Dante Di Stefano
In the milliseconds & minutes &
millennia when I no longer am the
bundle of meat & need unpoeming itself
in the still hours of a full or empty
house, I dream my eye socket encased
underground with root & worm &
watershed threading through it. | | The
summers become hotter & hotter. | |
Unbearable & luminous, the refrain of
the song of extinction—
My children & my children’s children
will inherit the edges of cumulonimbus
clouds, the unexpected sunflower
blooming from a second-story rain
gutter, the gentleness of the marbling
sunlight on the fur of a rabbit stilled in
a suburban backyard. | | I am in love
with the Earth. | | There are still
blackberries enough to light the brain
with the star charts of a sweetness—
& yet & yet & yet, the undertow of the
expanding universe repeats to the
mitochondria in my cells. The tiny
bluebird in my throat continues to build
her nest with twigs & mud & scraps of
Amazon packing tape. | | I feel the now
of now fluttering diastole & systole in
my biceps & lungs & toe bones | | The
oranges & reds & yellows of my many
Octobers leaf to life & spill from my
mouth: unaccountable acorns, midnight
loam, overgrown meadows,
a wee spore adrift among the fireflies—
About this Poem
“I would like to have a green burial someday. My wife and I often worry about the world our six-year-old daughter and two-year-old son will inherit and wonder what else we can do to preserve the Earth in all its beauty. This textbox prose poem ‘unsonnet’ challenges the tradition of the sonnet (and lineated poetry) even as it enacts some of the form’s structural and lyrical mechanisms. This formal tension also calls to mind the tension between inherited social norms (our dependence on fossil fuels and factory farming, for example), and efforts to move into a more sustainable, greener future.”
—Dante Di Stefano
https://poets.org/poem/green-burial-unsonnet?mc_cid=4e9acd195e
Dispassionate advice
Don't listen to the king,
don't listen to me.
The one who tricks you
makes himself a span taller,
wears a cap,
walks erect
and has many medals on his chest.
Don't listen to the sage
to the master of the village
to the master of the town
to the one who tells he knows.
Be wrong in your own way
like the horses, like the oxen,
like the birds, like the fish, like the snakes
who have no monuments
and don't know their history.
Those who live are without glory.
Alfonso Gatto
[my translation]
Consiglio spassionato
Non date retta al re,
non date retta a me.
Chi v'inganna
si fa sempre più alto d'una spanna,
mette sempre un berretto,
incede eretto
con tante medaglie sul petto.
Non date retta al saggio
al maestro del villaggio
al maestro della città
a chi vi dice che sa.
Sbagliate soltanto da voi
come i cavalli, come i buoi,
come gli uccelli, i pesci, i serpenti
che non hanno monumenti
e non sanno mai la storia.
Chi vive è senza gloria.
Alfonso Gatto
#mywork #photography #cat #poetry #translation #gatto #cat #cats #Italian
In Praise of Pulitzer Prize-Winner Jayne Anne Phillips
https://lithub.com/in-praise-of-pulitzer-prize-winner-jayne-anne-phillips/
In the mountains, move slowly. If you must creep, then creep.
Magnificent in the distance, meaningless closer up,
mountains are but a surface standing on end. The snail-
like and, it seems, horizontal meandering trail
is, in fact, vertical. Lying flat in the mountains, you
stand. Standing up, you lie flat. Which suggest your true
freedom's in falling down. That's the way, it appears,
to conquer, once in the mountains, vertigo, raptures, fears.
В горах продвигайся медленно; нужно ползти — ползи.
Величественные издалека, бессмысленные вблизи,
горы есть форма поверхности, поставленной на попа,
и кажущаяся горизонтальной вьющаяся тропа
в сущности вертикальна. Лежа в горах — стоишь,
стоя — лежишь, доказывая, что, лишь
падая, ты независим. Так побеждают страх,
головокруженье над пропастью либо восторг в горах.
A poem inspired by @hankschannel talking about the #BigBang 💫posted one year ago today! - YouTube
I loe her poetry!
#astronomy #science #poetry
PSALM FOR WORKING WOMEN
by Lynne Thompson
A microwave is my savior; I shall not starve.
