A Poem Thread

“there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock.
people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.
people just are not good to each other
one on one.
the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor.
we are afraid."

Charles Bukowski
 
Enjoy this month of appalling transformations in the larger stores?

Actually far less hectic and draining than Christmas. From the standpoint that you only have to waste selecting time and money on buying candy, and maybe the kids or grandkids could use the same costumes from last year (along with recycled decorations). And unless you're an extension of the Addams Family or the Munsters, probably no visiting relatives/guests and "feast at home" get-togethers.

Of course, the best deal is if your country doesn't participate in Halloween. But then you don't have anything to offset or contrast to December dread. (We won't mar the situation additionally with the varying international aspects of generic Thanksgiving that might contingently apply, since some of those create a double whammy of co-occurring in October or are outside the year-closing, tri-month pile-up hell zone via being as early as August.)
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October Portents
Cece

I may have seen the Grim Wife once
In a tall grass glade where the grey cat hunts.
Why she grieves so long after loss
Spans beyond my ken, too cryptic to cross.

Some hedge a boding widow's task
With warming solace from a drinking flask.
Trust they have in such spirits known.
But not those exhumed, oh not those wind blown.

I may have heard the Grim Wife thrice
At a late hour when the owl spots mice.
She's not hopeful like scrying seers.
Folk bury their eyes, they smother their ears.

If only wailing could relate
Whatever she gleans from the forge of fate.
Is it yours or is it mine or
A far tragedy, on another shore?

I may have felt the Grim Wife's hand
In early shivers from the autumn land.
Distant clouds were gravid with rain
When old rites took two, both man and son slain.

Fostered by a lingering dread.
It's the wool local storytellers spread.
None dear lost at an ancient well?
Just a faded woe, no legend to quell.

I may have breathed the Grim Wife's prayer
In the scented speech of the eldritch air.
Wafting from where the moonlight played
On dark lake ripples, as a red dog bayed.
_
 
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A Rhyme for Halloween

BY MAURICE KILWEIN GUEVARA

Tonight I light the candles of my eyes in the lee
And swing down this branch full of red leaves.
Yellow moon, skull and spine of the hare,
Arrow me to town on the neck of the air.

I hear the undertaker make love in the heather;
The candy maker, poor fellow, is under the weather.
Skunk, moose, raccoon, they go to the doors in threes
With a torch in their hands or pleas: "O, please . . ."

Baruch Spinoza and the butcher are drunk:
One is the tail and one is the trunk
Of a beast who dances in circles for beer
And doesn't think twice to learn how to steer.

Our clock is blind, our clock is dumb.
Its hands are broken, its fingers numb.
No time for the martyr of our fair town
Who wasn't a witch because she could drown.

Now the dogs of the cemetery are starting to bark
At the vision of her, bobbing up through the dark.
When she opens her mouth to gasp for air,
A moth flies out and lands in her hair.

The apples are thumping, winter is coming.
The lips of the pumpkin soon will be humming.
By the caw of the crow on the first of the year,
Something will die, something appear.
 
Theme in Yellow
BY CARL SANDBURG

"I spot the hills
With yellow balls in autumn.
I light the prairie cornfields
Orange and tawny gold clusters
And I am called pumpkins.
On the last of October
When dusk is fallen
Children join hands
And circle round me
Singing ghost songs
And love to the harvest moon;
I am a jack-o'-lantern
With terrible teeth
And the children know
I am fooling."
 
“won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.”
― Lucille Clifton
 
Poe_s_the_Raven_Note_Card_1024x1024.jpg
 
"Want the change. Be inspired by the flame
where everything shines as it disappears.
The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much
as the curve of the body as it turns away.

What locks itself in sameness has congealed.
Is it safer to be gray and numb?
What turns hard becomes rigid
and is easily shattered.

Pour yourself out like a fountain.
Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking
finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins.

Every happiness is the child of a separation
it did not think it could survive. And Daphne, becoming a laurel,
dares you to become the wind."

