Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Donall Dempsey Aug 2018
THE ARRIVAL OF ENIGMA

The square dressed itself
in moonlight

as if it were on its way
to a fancy dress ball

as one of de Chirico's
masterpieces.

The puppets
after an inspired performance

lay tangled together
in a box on the bridge.

They waited as their world
was dismantled and

their stage sets stacked
neatly against a wall.

A glass eye winked but
didn't think the human saw.

But the human saw.
Or was it just the moon?

The moon played hide
and seek behind a cloud.

The puppets chattered
amongst themselves

untangling each other
as they planned their escape.

But before anything could
come of this

they were tossed carelessly into a case
that snapped shut with sudden finality.

They were carried away
into the early hours of the morning.

The rebellion of wood
had been scotched.

We used the left over de Chirico
as a scene to stage a kiss

as if we had been painted
into place ourselves.

"The Arrival of Enigma"
or some such title

scrawled in litter
below our feet.
Donall Dempsey Aug 2015
Lautréamont Disco
beckons the neon

to those
travellers of the night

. . . words.

"What's a nice sewing machine
like you..."

asks an umbrella

"...doing on a dissection table
like this?"

Miss Sewing Machine
tells the umbrella fella

"Hop it buster!"

He hops it.

She is looking for
a Sugar Dalí.

A cute de Chirico statue
is getting chatted up

by what I guess is
a poet.

The poet is
getting his face slapped.

The nostalgia
of the Infinite.
("What shall I love if not the enigma?")


"beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting-table of a sewing-machine and an umbrella".

Comte de Lautréamont
irinia Apr 2016
Before me, nothing is what
it used to be; all seams getting ready to be;
a child with a hoop runs by, as in De Chirico's paintings
- in the distance the sky's still red, but in the poem it's gray.
I feel the words growing inside my fingers
and for the first time not for my benefit.
In the quiet of evening
the town seems a game with toy bricks
in which matches are struck and flare brightly - music cavorts at
                                                                                                       the windows -
in the distance the sky's gray, but in the poem is red.

Gellu Dorian, from City of Dreams and Whispers
translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Doina Iordachescu
Donall Dempsey Aug 2019
THE ARRIVAL OF ENIGMA

The square dressed itself
in moonlight

as if it were on its way
to a fancy dress ball

as one of de Chirico's
masterpieces.

The puppets
after an inspired performance

lay tangled together
in a box on the bridge.

They waited as their world
was dismantled and

their stage sets stacked
neatly against a wall.

A glass eye winked but
didn't think the human saw.

But the human saw.
Or was it just the moon?

The moon played hide
and seek behind a cloud.

The puppets chattered
amongst themselves

untangling each other
as they planned their escape.

But before anything could
come of this

they were tossed carelessly into a case
that snapped shut with sudden finality.

They were carried away
into the early hours of the morning.

The rebellion of wood
had been scotched.

We used the left over de Chirico
as a scene to stage a kiss

as if we had been painted
into place ourselves.