It alloweth me to eat quickly. It leadeth me
to purchase Stouffers in bulk.
It restoreth dehydrated onions. It delivers me
from pre-heating for pre-heating’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley
of canned goods, I shall fear no tin containers
for plastics art with me and glass and ceramics,
they comfort me.
It preparest a roast turkey in thirty-six minutes;
four for carrots when they’re ’waved on HIGH.
My rumaki comes out crisp.
Surely, defrosting and warming shall follow me
all the days of my life and I shall dwell
in the land of a Hotpoint forever.
—from Rattle #23, Summer 2009
https://www.rattle.com/psalm-for-working-women-by-lynne-thompson/
From 'In Our Terribleness'
Photos by Fundi (Billy Abernathy)
In Our Terribleness
Imamu Amiri Baraka & Fundi (Billy Abernathy)
-> In Our Terribleness (1970) I Designed by Laini (Sylvia Abernathy)
-> https://zocalopoets.com/2013/02/01/amiri-baraka-and-langston-hughes-throw-jesus-out-yr-mind-goodbye-christ/
-> https://zocalopoets.com/2013/02/01/they-now-gonna-make-us-shut-up-the-black-nationalist-third-world-socialist-poetry-of-amiri-baraka/
Image and poem by Imamu Amiri Baraka (Le Roi Jones) & Fundi (Billy Abernathy).
#InOurTerribleness #poetic #photographic #book I #poetry #design #photo #art
#ImamuAmiriBaraka #LeRoiJones I #Fundi #BillyAbernathy I #Laini #SylviaAbernathy
Ballad from the Soundhole of an Unstrung Guitar
by Diane Seuss
The best I ever wrote was in an attic.
No chair. Manual typewriter on an upended box.
No screen on the lone window, which I removed.
Bats flew through.
I woke up one night and Blue was in bed with me.
Nah, I said, and he put on his wire-rimmed glasses and left.
Somehow, I ended up with two kittens. Littermates.
I wonder how they lived and died, where they went.
The only furniture was the mattress on the floor.
A wooden box full of someone's Mardi Gras beads.
No ethics. No lock on the door.
No worries about vermin, rabies, fleas.
Where did I pee in the middle of the night?
There must have been a bathroom down those narrow stairs.
A shower somewhere.
A gold shower curtain laced with mold.
Blue once told me I walked in on him peeing and laughed.
That it ruined his life.
Well, Jesus, I'm sorry.
I would never have apologized back then.
I knew no forms.
Just a swarm of bees in the rafters who agreed to leave me be.
I made a line break when I took a drag on my Salem Light.
Menthols were pure as poetry.
Where are the words now, that you wrote in that hellhole?
On the typewriter ribbon I stuck in a knothole.
https://neopagan.net/blog/2020/03/25/on-seeing-beyond-ourselves/
"On Seeing Beyond Ourselves
Posted on March 25, 2020 by Phaedra Bonewits
This one’s for the street kids
The runaways and the throwaways
The queer kids and the trans kids
and the druggie kids with empty eyes
who can’t go home even if they wanted to
The travelling kids, the hitchhikers
who no one will stop for
The buskers and the panhandlers
staring at empty streets
homeless boy 1860
This one’s for the homeless
who have no place to shelter
The street people
The cold and hungry people
The ones with no soap
No running water
No take out or delivery
The ones with bad lungs
and diabetes and rotten livers
and damaged skin
who already saw friends die
This one’s for the buskers
and the living statues
and the people in costume
asking a fiver for a selfie
The ones who found
a way to survive
that worked for them
Who used their creativity
to find a way
Who stare at empty streets
with empty pockets
Knowing no government program
will compensate them
This one’s for the refugees
The ones in camps with
bombed out homelands
or drought or flood
behind them
and nothing in front
The ones who have no soap
and carry their water
The ones raising
their kids in tents
with nothing but fabric walls
separating them
from their neighbors
The ones who did
the best they could
and now they’ll see more death
I see you
I hear you
I fear for you more
than I fear for myself" #poetry
English below :
Lorsque les ombres obscurcissent ton esprit,
Souffle sur les braises
de la joie d’être en vie.
