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Glenn Currier Dec 2021
“Look for the soul,
you become soul;
Hunt for the bread,
you become bread
Whatever you look for,
you are.”   – Rumi

A glorious magenta thistle blossom
a humpback whale breaching
a haiku by my friend John
a kitten swatting at a bouncing string
a silent moment just sitting peacefully
Debussy’s La Mer
a giggling baby
a golden leaf falling from oak.
This morning I had a moment meditating that brought tears to my eyes. It felt like drops from heaven. As I wrote the above piece, I thought of Rumi and looked over on my bookshelf spying a decorative box: “The Card and Rumi Book Pack.” I took it down and opened it. Inside the book cover was a well written affirming inscription from the one who had gifted me this beautiful volume in 2001 upon my reception of an “excellence in teaching” award. It was from Valerie, a former student who is Native American. She ended her remarks with “Aho!” a Kiowa word that means thank you. I opened the book and turned to a tabbed page and read this quote from Rumi: “ At every moment, Love’s voice talks to us from left and from right, all we have to do is to know how to listen.”
Anais Vionet Dec 2021
Anyone can write a poem
I mean, they’ve never passed a law
and with the quick access to paper
and all.

Of course, the serial poet’s the danger
that keeps us up at night - someone lacking
the gene for rhyme control. Normal people can’t
imagine such wonton, naked promiscuity with words.

It’s best that we ignore them - to nip it in the bud.
A real collective effort is required - let us build
institutional archives - yes - we’ll call them libraries - to
lock such verse away - may it never again see the light of day.

If you catch a child with a pencil, slap it out of their little hand
because we cannot start too early in discouraging needless rhyme.

This public service announcement - pointing out this new “poetry”
trend - was made for the benefit of all.
spread the word people
Anais Vionet Dec 2021
As poets make their final search
for the lost syllables of fall
and wet branches of the stately birch
point out foliage is out of style
youngsters dream of holidays and smile.
holidays are coming and I can’t wait
fray narte Dec 2021
Someone mourns and I am terrified: my skin, shrinking — closing in upon myself, for how can they break and not break at the same time?

— “I am sorry for watching you watch someone else die”
fray narte Nov 2021
i am bone-tired and befogged with melancholia; i cannot wait to fall and bounce cheerlessly in a field of forlorn, arenaria flowers, all over the sunless forest floor. leave me be — a strange girl in a sleepy, run-down town. leave me be — a hopeless case in my own quiet apocalypse.
fray narte Nov 2021
i mount my heart on a wall,
still and discolored
where my taxidermist hands had pressed.

it breathes life into dead walls:
a hanging irony made of
soft cyclamens
and the closed, white fist of a tormented girl.

i mount my teeth on a wooden wall,
write my letters,
pour salt on spaces where i used to stand;
may i not stand here
once again.

i mount my hands on a wooden wall;
they do not knock. i do not answer.

silent as a lamb — down to a pit,
i watch the sheer cliff of my back
from where i have jumped
and the sundry sorrows shrink
into black, blinking dots
like a hidden villain
exposed.
i fall over myself
like in a slow-moving dream —
lead-like it flows like the acheron river.
and here comes the ferryman.
fray narte Nov 2021
i've always loved you one way or another. i break out of your ribs only to bury myself back in. i've always loved you one way after the other. everything else is a fleeting state — cruel, fluid transience leading me back to you.

some ghosts you just miss, darling — some ghosts, you'd die just to see again.
fray narte Nov 2021
the weight of your breaths is burning its way inside my skin. this is a catastrophe we're in now, darling, and i resemble all of your crestfallen asters, dried and dusty in your altar — now caught in a forest fire. this is a catastrophe we're in now but heathens like me don't burn down, and i have loved you with such fatality i didn't once possess. i have loved you like stray dust in lilac vapors. i have loved you, like stray wind in a firestorm.

this is the calm we're in now darling — and i have loved you to the point of no return.
fray narte Nov 2021
the world has taken away all of my poems. i have nothing to do but regress — sit still as november peels itself away. lo, i crawl into myself; all traces of anything human are left to dissipate, like a ghost sliding gracefully in faint, flaxen light. mute and unheard, i ache to unsee patches of my unraveled skin, so painfully human. so painfully visible. inside, i twist in painful longing to fall into obscurity — to be locked away like a tiny bone in a closed fracture, to perish in a sleepy seaside town, to fade like a poetic conundrum in a motionless, lilac dream.

come tomorrow, someone else in my body awakes with the same exhausted eyes. same despondent breaths. and i'm left to cling inside my skin, to wander indefinitely — a deboned greek kore, a mouthful of abstract poems, a mystery moving backwards to unsolve itself.

lo, the echoes: i cling inside my skin — walk beneath my skin. i am safe. safe. i’m more bearable somewhere out of sight. i’m more myself somewhere out of reach.
fray narte Nov 2021
1
i am the space expanding non-stop at the risk of losing history
and what remains of its stardust.
my sorrows expand with it; my vastness grows wider,
deeper by the day to accommodate
an uninvited houseguest.

2
i fear the act of going through my bones
like a bundle of endless, wistful letters;
some for burning.
some for throwing away.
some for breaking through
my ashen skin.

how can i be both limited and boundless —
it is no magic — just mundanely human.
the thought descends like poison eating at my backbone
until i am no more than a bygone, spineless caryatid.

3
yet again i take down the cosmos,
pick it apart
and in my hands, manage to turn it
into something distastefully prosaic —
turn it into a disassembled being.

all this wordless sadness has made me ancient. alien. unidentified.

4
i am the space expanding non-stop at the risk of losing history;
i have long stopped trying to make any sense to myself and
there is no greater joy
than to be a perplexity.

amid it all, i tiptoe back and forth
between the ice-thin parts of celestine silence
and the static ringing of incomprehensible poetry.

the ground where i stand on breaks;
i float with no direction.

5
i am the space expanding endlessly; i grow wider and deeper
to make room for vaster sorrows —
if only a sigh is enough to hold me
as i tear it all down. tear it all quietly. inward. once and for all.
if only a sigh is enough to hold me
as i implode in tragic,
breath-taking cosmic colors.
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