Poezija i plandovanje

Mitsuye Yamada: Neutralize!

poetry . . .
has been my spiritual guide
throughout my incarceration
in the darkest of times
I turn to Neruda and Hikmet
and Rukeyser and Ritsas
and Chrytos
and Whitman. . .
           – U.S. Political Prisoner

They mean to kill
the sentient being in me
Neutralize!
White white
no poetry in
white floors walls ceiling white
white chairs tables sink white
only when I close my eyes do I see
beyond the white windowless walls
remembering springtime of
lacy trees lightly green against baby blue.
There is silence silence more silence
to drown out the incessant silence
I fill my inner ear with robinsongs
melodious and soothing
but how to quell deafening
nonhuman screeches and scrapes
sounds bouncing against the white walls?
Dull smells of dead air in the cell
but through the olfactory nerves
in my mind
I can tickle with the zest of lemon
and the sweetness of wildflowers.
Willfully bland diet aimed
to erase use of my tongue
Add a pinch of salt with the taste
of sweat or even of blood
anywhere on my body
Remembering the taste of cheese.
One human touch allowed
my own arms enfold me
my fingers move over my sagging breasts
my nipples and soft parts of my body
respond.
They mean to neutralize me but
poetry keeps me alive.

Mitsuye Yamada: To the Lady




The one in San Francisco who asked:

Why did the Japanese Americans let

the government put them in

those camps without protest?



Come the think of it I

should’ve run off to Canada

should’ve hijacked a plane to Algeria

should’ve pulled myself up from my

bra straps

and kicked ‘m in the groin

should’ve bombed a bank

should’ve tried self-immolation

should’ve holed myself up in a

woodframe house

and let you watch me

burn up on the six o’clock news

should’ve run howling down the street

naked and assaulted you at breakfast

by AP wirephoto

should’ve screamed bloody murder

like Kitty Genovese



Then

YOU would’ve



come to my aid in shining armor

laid yourself across the railroad track

marched on Washington

tattooed a Star of David on your arm

written six million enraged

letters to Congress



But we didn’t draw the line

anywhere

law and order Executive Order 9066

social order moral order internal order



You let’m

I let’m

All are punished

Sylvia Plath: The Colossus

I shall never get you put together entirely,
Pieced, glued, and properly jointed.
Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles
Proceed from your great lips.
It’s worse than a barnyard.
 
Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle,
Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other.
Thirty years now I have labored
To dredge the silt from your throat.
I am none the wiser.
 
Scaling little ladders with glue pots and pails of lysol
I crawl like an ant in mourning
Over the weedy acres of your brow
To mend the immense skull plates and clear
The bald, white tumuli of your eyes.
 
A blue sky out of the Oresteia
Arches above us. O father, all by yourself
You are pithy and historical as the Roman Forum.
I open my lunch on a hill of black cypress.
Your fluted bones and acanthine hair are littered
 
In their old anarchy to the horizon-line.
It would take more than a lightning-stroke
To create such a ruin.
Nights, I squat in the cornucopia
Of your left ear, out of the wind,
 
Counting the red stars and those of plum-color.
The sun rises under the pillar of your tongue.
My hours are married to shadow.
No longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel
On the blank stones of the landing.

Anna Rabinowitz: A Small Anatomy of Feeling



That which installs itself in the mind embraces sound
 
Rebounding,
                         rounding the fecund earth
 
Birth, as in what is not, as in one makes one,
                                                     is a mighty absence to understand
 
(and there are those who fail to get their lessons done)
 
Dun is the color of submission
 
Unfledged, she leafs through what has been nothing never
Never to be what she is/ or could /or hope to be
Bewitched by dictions (fictions) on the surface—
 
Face naming that which she must save, polished like an apple—
 
Apple of the eye, amour of town and street, apple of the cheek
Eaten with a dab of honey for a sweet year
 
Ear to who am I in the suddenly-arriving what-comes-next
Next to being, next to delivery, next to undergone
Gone parenthetical but now revived as her eye
Spies the sudden trespass of his unexpected welcome—
 
Succumbing, coming unto him in full sun this morning
 
Mourning what she need not beguile or lie beside

The Old Pond 


The old pond

    A frog jumps in -

       Splash! 

Matsuo Basho

Nisam bila sigurna da li da stavim ovo tu ili ne, al' ajd...