"The Arrival of Enigma"
or some such title

scrawled in litter
below our feet.
zebra Nov 2021
I’ve been reading a lot of poetry for quite a few years and maybe this is just me, as in some quirky bias I suffer, or misapprehension about poetry, but much of what I read doesn’t feel much like poetry at all. Now, one can rightfully argue that poetry can be anything, and that’s okay because if we take a look at poetry’s history what we see is a continuum of thesis and antithesis, flagging us who read the stuff that anything goes. So where does that leave us? I might argue that since there are so many distinct kinds of poems that a definition alludes us all together and when we hear the noun p o e t r y, we can only assign the familiar poetic shape as its definitive territory, meaning a few words in a line that are stacked up on each other, which we generally think of as verse with multiplied stacks fulfilling our expectation of poem. I’m thinking if we want to go with that poetry digresses to a linguistic charmless flat land characteristic of prose, relative to at least some of the poetic writing that is highly lyrical, sonically potent, novel, intonated, linguistically muscular, and dynamically connective to the reader. Poetry can take creative liberties that prose customarily does not or cannot take. Poetry may have different linguistic needs like different kinds of English. For example, articles may be absent towards a more concentrated synthesis for phrasing, a lyrical lilt, stream of consciousness boarding on the abstract et al.
Being a poet is born of a feeling that a face may be a liquid surface. That time is malleable, and that there is always something going on in-between the lines gleaned from inexplicable moments of inner disjuncture or a hesitating breath.
Poetry may facilitate that mind may emerge from the concrete objective into the mirrors of the marvelous or uncanny like a burped half avocado and fish head at 2 am in the morning transmuting into a torrent of dormice and angels in delirious avenues of falling stars and looking glasses.
Poetry may address intersectional dimensionality populated by visions and voices of primordial undercurrents, that stories may not lend themselves to. Poetry may be metalinguistic and a fragment of the inner life both collective and individuated. Poetry may work from the inside out without referencing the temporal, locational, and name it and claim it nouns and pronouns typical of prose. So, here’s the poetry problem. Why is it that 99% of the poetry I read here and places like it remain basically written just like prose, linguistically and sonically vacuous, largely bereft of similes, metaphors and all the other strategic devices that can make poetry progressive, inventive and deeply resonate, except of course that they are stacked and columned giving the appearance of poems?
~~~~~
EXAMPLES OF POEMS THAT CAN BE CALLED POETRY
Ballad in A
BY CATHY PARK HONG
A Kansan plays cards, calls Marshall
a crawdad, that barb lands that rascal a slap;
that Kansan ******* scats,
camps back at caballada ranch.
Hangs kack, ax, and camp hat.
Kansan’s nag mad and rants can’t bask,
can’t bacchanal and garland a lass,
can’t at last brag can crack Law’s *****,
Kansan’s cantata rang at that ramada ranch,
Mañana, Kansan snarls, I’ll have an armada
and thwart Law’s brawn,
slam Law a **** mass war path.
Marshall’s a marksman, maps Kansan’s track,
calm as a shaman, sharp as a hawk,
Says: That dastard Kansan’s had
and gnaws lamb fatback.
At dawn, Marshall stalks that ranch,
packs a gat and blasts Kansan’s ***
and Kansan gasps, blasts back.
A flag ***** at half-mast.~~~~~
Ocean of Earth

BY GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE
TRANSLATED BY RON PADGETT
To G. de Chirico
I have built a house in the middle of the Ocean
Its windows are the rivers flowing from my eyes
Octopi are crawling all over where the walls are
Hear their triple hearts beat and their beaks peck against the windowpanes
House of dampness
House of burning
Season’s fastness
Season singing
The airplanes are laying eggs
Watch out for the dropping of the anchor
Watch out for the shooting black ichor
It would be good if you were to come from the sky
The sky’s honeysuckle is climbing
The earthly octopi are throbbing
And so very many of us have become our own gravediggers
Pale octopi of the chalky waves O octopi with pale beaks
Around the house is this ocean that you know well
And is never still
Translated from the French
Source: Poetry (October 2015)~~~~~

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
BY OCEAN VUONG
i
Tell me it was for the hunger
& nothing less. For hunger is to give
the body what it knows
it cannot keep. That this amber light
whittled down by another war
is all that pins my hand
to your chest.
i
You, drowning
between my arms —
stay.
You, pushing your body
into the river
only to be left
with yourself —
stay.
i
I’ll tell you how we’re wrong enough to be forgiven. How one night, after
backhanding
mother, then taking a chainsaw to the kitchen table, my father went to kneel
in the bathroom until we heard his muffled cries through the walls.
And so I learned that a man, in ******, was the closest thing
to surrender.
i
Say surrender. Say alabaster. Switchblade.
Honeysuckle. Goldenrod. Say autumn.
Say autumn despite the green
in your eyes. Beauty despite
daylight. Say you’d **** for it. Unbreakable dawn
mounting in your throat.
My thrashing beneath you
like a sparrow stunned
with falling.
i
Dusk: a blade of honey between our shadows, draining.
i
I wanted to disappear — so I opened the door to a stranger’s car. He was divorced. He was still alive. He was sobbing into his hands (hands that tasted like rust). The pink breast cancer ribbon on his keychain swayed in the ignition. Don’t we touch each other just to prove we are still here? I was still here once. The moon, distant & flickering, trapped itself in beads of sweat on my neck. I let the fog spill through the cracked window & cover my fangs. When I left, the Buick kept sitting there, a dumb bull in pasture, its eyes searing my shadow onto the side of suburban houses. At home, I threw myself on the bed like a torch & watched the flames gnaw through my mother’s house until the sky appeared, bloodshot & massive. How I wanted to be that sky — to hold every flying & falling at once.
i
Say amen. Say amend.
Say yes. Say yes
anyway.
i
In the shower, sweating under cold water, I scrubbed & scrubbed.
i
In the life before this one, you could tell
two people were in love
because when they drove the pickup
over the bridge, their wings
would grow back just in time.
Some days I am still inside the pickup.
Some days I keep waiting.
i
It’s not too late. Our heads haloed
with gnats & summer too early
to leave any marks.
Your hand under my shirt as static
intensifies on the radio.
Your other hand pointing
your daddy’s revolver
to the sky. Stars falling one
by one in the cross hairs.
This means I won’t be
afraid if we’re already
here. Already more
than skin can hold. That a body
beside a body
must make a field
full of ticking. That your name
is only the sound of clocks
being set back another hour
& morning
finds our clothes
on your mother’s front porch, shed
like week-old lilies.
Source: Poetry (December 2014)
~~~~~
SOMETIMES WE’VE GOT TO READ IT TO KNOW WHAT IT IS.
Donall Dempsey Aug 2022
THE ARRIVAL OF ENIGMA

