st64 - Hello Poetry

st64 Mar 2014

By the time he'd hit eighty, he was something out of Ovid,
his long beak thin and hooked,
the fingers of one hand curled and stiff.
Still, he never flew. Only sat in his lawn chair by the highway,
waving a *** wing at passing cars.

I was a timid kid, easily spooked. And it seemed like touchy gods
were everywhere—in the horns
and roar of diesels, in thunder, wind, tree limbs thrashing
the windows at night.

I was ashamed to be afraid of my grandfather.
But the hair on his ears!
The cackle in his throat!
Then on his birthday, my mother coaxed me into the yard.
I carried the cake with the one tiny candle

and sat it on a towel in the shade.
I tried not to tremble,
but it felt like gods were everywhere—in the grimy clouds
smothering the pine tops, the chainsaw
in Cantrell's woods—everywhere, everywhere,
and from the look of the man
in the lawn chair, he'd ****** one off.

David Bottoms was born in Canton, Georgia in 1949. He earned an MA from the University of West Georgia and a PhD from Florida State University. In 1979, Bottoms won the prestigious Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets for his collection Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dump.
The book—filled with bars, motels, pawnshops, truckers, waitresses, and vandals—was recognisably Southern in tenor and landscape.

Since Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dump, Bottoms has continued to write poems that “communicate the implications of experiences” through clear narratives, natural and animal imagery, and influences that range from church and blue-grass music to the work of James Dickey, who was a close friend.
Speaking to William Walsh, Bottoms commented on his affinity for church hymns and spirituals: “There's so much water imagery in those hymns. It's the whole beautiful notion of crossing over, of getting to the other side. This imagery, of course, is ancient, and not uniquely Christian, but I suppose Sunday school largely accounts for my love of it. Also, as you know, lakes and rivers make such wonderful metaphors for the psyche—the conscious mind and the unconscious, the surface and that hidden realm below the surface. I keep coming back to that, I guess.”

Concerned with apocalyptic “endtime” prophecies, and delving deeper into autobiography, his poems circle and fracture around central narratives,
always filled with Bottoms's very own voice, his gift for evocative images, searching irony, and meditative poise.
David Bottoms has won many awards and honours for his work.

st64 Mar 2014

Lupita, Lupita

you are so beautiful

such grace
in your words, power spills forth
with magnitude

you are so beautiful

may your light shine
beyond
all boundaries

YOU are so beautiful

st - 5 mar

so inspiring.. humanity at work.
such finesse.. wow!

http://www.upworthy.com/oscar-winner-lupita-nyongos-speech-on-beauty-that-left-an-entire-audience-speechless?c=reccon1

sub-entry: beauty in / / beauty out

what is it?
is it upon the rags of your face.. ?
or is it the ***** you flaunt?

where is beauty?
perhaps.. in the things
we do not see.

st64 Mar 2014

smiles on paper-boat

keep folding your cool designs
they hold afloat all your dreams
waiting on that raft
to it all

1.
how I marvel at your vigour to grab any sheet of paper
to create shapes to your fancy
your vision sees further-use in adverts and pamphlets
so creative and undaunted by the wide-ocean
windy-rains may come, whip away your lovely paper-boats
but you set forth fleet-footed in salt-spray
your eyes follow their route on bobbing-smiles
you watch their trail and scout over rocks
yes, they sink soon.. yet, you don't cry
how you run ruddy your cheeks -- oh, how you do inspire!

2.
I didn't mean to silence you
when you sang your song
it's just.. I had a headache
(but you know -- that is poor excuse!)
may the lilt in your voice carry so high
and I pray that grace be mine
when you speak your thoughts

3.
black wings with orange-beaks congregate on the shore
beauty untold when they all take flight
high up in the sky -- what a sight
a flock of blessings in the rain
flying over smiles on paper-boat

with every flap, thunder rolls its power
and there's little place for lightning to hide
its splendour
it crashes smack-bang within
the silent-blubbering
of sightless-whales*

may dreams land sweetly
and yours..
come true

S T - on 2 march 2014

me lad at paper-boats at the sea-side today :)

sub: sailor-boy

how I marvel that you don't trip
over rocky shores
as you hop and skip
and play with waves

(such aliveness)

so undeterred by the mess of life
sailor-boy, hoist high that flag
my reward sits in your smile

thank you :) so much

st64 Mar 2014

the imp of wisdom

he who knows..
he who speaks..

laughing all the time
disobeying every law
even the great-king laughed
till he retired for five centuries
to meditate