David Tibet (Current 93): Soft Black Stars

Little children snuggle under soft black stars
And if you look into their eyes-- soft black stars
Deliver them from the book and the letter and the word
And let them read the silence bathed in soft black stars
Let them trace the raindrops under soft black stars
Let them follow whispers and scare away the night
Let them kiss the featherbreath of soft black stars
And let them ride their horsies licked by the wind and the snow
And tip-toe into twilight where we all one day will go
Caressed with tendrils and with no fear at all
Their faces shining river-gold brushed with soft black stars
And angels' wings shall soothe their cares
And all the birds shall sing at dawn
Blessed and wet with joy
You and I will meet one day
Under a nightsky lit by soft black stars

Born in Malaysia, truly Asia... 

March: With Saguaro Witness

Looking down from eighteen inches
chubby cheeks hanging like heavy ripe apricots
eyes shining with pride and awe
at white leather hi-top shoes
thick with support

She Walks

Barbara Aragon

March: With Saguaro Witness II

Dancing in a Circle
with feet and
steps that tease
independence
Steps that are pulled back
to the Circle by the thump of the drum
the whine of the accordion and smiles on the faces
Take off the shoes
Massage the earth with your loving feet

Barbara Aragon

Endings or Blue’s Last Breath

The whoosh of air
left its old
grey body

And traveled
into the
ether –

I carried that
old Blue cat
home

And knew what
spirit looked
like

And was relieved
to see that
wind exit

To be drawn in
by another
and another

– Clare Bonsall

In Praise of Emptiness



We need

The empty

To find

The full

So that the dream

Unfolds

So that the breath

Takes in



So that the fruit

Sprouts

We need

All the hollows



And the want.



– Andrée Chedid,
translation by Annie Finch

dudette wrote:Born in Malaysia, truly Asia... 

David Tibet wrote:I was born in Malaysia in 1960. Paradise gained. In 1970, I left for England, where I attended an all-boys boarding school. Paradise not only lost but then packed with the sex of ghosts and kicked into the bonefire. Welcome to NeverLand. (...)

Vegvísir wrote:

dudette wrote:Born in Malaysia, truly Asia... 

David Tibet wrote:I was born in Malaysia in 1960. Paradise gained. In 1970, I left for England, where I attended an all-boys boarding school. Paradise not only lost but then packed with the sex of ghosts and kicked into the bonefire. Welcome to NeverLand. (...)

Sometimes I feel sooo
British if you please 
so British if you please
I'm turning Japanese 
tsk, tsk, tsk, dot, dot, dot

Bamboo

First woman was made of slender bones
like these that stand upright together
in the rich, green world of daylight.

At night, they are a darkened forest
of sisters who grow quickly
in moving water
and talk in the clattering breeze
as if each is an open throat, rising
to speak.

I tell a man about this beautiful,
creaking world, how it flowers all
at once. He has been to war. He says
with bamboo they do terrible things
to men and women.

I look at this bamboo.
It did not give permission to soldiers.
It is imprisoned in its own skin.
The stalks are restless about this.
They have lived too long in the world of men.
They are hollow inside.

Lord, are you listening to this?
Plants are climbing to heaven
to talk to you.

-Linda Hogan

Frank O'Hara: Poem

Instant coffee with slightly sour cream
in it, and a phone call to the beyond
which doesn’t seem to be coming any nearer.
“Ah daddy, I wanna stay drunk many days”
on the poetry of a new friend
my life held precariously in the seeing
hands of others, their and my impossibilities.
Is this love, now that the first love
has finally died, where there were no impossibilities?

(1956)


Frank O'Hara: Today

Oh! kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas!
You really are beautiful! Pearls,
harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins! all
the stuff they’ve always talked about
still makes a poem a surprise!
These things are with us every day
even on beachheads and biers. They
do have meaning. They’re strong as rocks.

(1950.)

Frank O'Hara: Song


Is it dirty
does it look dirty
that’s what you think of in the city

does it just seem dirty
that’s what you think of in the city
you don’t refuse to breathe do you

someone comes along with a very bad character
he seems attractive. is he really. yes. very
he’s attractive as his character is bad. is it. yes

that’s what you think of in the city
run your finger along your no-moss mind
that’s not a thought that’s soot

and you take a lot of dirt off someone
is the character less bad. no. it improves constantly
you don’t refuse to breathe do you

Emily Dickinson: I'm Nobody! Who are you?


I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – Too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!

Self inside self, You are nothing but me.

Self inside self, I am only You.



What we are together

will never die.



The why and how of this?

What does it matter?



- Lalla, translated by Coleman Barks

For Ever We Come, For Ever We Go

For ever we come, for ever we go;
For ever, day and night, we are on the move.
Whence we come, thither we go,
For ever in the round of birth and death,
From nothingness to nothingness.
But sure, a mystery here abides,
A Something is there for us to know.
(It cannot all be meaningless).

- Lalla (Lalleshwari)