"rimbaud" poems
I am thankful for the mountains
I am thankful for the music that comes from the mountains
I am thankful for every fire that is lit by nothing more than the embers of a fire that raged before it
Only these fires can truly comprehend what it is like to suffer and be born again
I am thankful for the knowledge that every human being has in them a true spark
Only some don't care or are too busy
Or let their dreams be squashed or didn't have the fuel to burn in the first place
I am thankful for the holy beat poets
Kerouac and Ginsberg
I am thankful for the poet saints
Rimbaud and Lorca
And I am thankful for my saints of folk music
Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie shaped me long before any of this
But all in all I am thankful for the holy ghost of Carl Sandburg
Without him I would not be writing this poem or any
I am thankful that these poems allow me to say what I need to
I don't expect my words to be recited at weddings or funerals
But I don't mind because both atmospheres depress me just the same
I am thankful for every trail I have walked
I am thankful for every breath of Rocky or Appalachian air ever to enter my tragic lungs
I am thankful for the bonfires I have lit
I am thankful for the sticks that snap in my hands and leave scrapes that bleed only enough to remind me that I'm alive
I do not need such reminders but it's always a nice thing to have
I am thankful for every lost love
Whether I disappointed them or ****** them off is no matter
All that matters is that there is humility
I am thankful for the fact that these lost loves are leading
Completely happy lives with or without me
Knowing someone's happiness is dependent on me is a responsibility I cannot bear
I am thankful for this typewriter
It was my grandfather's when he was my age
He passed away two years ago on the week of Thanksgiving
He was born that week too
And it isn't pilgrims or stuffing that help me to feel thankful
It's the people like him
Nov 29, 2015
Nov 29, 2015 at 2:19 AM UTC
heartbreak
parallel to eye
without razor
sobbing
wet leaves
pressed in
a book
will not
dry
next
tears
do not
outlive
themselves
discovery
for another
generation
still
when in doubt
quote rimbaud
no verbs
no more
choosing the vowel “o”
that
i’m not
going to
remember
again
6.9k
The short-order cook and the dishwasher
argue the relative merits
of Rilke’s Elegies
against Eliot’s Four Quartets,
but the delivery man who brings eggs
suggests they have forgotten Les fleurs
du mal and Baudelaire. The waitress
carrying three plates and a coffee ***
can’t decide whom she loves more—
Rimbaud or Verlaine,
William Blake or William Wordsworth.
She refills the rabbi’s cup
(he’s reading Rumi),
asks what he thinks of Arthur Whaley.
In the booth behind them, a fat woman
feeds a small white poodle in her lap,
with whom she shares her spoon.
"It’s Rexroth’s translations of the Japanese,"
she says, "that one can’t live without:
May those who are born after me
Never travel such roads of love."
The revolving door proffers
a stranger in a long black coat, lost in the madhouse poems of John Clare.
As he waits to be seated,
the woman who owns the place
hands him a menu
in which he finds several handwritten poems
By Hafiz, Gibran, and Rabindranath Tagore.
The lunch hour’s crowded—
the owner wonders
if the stranger might share
my table. As he sits,
I put a finger to my lips,
and with my eyes ask him
to listen with me
to the young boy and the young girl
two tables away
taking turns reading aloud
the love poems of Pablo Neruda.
4.9k
"Boy were we wrong! We're the oddball. We're the freaks." --- Dr. Michio Kaku
We looked at trillions of those stars and knew,
that somewhere out there was another Planet Blue.
Those were not canals we saw on Mars;
optical illusions, lensed figment memoirs.
Stare into trillions, space mind overwhelms.
Rimbaud entrapped in countless ethereal realms.
Not the goal of evolution, merely happenstance,
the search for elsewhere leads a merry dance.
Planets a dime a dozen, yet no Goldilocks Zone
produces signals bearing SETI transient tones.
Birds more subtly impact our lives,
than do the aliens our universe provides.
Aug 14, 2018
Aug 14, 2018 at 1:16 AM UTC
Ophelia...smote egress, you are Rimbaud's:
"Drunken Boat".
The river you fell asleep upon found you a sea.
Your bones knew no seabed--poppies, marigolds,
orchids, black roses fill your eye sockets, mouth and rib cage.
You substantiate what color the sea may give your lay.
Its foamy waddle has signaled you to one too many
climes...an orison broke open.
What strain of tragedy now holds you, spine on depth,
eye sockets on sky?
You dove headlong into the Shakespearean maelstrom--
where mortal coil confounds, chin-up darling.
Great winds fish-scale your waters, only to invert their maw.
There are lines daily of sea's breadth, whereupon its
creatures come single file to kiss your bone.
Ophelia...wrested from river to sanguine sea, shedding trails
of flesh.
If bones were the eye of a needle...you've pulled through,
heir to tragedy--circumnavigating your infamy.
Nov 1, 2013
Nov 1, 2013 at 10:25 AM UTC
Il pleure dans mon coeur (“It rains in my heart”)
by Paul Verlaine
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
It rains in my heart
As it rains on the town;
Heavy languor and dark
Drenches my heart.
Oh, the sweet-sounding rain
Cleansing pavements and roofs!
For my listless heart's pain
The pure song of the rain!
Still it rains without reason
In my overcast heart.
Can it be there's no treason?
That this grief's without reason?
As my heart floods with pain,
Lacking hatred, or love,
I've no way to explain
Such bewildering pain!
Published by Better Than Starbucks
Paul-Marie Verlaine (1844-1896) was a French poet and a prominent figure in the Symbolist and Decadent poetry movements. Verlaine has been called "one of the most purely lyrical of French poets." Keywords/Tags: Verlaine, French, translation, rain, languor, heart, treason, reason, pain, hatred, love, Arthur Rimbaud
Ophélie (“Ophelia”), an Excerpt
by Arthur Rimbaud
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
On pitiless black waves unsinking stars abide
... while pale Ophelia, a lethargic lily, drifts by ...