1.
the imp of wisdom
with coat of gold-brocade and mint-lining
never crawled but crashed
all parties with *ephemerated-crime
with banner held high, he spread mirth
but the jay-lord's son was not amused
and challenged the magic-monkey
who blew but one hair-strand to duplicate the view
and the foe fought hard against the wind
which made one **** and disappeared

there he was.. up on the beam
munching joyful an apple to the core
and ire met his glaring eyes
he lifted a large vase and forced fire inside
and sent it forth
but excellent skills of the hermit shone
until deception caught him by surprise
ugly lies and secret art sent the baton flying
into malingering-oblivion
and left the imp banished into stone
mockery petrified
and the staff traveled on, alone
where it spins to this day
until it finds a worthy-hand
to catch its portent, embossed with ancient-lore

2.
but the player of the lyre spun a thread to turn all heads upside-down
spinning a feline-twist
smacks them with tight silver-aglet'd tresses
and sends the hunters onto a new trail
of unspeakable dangers on the Fifth-Pathway
a hooded rider on a steed so fast
outruns the stallion over a cawing-hill
a silent-temple starts humming olden-prayers in tongues-forgot
to a drunken-master
calabash-mug in the hand of an expert
pretense hard at work in the grey-dust

both holding onto the same thing
makes sharing one swish of a horse's tale
a miniature-masterpiece sways obstinacy
interceptor-serpent too languid to trap the crab
silent riddles stretch learning to land at the waterfall's feet
its power majestic, yet freeing

empty your cup
pour anew
there's half a shadow beneath the bridge
the one you must cross
take finest-care now

S T, 1 march 2014

just a silly piece..

sub-entry: protect yourself

read the letters on the wall
now.. duck!

st64 Feb 2014

The Whole Mess ... Almost - by Gregory Corso

I ran up six flights of stairs
to my small furnished room
opened the window
and began throwing out
those things most important in life.

First to go, Truth, squealing like a fink:
"Don't! I'll tell awful things about you!"
"Oh yeah? Well, I've nothing to hide ... OUT!"

Then went God, glowering & whimpering in amazement:
"It's not my fault! I'm not the cause of it all!"
"OUT!"

Then Love, cooing bribes: "You'll never know impotency!
All the girls on Vogue covers, all yours!"
I pushed her fat *** out and screamed:
"You always end up a ******!"

I picked up Faith, Hope, Charity
all three clinging together:
"Without us you'll surely die!"
"With you I'm going nuts! Goodbye!"

Then Beauty ... ah, Beauty—
As I led her to the window
I told her: "You I loved best in life
... but you're a killer; Beauty kills!"

Not really meaning to drop her
I immediately ran downstairs
getting there just in time to catch her
"You saved me!" she cried
I put her down and told her: "Move on."

Went back up those six flights
went to the money
there was no money to throw out.

The only thing left in the room was Death
hiding beneath the kitchen sink:
"I'm not real!" It cried
"I'm just a rumor spread by life ... "

Laughing I threw it out, kitchen sink and all
and suddenly realized Humor
was all that was left—

All I could do with Humor was to say:
"Out the window with the window!"

Gregory Corso (1930–2001)

Gregory Corso was a key member of the Beat movement, a group of convention-breaking writers who were credited with sparking much of the social and political change that transformed the United States in the 1960s. Corso's spontaneous, insightful, and inspirational verse once prompted fellow Beat poet Allen Ginsberg to describe him as an "awakener of youth." Although Corso enjoyed his greatest level of popularity during the 1960s and 1970s, he continued to influence contemporary readers and critics late into the twentieth century. Writing in the American Book Review, Dennis Barone remarked that Corso's 1989 volume of new and selected poems was a sign that "despite doubt, uncertainty, the American way, death all around, Gregory Corso will continue, and I am glad he will."

Born in 1930 to teenaged parents who separated a year after his birth, Corso spent his early childhood in foster homes and orphanages. At the age of eleven, he went to live with his natural father, who had remarried. A troubled youth, Corso repeatedly ran away and was eventually sent to a boys' home. One year later he was caught selling a stolen radio and was forced to testify in court against the dealer who purchased the illegal merchandise. While he was held as a material witness in the trial, the twelve-year-old boy spent several months in prison where, as he wrote in a biographical sketch for The New American Poetry, the other prisoners "abused me terribly, and I was indeed like an angel then because when they stole my food and beat me up and threw *** in my cell, I . . . would come out and tell them my beautiful dream about a floating girl who landed before a deep pit and just stared." He later spent three months under observation at Bellevue Hospital.

