Pageviews past week

Friday, June 7, 2013

PANIS ANGELICUS


Mukojima
Hiroshi Yoshida

PANIS ANGELICUS

The hour of the Angelus.
The shortest day of the year.
The room all but deserted
But for the figure resting
On the bed, not on light depending.

Hail Mary. The grace of sleep
Through her fine bones
Lift her to vision.
Elizabeth in the next room
Hears nothing, but the soft light
Has a music to it.

Be it done unto me according
To thy word.  The language of flowers.
The angel may or may not have
Beautiful wings, may or may not
Be genuflecting next to Mary,
May or may not be whispering,
May or may not be a dreaming,
But the soft light has a music to it.

O res merabilis!  Unaque poscimus
Sic nos tu visita,  ad lucem quam inhabitas.


            Translation:
 What wonder! We beg of you
That you visit us, the light in which you dwell.


            The only known film footage of Anne Frank



Thursday, June 6, 2013

MANHA DE CARNAVAL

Soyons Discrets - label
The Alphabet - The Letter 'E'
V. Cardadossi - Shooting Star

MANHA DE CARNAVAL

I am unable to do anything about it.
I stare for hours at the ocean.
I have been taken.  My thought
Listening to translations from
A language made of magic and swift gestures

Captured from dances performed 
By a hooded crowd who insist
We know them but they do not
Know time and we show the tattoos 
Of time all too clearly.

I am going to walk away from this
For a moment.  I am in danger of
Falling too far and becoming water,
Totally water, once again.

I saw spirits moving as clouds
Toward an infinite tomorrow.
I am unable to recall if we arrived
Here to do something special like dying
Or if there was to be a fiesta
That had another ending, a sky filled 
With fireworks.  We have seen such 
Things as we are not allowed to
Even attempt in explanations.

I sharpen my knives.  There will
Come a time when a dagger will
Hold all the language, when we 
Will garb ourselves for inclement
Weather and find our horses.

This might be a story but it does
Have horses. So we might want to
Leave before we know too
Much to begin insisting on a dawn,
A special fire that really gives
Nothing away at all.

And so I think I’m telling you a story 
But it seems all about a carnival 
That happens tomorrow in a poem
Left in a book so very long ago.




Wednesday, June 5, 2013

AN OLD DESCRIPTION OF NIAGARA FALLS






AN OLD DESCRIPTION OF NIAGARA FALLS

We could not see where
The end of the land came.
The French told us we must
Leave the water and walk
For a distance of many leagues
Because of a great waterfall
That would not allow us passage upstream.

These woods were old,
Filled with highways
And worn places, used by men.

The night we heard the
Waterfall was memorable.  It
Seemed a constant wind that
Did not move the trees at all.
All sound.  And then
The place itself.  The voice of water
Articulate and incessant
Filling all of consciousness
For enormous moments.
There could not be such a place.,
Yet there it was.

Day and night forever
Through such time as man
Cannot but fancy.
All the choirs of the angels
Singing together precisely,
In this manner, so it seemed.

The greens, the whiteness,
The bows of colored light
By day and pale ghosts of
Them in the moonlight.

This must be what prayer
Was like in power and in voice.
All our lives we bathed our
Memories in this gift.

We joined it to our children,
Drove it through our dreams,
Hovering near its mists as long
As soul would cling to flesh
And then we joined this voice;
The rapids and the rills,
The clicking of the rocks,
The huge sighing of the 
Place as it continues
Its descriptions with water.

I hear you hearing this.
All of us hear you hearing this.
It is a rushing through the seasons,
A mouth unlike any other.
We look into your eyes. You look into time itself,
The way all life understands it,

Full and incomplete,
Always moving.  Time is water.
Time is the huge falling
That we saw here, surely
A fair description.



Tuesday, June 4, 2013

THE ROADS ARE SLIPPERY WITH OIL




This poem was published in STAR * LINE, The Journal of the SFPA (Science Fiction Poetery Association) in the October-December 2012 issue #354.



THE ROADS ARE SLIPPERY WITH OIL

Occasionally tiny blue creatures
Glide across its surface,
Heads down, skimming for
Black algae.

The sun was flickering 
Electric blue.

We were sitting by the side
Of the roads, smoking.

“The sun was never
That color,” you said.
“It’s all the fires.”,
I replied.

“We always think it’s something 
Else.”, you said.

During the playback the image
Fluttered a lot and we
Couldn’t see the parts
With the gunfire clearly.

They advanced our ages
Very quickly.  We could say 
Nothing.

“Can we see it again?” you said.
“The tiny blue creatures
Look so different now.
Skimming, skimming.”

They led us away.
It was like being blind.



Monday, June 3, 2013

UNABLE TO EXPLAIN





UNABLE TO EXPLAIN

We sat on the edge of the blue
Inlet and listened for the question
To become complete. A slight
Drift of smoke carried the scent
Of the cities through our clothing,
Peeling layer after layer of feeling
From us as if it were the heart,
Caught in its room of ribs and breathing,
Unable to understand hands, the movements
Of high mountain goats among the pinnacles of forgetting.

Sounds poured forth from us,
Continents of them, ripe and with
A million yellow mouths, all wanting
Something other than words could
Give, caught in melody and stripped
Before our eyes of the darling vestments
So beloved by men everywhere;
Truth, Knowing, the Sublime, Instinct.
“All lost, lost,” the captain said, unable
To recognize the land any longer.

We have no maps for things like this.
We are forever thinking we know
What will happen. We are forever
Calling, searching for echoes, the voice of angels,
The smiles of children blessed with tenderness,
Founded in waking up to see the sun
Slipping between the window blinds,
Not a dream at all, rather a way of knowing.
We embrace them and weep endlessly.
We name ourselves rain forest. 




Sunday, June 2, 2013

MAKING WITH FRAGMENTS




Bill W. H. Robinson - Happiness


This poem is from my book A LIMITED MEANS OF EXPRESSION published by Rattlesnake Press, Pollack Pines, Ca. 2011.  The book is out of print.

MAKING WITH FRAGMENTS
for Tom Kryss
There is a moment when the lights
Become dull memories and the territories
We have come to understand in our travels
Begin to unwind and contrive their own kind
Of knowing, one coupled with the notion that

Soon an emptiness will sidle up to us and clasp
Our hand, explaining the while that we will have
Little chance of understanding emptiness and the 
Damp that descends with the evening, even here

On these mountains or in this desert or along these
Trails still dusty with the echoes of elephants, ostriches,
Creatures of mystery.  They will crumble, we are told
And in that moment, we believe that we are hearing
The truth rather than the banging of cymbals played
By deaf men who sold their imaginations long ago.

The multi-colored lamps make this place seem dreamed,
Not found on maps we carry, nothing promised here,
Only the trail of words that leads us on.  We will recognize
Nothing but will continue so that we might see these places,
So that we may fall into the mouth of fables breathed
Over fires on some future night when the Nightjar’s wings
Begin their tale and summon us from the dust once again.

I will see you there, crossing the winter night just ahead,
Betting destinies on seasons, correcting the optics
So all may see mythical beasts and believe in them
If only for the telling. Make in your mouth a story now

While you walk and breathe here that it may be told
Again at some set date far beyond these landscapes.
Favor mystery and what is lovely. Avoid the invisible
That I may feel your hand and together we will build
Toward the favoring winds, tell the dates, catch the
Glint of light on our words as they dance away from us.