Rainer Marie Rilke, from Sonnet to Orpheus II, 12
 
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"I wanted to destroy this
entire contemporary mess
I'm caught in, the social
lies, the motherfucking
so-called civilization
which seems to lack the
freedom we all crow about
so goddam much, the idiot
middle-class I'm trapped
in by the fact that my
art is ignored, as all
contemporary art is ig-
nored until it is no longer
contemporary, until it is
old and respectable and
safe."
~William Wantling
 
Ghost
BY CYNTHIA HUNTINGTON

"At first you didn’t know me.
I was a shape moving rapidly, nervous
at the edge of your vision. A flat, high voice,
dark slash of hair across my cheekbone.
I made myself present, though never distinct.
Things I said that he repeated, a tone
you could hear, but never trace, in his voice.
Silence—followed by talk of other things.
When you would sit at your desk, I would creep
near you like a question. A thought would scurry
across the front of your mind. I’d be there,
ducking out of sight. You must have felt me
watching you, my small eyes fixed on your face,
the smile you wondered at, on the lips only.
The voice on the phone, quick and full of business.
All that you saw and heard and could not find
the center of, those days growing into years,
growing inside of you, out of reach, now with you
forever, in your house, in your garden, in corridors
of dream where I finally tell you my name."
 
Yeah, a few hours early, but Halloween will soon be defunct. Time to move ahead to the event after Thanksgiving.
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Black Friday (November tidings)
Cece

Quickly, quickly,
pass through that day.
Comfort not those sickly,
nor falter for the stray.

Will the old gods intervene
when the victims' pyres are lit?
Will the halls be red or green
when the poised marauders quit?

Boldly, boldly,
defend the gate!
Sunrise glowers coldly
at the masses who wait.

Survival is a beacon
after tawny beasts flood in.
Only saints left uneaten
shall enjoy the final sin.

Harken, harken,
our times are cursed.
If the gentry bargain
and hill tribes plunder first.

Let brash mortals buy and trade
as fey halflings stock the shelves.
Let their paladins parade
as new victors preen themselves.

Hasten, hasten,
reach high retreats!
The mad throng will chasten
stragglers lost in the streets.

Eschew fabled jubilees,
and be deaf to frantic howls
of pale wretches on their knees,
when the Devil drains his bowels!
_
 
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AUTUMNAL

"Pale amber sunlight falls across
The reddening October trees,
That hardly sway before a breeze
As soft as summer: summer's loss
Seems little, dear! on days like these.

Let misty autumn be our part!
The twilight of the year is sweet:
Where shadow and the darkness meet
Our love, a twilight of the heart
Eludes a little time's deceit.

Are we not better and at home
In dreamful Autumn, we who deem
No harvest joy is worth a dream?
A little while and night shall come,
A little while, then, let us dream.

Beyond the pearled horizons lie
Winter and night: awaiting these
We garner this poor hour of ease,
Until love turn from us and die
Beneath the drear November trees.”

― Ernest Dowson, The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson
 
I Grant You Refuge
by Hiba Abu Nada¹ (trans. Huda Fakhreddine), 10 October 2023

1.
I grant you refuge
in invocation and prayer.
I bless the neighborhood and the minaret
to guard them
from the rocket

from the moment
it is a general's command
until it becomes
a raid.

I grant you and the little ones refuge,
the little ones who
change the rocket's course
before it lands
with their smiles.

2.
I grant you and the little ones refuge,
the little ones now asleep like chicks in a nest.

They don't walk in their sleep toward dreams.
They know death lurks outside the house.

Their mothers' tears are now doves
following them, trailing behind
every coffin.

3.
I grant the father refuge,
the little ones' father who holds the house upright
when it tilts after the bombs.
He implores the moment of death:
"Have mercy. Spare me a little while.
For their sake, I've learned to love my life.
Grant them a death
as beautiful as they are."

4.
I grant you refuge
from hurt and death,
refuge in the glory of our siege,
here in the belly of the whale.

Our streets exalt God with every bomb.
They pray for the mosques and the houses.
And every time the bombing begins in the North,
our supplications rise in the South.

5.
I grant you refuge
from hurt and suffering.

With words of sacred scripture
I shield the oranges from the sting of phosphorous
and the shades of cloud from the smog.

I grant you refuge in knowing
that the dust will clear,
and they who fell in love and died together
will one day laugh.


____________________

Notes:

¹ Hiba Abu Nada died in an airstrike on 20 October 2023, ten days after penning these verses.
 