When Corso was sixteen, he returned to jail to serve a three-year sentence for theft. There he read widely in the classics, including Fyodor Dostoevsky, Stendahl, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Thomas Chatterton, and Christopher Marlowe. After his release in 1950, he worked as a laborer in New York City, a newspaper reporter in Los Angeles, and a sailor on a boat to Africa and South America. It was in New York City that he first met Ginsberg, the Beat poet with whom he was most closely associated. The pair met in a Greenwich Village bar in 1950 while Corso was working on his first poems. Until then he had read only traditional poetry, and Ginsberg introduced him to contemporary, experimental work. Within a few years Corso was writing in long, Whitmanesque lines similar to those Ginsberg had developed in his own work. The surreal word combinations that began to appear in Ginsberg's work about the same time may in turn suggest Corso's reciprocal influence.

Corso once explained his use of rhythm and meter in an interview with Gavin Selerie for Riverside Interviews: "My music is built in—it's already natural. I don't play with the meter." In other words, Corso believes the meter must arise naturally from the poet's voice; it is never consciously chosen.

Corso shaped his poems from 1970 to 1974 into a book he planned to call Who Am I—Who I Am, but the manuscript was stolen, and there were no other copies. Aside from chapbooks and a few miscellaneous publications, he did not issue other work until 1981 when Herald of the Autochthonic Spirit appeared. Shorter than any of his major books since Gasoline, it contains several critically acclaimed poems, many of them written in clipped, almost prosaic lines more reminiscent of William Carlos Williams than of Whitman. "Return" deals with barren times in which there had been no poems but also asserts that the poet can now write again and that "the past is my future." The new poems, however, are generally more subdued than the earlier ones, though there are surreal flights, as in "The Whole Mess . . . Almost," in which the poet cleans his apartment of Truth, God, Beauty, Death, and essentially everything but Humor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGam9Z6PSWk

st64 Feb 2014

IN YOUR LIGHT - Rumi

“I know you're tired but come, this is the way...

In your light, I learn how to love.
In your beauty, how to make poems.
You dance inside my chest where no-one sees you,
but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art.”*        ― Rumi

1.
“You and I have spoken all these words, but for the way we have to go, words are no preparation. I have one small drop of knowing in my soul.
Let it dissolve in your ocean.

A mountain keeps an echo deep inside. That's how I hold your voice.”
― Rumi

2.
“Do not feel lonely, the entire universe is inside you.
Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.

Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames.”   ― Rumi

3.
“The way of love is not
a subtle argument.

The door there
is devastation.

Birds make great sky-circles
of their freedom.
How do they learn it?

They fall, and falling,
they're given wings.”                          ― Rumi

4.
“The morning wind spreads its fresh smell. We must get up and take that in, that wind that lets us live. Breathe before it's gone.

Sorrow prepares you for joy.
It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow.
Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their
place.”                                     ― Rumi

5.
“You are so weak. Give up to grace.
The ocean takes care of each wave till it gets to shore.
You need more help than you know.

Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone's soul heal.
Walk out of your house like a shepherd.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

6.
“You think you are alive
because you breathe air?
Shame on you,
that you are alive in such a limited way.
Don't be without Love,
so you won't feel dead.
Die in Love
and stay alive forever.

I want to see you.
Know your voice.

Recognise you when you
first come 'round the corner.

Sense your scent when I come
into a room you've just left.

Know the lift of your heel,
the glide of your foot.

Become familiar with the way
you purse your lips
then let them part,
just the slightest bit,
when I lean in to your space
and kiss you.

I want to know the joy
of how you whisper
“more”...                                                            ― Rumi

7.
“When you go through a hard period,
When everything seems to oppose you,
... When you feel you cannot even bear one more minute,
NEVER GIVE UP!
Because it is the time and place that the course will divert!

The cure for pain is in the pain.
In Silence, there is eloquence. Stop weaving and see how the pattern improves.

The truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth.”                                       ― Rumi

8.
“Study me as much as you like, you will not know me, for I differ in a hundred ways from what you see me to be. Put yourself behind my eyes and see me as I see myself, for I have chosen to dwell in a place you cannot see.

Moonlight floods the whole sky from horizon to horizon;
How much it can fill your room depends on its windows.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

9.
“Keep walking, though there's no place to get to.
Don't try to see through the distances.
That's not for human beings. Move within,
But don't move the way fear makes you move.