The square dressed itself
in moonlight

as if it were on its way
to a fancy dress ball

as one of de Chirico's
masterpieces.

The puppets
after an inspired performance

lay tangled together
in a box on the bridge.

They waited as their world
was dismantled and

their stage sets stacked
neatly against a wall.

A glass eye winked but
didn't think the human saw.

But the human saw.
Or was it just the moon?

The moon played hide
and seek behind a cloud.

The puppets chattered
amongst themselves

untangling each other
as they planned their escape.

But before anything could
come of this

they were tossed carelessly into a case
that snapped shut with sudden finality.

They were carried away
into the early hours of the morning.

The rebellion of wood
had been scotched.

We used the left over de Chirico
as a scene to stage a kiss

as if we had been painted
into place ourselves.

"The Arrival of Enigma"
or some such title

scrawled in litter
below our feet.
Donall Dempsey Aug 2024
THE ARRIVAL OF ENIGMA

The square dressed itself
in moonlight

as if it were on its way
to a fancy dress ball

as one of de Chirico's
masterpieces.

The puppets
after an inspired performance

lay tangled together
in a box on the bridge.

They waited as their world
was dismantled and

their stage sets stacked
neatly against a wall.

A glass eye winked but
didn't think the human saw.

But the human saw.
Or was it just the moon?

The moon played hide
and seek behind a cloud.

The puppets chattered
amongst themselves

untangling each other
as they planned their escape.

But before anything could
come of this

they were tossed carelessly into a case
that snapped shut with sudden finality.

They were carried away
into the early hours of the morning.

The rebellion of wood
had been scotched.

We used the left over de Chirico
as a scene to stage a kiss

as if we had been painted
into place ourselves.