Magical Realist said:
"I wanted to destroy this
entire contemporary mess
I'm caught in, the social
lies, the motherfucking
so-called civilization
which seems to lack the
freedom we all crow about
so goddam much, the idiot
middle-class I'm trapped
in by the fact that my
art is ignored, as all
contemporary art is ig-
nored until it is no longer
contemporary, until it is
old and respectable and
safe."
~William Wantling
Click to expand...
This may seem prudish, but I’m somewhat fine with swearing in songs, just not poetry. Otherwise, I enjoyed this poem. Swearing to me belongs in Netflix series about mafia bosses or something. lol It seems like a lazy way to express one’s self, like the author is going for shock value or whatever. It’s not shocking at all though, because the “technique” is so overused. :rolleye:
 
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I have no problem with anyone using profanity, either in writing or speech.To me it's just another form of communication, often expressing anger and desperation. To each their own I guess.
 
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wegs said:
This may seem prudish, but I’m somewhat fine with swearing in songs, just not poetry. Otherwise, I enjoyed this poem. Swearing to me belongs in Netflix series about mafia bosses or something. lol It seems like a lazy way to express one’s self, like the author is going for shock value or whatever. It’s not shocking at all though, because the “technique” is so overused. :rolleye:
Click to expand...

I agree that our traditional "vulgar vocabulary" has now become pretty much corny and kaput. The only language that has potent shock value in our era is speech violations and thought-crimes related to social justice.

I mean, the efwerd still isn't at the level of "heck" or "darn", but it is sliding toward that neighborhood. Even if one regards "vulgar vocabulary" as a significant part of the everyday jargon of some hipster and Ulster Scot (redneck) descended subcultures, that likewise means it has been rendered trite or common.

But counterculture poetry from the '50s. '60s. and '70s (as well as literature in general) was coming out of a period of heavy censorship (of the traditional ilk). So working with obscenity back then (like in the Beat movement onward) was an experimental novelty, and it did generate psychological, rebellious, disorienting, and sometimes surreal effects for those vintage readers (including outrage).

This particular poem is from that era, so it can be retrospectively "valued" or "excused" in terms of that historical setting. But if written today it would certainly be nothing new (operating within a spirit or template already introduced in the past). Even the Marxist-like ranting against Western civilization and the middle class (bourgeoisie) was older than the hills back then.

Given the imprisonment, substance addictions, and military background of its author, it's also arguably using some kind of "confessional writing" approach similar to what Plath adopted from 1960 onward, that reflected "personal, private material".

While she managed to navigate that territory without delivering the poetry equivalent of the taboo hand grenades that, say, William S, Burroughs released in his unrestricted prose... It's a style that nevertheless even today is going to be prone at times to drop something that would have been disturbing to the Old Establishment (but which has long since been replaced -- the original counterculture having hybridized with it).
_
 
I got used to "shocking words" reading Ginsburg, Burroughs, Bukowski, and O'Hara. I actually like it. It lends a sort of everyday grittiness and rawness to the prose..
 
A Supermarket in California
Launch Audio in a New Window
BY ALLEN GINSBERG

"What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!—and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?"

Berkeley, 1955
 
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Probably helped that drafts of Beat poetry were often rendered verbally in front of small audiences, before they ever wound up being published. Hearing how such was meant to be elocuted by the authors themselves, and that traveling about, maybe aided the ultimate editor in deciding that what looked like prose really did qualify as a poem.

Of course, some of the stuff outputted literally was performance poetry. But Ginsberg usually wrote his material down first, even if he did recite it early before crowds. There wasn't improvisation thrown in, which is a key aspect of the other.

If only Roger Corman had done it first...

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1965
 
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Jack Keorouac reading several of his poems, Steve Allen playing piano in the background. 1959 record album release.

link --> Jack Kerouac & Steve Allen ~ Poetry For The Beat Generation

1 October In The Railroad Earth 7:09
2 Deadbelly 1:05
3 Charlie Parker 3:45
4 The Sounds Of The Universe Coming In My Window 3:17
5 One Mother 0:49
6 Goofing At The Table 1:45
7 Bowery Blues 3:56
8 Abraham 1:17
9 Dave Brubeck 0:31
10 I Had A Slouch Hat Too One Time 6:12
11 The Wheel Of The Quivering Meat Conception 1:55
12 McDougal Street Blues 3:23
13 The Moon Her Majesty 1:36
14 I'd Rather Be Thin Than Famous
 
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