the wind reads me well
I'm a nomad of time
a pulse like a prophecy
whispers myself to me

With spirit ablaze,
To tread, where everyone conspire
My truth, a flame held higher,
Yet branded still a liar.
This path, where doubts transpire,
To reach what hearts desire.
As in ages of old time's fire,
Worth on the pyre, a maiden's trial dire.
The heart's own fire, just water to the pyre,
Yet the world deems us of less significance,
Not much of a crier if you keep your distance,
We've never needed rescue, if the problem wasn't you.

Every year the desert
           (with d from devils)
advances fifteen kilometers
           (with k from karma)
dries up springs
            (with s from spirits)
dries up more and more words.
The dictionary is ever more famished -
essences on the leap
stop for a second over the abyss,
then whiten the cracked earth.
The poet watches
the pure skulls of the words;
the words, still living and hungry,
watch the poet.

By Grete Tartler, translated by Liviu Bleoca

for Roger Caillois

Water hollows stone,
wind scatters water,
stone stops the wind.
Water, wind, stone.

Wind carves stone,
stone's a cup of water,
water escapes and is wind.
Stone, wind, water.

Wind sings in its whirling,
water murmurs going by,
unmoving stone keeps still.
Wind, water, stone.

Each is another and no other:
crossing and vanishing
through their empty names:
water, stone, wind

by Octavio Paz, translated by Eliot Weinberger

Water is bi polar
It will rage so blindly
Be so gentle when falling to earth
Languish in puddles but be so anxious
Rushing from place to place
Agitated when surrounded by laundry
It's frenzied approach
When confronted by fire
Shows it apathy when it relaxes on leaves
Fatigue as it slowly soak into dirt
Its grand delusion when it crashes into surf

the dream is dreaming itself, we are its subjects
the mysterious writing of life, its ellusive quest
an inflationary expansion was deleting its traces
zero degree of consciousness in a moving aliveness
strange rhythms around and strange qualia
there were attributes without letters at first
before a predicate turned into subject
life othering itself into much more in its own image

life was chatting with itself before the knower and the known
spinning the seeds of time, change: its true substance
I am you and you are me but  we need
a symmetry break for the dawn of mind, the other of the body

so much was already done since life was rehearsing for eons its scripture, forms of habit, viable conventions
processing its otherness relentlessly
mind is this forest-creature exulting, hiding, defending,
breaking down, screaming, expulsing, recomposing, sprouting light and lightning

the very first thoughts traversed the barrier of vibrant void
their binding a translation of a body in time, a future storyteller
pure movement the nature of space, the wonder of above and bellow
the first qualia, tension and intensity, an unstructured  flow of frequencies, a cascade of warmth, fullness, emptiness,  
a body discovering herself, her unbearable, her rapture, the feeling of being

the centre is everywhere expanding, accelerating a creative chaos
thinking was just waking in the  field of a dreaming body
thoughts needed to outgrow slowly their skin of imaginary beings

then again and again
dreaming keeps decomposing the already thoughts trapped in their echo chambers, their networked cocoons circle our certainties
a thought needs to die to create another, a sacrifice to the god of the unknown
oh how many deaths we have already died recomposed only by dreaming, the solvent from which reality is born

intensively your body is translating feeling into dreaming,
extensively the mind is dislocating dreaming into thinking  
whille a distant star is crushing itself,  
love rehearses its gravity,
death is saturated by its own dismay

perhaps poetry is this witness of silent cosmogonies

For the casket of the fallen
On the backs of the brave
Uncommon is the valor
For a soldiers final day

Cornbread is the concrete
Kentucky blue grass a fertile mane
Gravy is the mothers milk
For this bond that we share
This country music love affair

The statue of a common place
The willow supply my shade
Elvis grinning like a butchers dog
The heart of Dixie fades away

For a song of redemption
Fields of wheat and waves of grain
Tree roots caress a coffins hold
A country music serenade


Merry Christmas to the poetry elves

again and again
I believe in it
I know it exists
feeding on infinity

if you were a poem
darkness would get deeper and deeper in you
till it turned into white or alkaline nostalgia
it is something only yours, so much laughter
as if life itself was an obsession with a strange pulse

I believe in it
I feel it exists
feeding on flesh and bones
on the cycle of wonder

The true poem is not the work of the individual artist, it is the universe itself, the one work of art which is forever perfecting itself.

Ernst Cassirer, from "An essay on Man"