If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?

Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah…it makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.”   ― Rumi

10.
“Do you know what you are?
You are a manuscript oƒ a divine letter.
You are a mirror reflecting a noble face.
This universe is not outside of you.
Look inside yourself;
everything that you want,
you are already that.”
― Rumi, Hush, Don't Say Anything to God: Passionate Poems of Rumi

11.
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing, there is a field.
I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.

What you seek, is seeking you.”                             ― Rumi

12.
“The lion is most handsome when looking for food.

Pain is a treasure, for it contains mercies.
Love comes with a knife, not some shy question, and not with fears for its reputation!

I am your moon and your moonlight too
I am your flower garden and your water too
I have come all this way, eager for you
Without shoes or shawl
I want you to laugh
To **** all your worries
To love you
To nourish you.”                                          ― Rumi

13.
“I was dead, then alive.
Weeping, then laughing.

The power of love came into me,
and I became fierce like a lion,
then tender like the evening star.”                        ― Rumi

14.
“Suffering is a gift. In it is hidden mercy.

Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving.
It doesn't matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair.. come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again, come, come.

But listen to me. For one moment - quit being sad. Hear blessings
dropping their blossoms
around you.

I closed my mouth and spoke to you in a hundred silent ways.”
― Rumi

15.
“The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don't go back to sleep!
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep!
People are going back and forth
across the doorsill where the two worlds touch,
The door is round and open
Don't go back to sleep!

These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

16.
“Like a sculptor, if necessary,
carve a friend out of stone.
Realise that your inner sight is blind
and try to see a treasure in everyone.”                    ― Rumi

17.
“Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absent-minded. Someone sober will worry about things going badly. Let the lover be.

There are lovers content with longing.
I’m not one of them.”    ― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

18.
“There is a secret medicine given only to those who hurt so hard they can't hope.
The hopers would feel slighted if they knew.

You were born with potential.
You were born with goodness and trust. You were born with ideals and dreams. You were born with greatness.
You were born with wings.
You are not meant for crawling, so don't.
You have wings.
Learn to use them and fly.”          ― Rumi

19.
“Forget safety.
Live where you fear to live.
Destroy your reputation.
Be notorious.

Inside you, there’s an artist you don’t know about… say yes quickly, if you know, if you’ve known it from before the beginning of the universe.”
― Rumi

20.
“Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.”     ― Rumi

"On a day
when the wind is perfect,
the sail just needs to open and the world is full of beauty.
Today is such a day.”                                               ― Rumi

S T – 25 feb 14

Rumi - born to native Persian speaking parents in 1207.
Died 1273 AD.
Rumi (an evolutionary thinker) believed passionately in the use of music, poetry and dance as a path for reaching God.

st64 Feb 2014

Crawling in a desert

(Blackened tissue beside debris of bleachd cocktail
Power pundit in cubicle
A ship in shadow-pieces passing by, unnoticed

smoking water.. now costs getting kickd  out ur xafe
Your blood lies in a high-account and all the stampz areMelting
Crawling in a desert, accusations shave the top off my black land
Did failing the test lead to a power-packed punch in strands
No time for treagedies clogging up the freeway
Twenty watts up the waterfall and your ride is here
Befits a ceremonial decapping
Catch ur vogue latte on the way out
Come aboard by jet and then expect a red carpet, soaked dry from the spoils of erstwehile-smugglers
Let em bleed green notes till the moths all come round the flame
Wait for it… the flame grows hugher… and int it all…………****!

That was easy.
Don’t chuckle out loud when expletives slidie down your back
Like champagne off the shoulder of your ne-xt planet’s ride

Duck in time cos the butters hard and the toast is dry

Four friends over six decades carry grudges heavey enough to pump oil to lakes
And the unexpected happens.. the one they didn’t watch, wwent missing
All eyes on the little one.. no, you didn’t catch them all.

You became immunes to the skills you advert-tarted and sqeueamish set in
you didn’t know casn host violence in a putrid-robe?
One finger pointing out, makes at least three in.. to the pointer
How can one planet swallow so wide a dichotomy in plasticky degrees?
It’s too wide this time to make that jump  – we will ingest what weve been giving all along
And some end up well-funded while others simply dwell..  as frogs in a well.

sun can climb in sometimes, but for half an hour
their fingers are small for the mine, keep small the issue
don’t cry when it rains in expectorata
I think frogs can swim.

when do I ever learn that..
I am simply a frog in a well
near craxks )*

21feb

cant make this jump.