"The Arrival of Enigma"
or some such title

scrawled in litter
below our feet.
Gaudi hedges his bets
Against the future.
More than one hundred thirty-five years
Of building the infinite
La Sagrada Familia.
A stone mason’s nightmare.
An architect’s dream,
Painted by de Chirico.
Faith and nature intertwine.
Brown earth smears the facades.
Nativity and passion morph
Into angular designs.
A lizard, a leaf, a cross, a dove.
Bejeweled pillars bend and rise.
Crowned towers reach and climb
Spiral staircases to the heavens.
Chapels pray for silence.
Tourists pray for photo-ops.
All views turn inward.
There is much work to be done.
Antoni Gaudi is Spain's most important modernista architect. He began work on the Basilica La Sagrada Familia in the late 1800s; the church is still unfinished, but construction continues. A completion date keeps changing, but may be in the first third of this century.
Johnny Noiπ Feb 2019
Most famous poet in Greece, Archilutus,
Samonidis; Hibonax is, was, his first fan.
Turkish poet Kálimaco, including a part
of the line of 13 poems, wrote a "silly song"
modern scholars who met on line 1000.
This influenced the Roman poet, like Katra.
And he made a satire puzzle to create
a Tsubaramu language. Many years
of ****** life of women urban life life
music male red novel Kamimidori
in Africa and the night of the mother;
dead the night of America's
star celebration amen. In Australia waters
three white black women love epic most
of the project... United States Girls Blue
Europe American Death Star, Juan del Sur
Italian gold Great Asian-Russian blood
prostitutes with long hair,
German team Friends heart George
time Tyco Firetruck; History of Canada;
Future head; Leather headed radical
elements passionate man in a hot-air balloon,
Christian Thomas Project Cristiano cold
example of war dogs yellow sky in the half
of France real money, month of naked women
standing, living off Latin cuisine
while the Russian land of glory of beauty
is at home, I amino acid; Gender free poet,
lost father problem, born in the German
reality of peaceful reality. Number of news
ReprodUCIR song unlocking Police Search;
Real things real dream movement El Dorado
men's story; women with animals language
Robert's picture July garden Kageo baby
life Art Day Church Dead S defeat
this side of nature; Mural wall friends
change de Chirico public opinion *******
lips clear ***** pink prophecy of summer
India rain mountain table mountain
ANSI from the ****** queen of Africa
wrote feet, the gods, the temple wall poet,
silver, mother, news, Satan Big Big Devil,
begin to understand his angel Elli,
the tree and mine a list of West Einstein's
legs asked him to think of the perfect cat
with sharp teeth she cannot see;
her eyes in his father's mirror, |
walk with a wave of a plastic woman
and do the joint exercise of the Jews
in the desert trying to eat a kind
of twisted eye; a kiss brand Bar
United gang poetry in ancient
Greece after empty image magic
smells birthday scent image
club gay scissors horror machine
is a bad haven is to understand
no cold in Arab Kid anode is filled
with the world of hunting animals
recent model 5,
which determines the stupid hole
of Demeter's name to this kind
of drunken hole hill mountain
shadow to cover mainly poetry                                                five dimensions
And Dionysius. This man appeared
in attacks and inappropriate language,
also known as "guilt".
But for the publishers of Alexandria,
Imbo hair is a symbol of all things,
which means that formal entertainment,
despite the lack of self-esteem,
seems to be elected on the same subject.
Play Sanctuary Second Saudi Arabia;
Italy & Spain Opens for long is Jesus,
the law of old windmills park.
How French Sweet Computers
Museum to deal with Asia |
in the Jewish state of security's Coffee Hell.
The PC game, Greece sleeping cautious
on the dark dark computer of political poetry.         Computer time reminded senior vitamins, the best street children.
Mattel writes group group field today
only goddess deep sand tank Bob blind
kitten crazy character sister soul door
ugly fall public hearings natural half-life
Maria Stella British cat
A crippled dove is dying; her wound a dusky red
in the maple's crook she's hiding.
Her heart her wedding song; herself the newlywed.

A carmine blaze upon her breast to mark the place she's bled
like a penitent confiding
A crippled dove is dying; her wound a dusky red

The purple splay of sunset now reveals a fraying thread
in her tiny breast subsiding--
her heart her wedding song; herself the newlywed.

Beneath her injured wing, she hides her tawny head
as the sun is lower gliding
a crippled dove is dying; her wound a dusky red.

The summer grass, soon bereft, would take her place instead
except for circumstance dividing--
her heart her wedding song; herself the newlywed.

The presiding night has finished; the ceremony said--
her new master toward the threshold swiftly striding.
A crippled dove is dying; her wound a dusky red--
her heart her wedding song; herself the newlywed.

— The End —