Jette dans ce feu
tout ce qui n’est plus toi;
Que brûlent enfin
toutes les scories du moi.
Ressent le tambour
derrière ton sternum,
Et foule la terre tel les premiers hommes.
Que jaillisse
enfin de ta poitrine,
le souffle libre des origines.
L.V
When shadows cloud your mind,
Blow on the embers
of the joy of being alive.
Throw into this fire
all that is no longer you; Let all the dross of the self
all the dross of the self.
Feel the drum
behind your breastbone,
And tread the earth like the first men.
Let it burst
at last from your chest
the free breath of origins.
L.V
#poetry #poesie #dance #human #humain #heart #coeur #vie #souffle #life #breth #joy #joie #firedance #origines
They ignore the suffering of millions saying they do not understand it but I ask them:
In what language does a child cry?
— Karim Wafa Al-Hussaini
#KarimWafaAl-Hussaini #Gaza #genocide #suffering #poem #poetry
From nowhere with love, on the -eenth of Marchember,
dear respectful my darling, doesn't matter
even who, for the face, speaking frankly,
is impossible to remember, not yours, and
no-one's best friend, sends his regards being on one
of the five continents, related to cow-boys;
I loved you more than angels and even Himself
and am further from you now than from them both;
late at night, in the sleeping valley, in its very pit,
twisting at night on the blank bed-sheet --
as not mentioned below at least, -- with a throb
I whip up the pillow by moaning "you"
from beyond the seas, its shores connecting
in the dark, with my body your body through
all it's features, as a crazy mirror, reflecting.
Ниоткуда с любовью, надцатого мартобря,
дорогой, уважаемый, милая, но не важно
даже кто, ибо черт лица, говоря
откровенно, не вспомнить уже, не ваш, но
и ничей верный друг вас приветствует с одного
из пяти континентов, держащегося на ковбоях.
Я любил тебя больше, чем ангелов и самого,
и поэтому дальше теперь
от тебя, чем от них обоих.
Далеко, поздно ночью, в долине, на самом дне,
в городке, занесенном снегом по ручку двери,
извиваясь ночью на простыне,
как не сказано ниже, по крайней мере,
я взбиваю подушку мычащим «ты»,
за горами, которым конца и края,
в темноте всем телом твои черты
как безумное зеркало повторяя.
1975-1976
This is my life!!!
THE NEW BATTERY SHOULD COME TOMORROW
by Ruth Bavetta
Got up this morning thinking about going to see my daughter.
Which led to thinking about the remote for the garage door opener
which had stopped working when I replaced the battery.
Which led to searching online for garage door repairmen. Which led to
wanting to check the remote again before I called a repairman.
Which led to getting dressed so I could go outside. Which led to
remembering to brush my teeth. Which led to discovering my Waterpik
wasn’t working. Which led to researching online to find out
what the problem could be. Which led to
scrabbling around to find the extra tips that came with the Waterpik
and figuring out which was which and how to replace the tip.
So with Waterpik repaired I went outside and tried again
to make the garage door opener work. Which led to
my discovering that the little red light in the remote wasn’t on.
Which led me to fiddle with the batteries again. Which led to
my discovering I had ordered the wrong battery for it. Which led to
a protracted Amazon session looking for the proper battery
and figuring out which were in stock and would come soon
and didn’t come only in a pack of fifty.
So now I’m exhausted and I’m not going anywhere.
from Rattle #83, Spring 2024
Ruth Bavetta: “I write at a messy desk overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Once, it was important to me to make sense of life. Now, I’m convinced that there is no sense-making. There is only what is and what has been. I am human, separate and mortal, and that’s where the poetry comes from. This poem is pretty much an accurate report of an actual morning a couple of years ago. This kind of thing happens with increasing frequency as we age. What can we do but laugh about it?”
https://www.rattle.com/the-new-battery-should-come-tomorrow-by-ruth-bavetta/
Patti Smith Sends Taylor Swift a Direct Message After Pop Star Name-Dropped Her in New Song
https://parade.com/news/patti-smith-sends-taylor-swift-direct-message-name-drop-tortured-poets