Here, tangled in her veils, she floats on the tide ...
Far-off, in the woods, we hear the strident bugle’s cry.
For a thousand years, or more, sad Ophelia,
This albescent phantom, has rocked here, to and fro.
For a thousand years, or more, in her gentle folly,
Ophelia has rocked here when the night breezes blow.
For a thousand years, or more, sad Ophelia,
Has passed, an albescent phantom, down this long black river.
For a thousand years, or more, in her sweet madness
Ophelia has made this river shiver.
Mar 28, 2020
Mar 28, 2020 at 2:13 AM UTC
stupid living boys
and their hummingbird hearts.
stupid dead boys
and their lingering stares.
supermarket polaroids,
cold apartment poetry,
faded glassy eyes,
***** fingernails.
Feb 22, 2015
Feb 22, 2015 at 6:58 PM UTC
I suppose if the arts had any real power
Michaelangelo's David could have healed my brother
Rimbaud could have saved Hiroshima
Monet could have painted the world in shades of peace
Desiderata could have protected me
But this is the real world
And where poetry once grew comes the art of fabrication
Dali's obras are no longer enough to make me forget
Moonlight Sonata never warned me of this hurt
The waltz never healed a broken family
I suppose if the arts had any real power
Beethoven wouldn't have gone deaf
Van Gogh would have been happy
Hemingway would have loved better
And Ginsberg wouldn't have been afraid to love
Yet here they all are
When the only light I see is on hundred year old canvas
When the only solace I have is a dead man's words
When the only thing that keeps my heart thundering
Is the promise of a Boticelli ending in Picasso figures
All colors, beauty, light and metaphors
The promise of a Renaissance gleaming in the ashes of prose
This is the real world
I suppose if the arts had any real power
It would heal more than just my heart
It would build me a new Garden of Eden
And I'd pave a way to nirvana
So the world could join hands
And start anew
But it's saved me for now
That is enough.
Sep 5, 2016
Sep 5, 2016 at 6:26 AM UTC
Spleen
by Paul Verlaine
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
The roses were so very red;
The ivy, impossibly black.
Dear, with a mere a turn of your head,
My despair’s flooded back!
The sky was too gentle, too blue;
The sea, far too windswept and green.
Yet I always imagined―or knew―
I’d again feel your spleen.
Now I'm tired of the glossy waxed holly,
Of the shimmering boxwood too,
Of the meadowland’s endless folly,
When all things, alas, lead to you!
Paul-Marie Verlaine (1844-1896) was a French poet and a prominent figure in the Symbolist and Decadent poetry movements. Verlaine has been called "one of the most purely lyrical of French poets." Keywords/Tags: Verlaine, French, translation, spleen, roses, ivy, despair, sky, sea, blue, green, red, black, holly, boxwood, Arthur Rimbaud
Ophélie (“Ophelia”), an Excerpt
by Arthur Rimbaud
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
On pitiless black waves unsinking stars abide
... while pale Ophelia, a lethargic lily, drifts by ...
Here, tangled in her veils, she floats on the tide ...
Far-off, in the woods, we hear the strident bugle’s cry.
For a thousand years, or more, sad Ophelia,
This albescent phantom, has rocked here, to and fro.
For a thousand years, or more, in her gentle folly,
Ophelia has rocked here when the night breezes blow.
For a thousand years, or more, sad Ophelia,
Has passed, an albescent phantom, down this long black river.
For a thousand years, or more, in her sweet madness
Ophelia has made this river shiver.
Mar 28, 2020
Mar 28, 2020 at 2:17 AM UTC
As a young man,
I was always obsessed
By melancholy.
I saw deep sadness,
The quality
That so tormented my heroes,
Such as Arthur Rimbaud,
And Montgomery Clift,
As glamorous and romantic,
But it’s not…
It’s not remotely romantic,
When you yourself are adrift,
And weighed down,
By a multitude of woes.
Jun 29, 2015
Jun 29, 2015 at 3:59 AM UTC
The Rimbaud flows incessantly
The moonlit garden shrieks and howls
The pictures glow incandescently
Sweat beads marching down their brows
A fruitful sun will bring clarity
A mistreated boy laughs at you
A new day re-born without sanity
Accepting rough beauty through and through
39 days remain
Don't eat at the dirt
Eat at the sound
The smell of a coming rain
Wash my stains up from the ground
Your lost and found
Your picket lines
We be all skinned men from our hides.
Oct 25, 2012
Oct 25, 2012 at 6:25 PM UTC
eating breakfast
on a beaten girl's face
she ignites when you take it
she glows in her faith
with gold and blue phalange atop sleekest new marrow
she is clear raincoats and black body polish
she is siamese cats asleep on a windowsill
she is the rusted remains where the ices draw narrow
she is reading rimbaud and drowning brian jones
the swan's neck upper reach
is steady with guilt
engraved with your initials
a monogrammed friese
on white marble quilt
Oct 26, 2013
Oct 26, 2013 at 11:19 PM UTC
Porque me ven la barba y el pelo y la alta pipa
dicen que soy poeta..., cuando no porque iluso
suelo rimar -en verso de contorno difuso-
mi viaje byroniano por las vegas del Zipa...,
tal un ventripotente agrómena de jipa
a quien por un capricho de su caletre obtuso
se le antoja, fingirse paraísos...! ¡al uso
de alucinado Poe que el alcohol destripa!, 1
de Baudelaire diabólico, de angelical Verlaine,
de Arthur Rimbaud malévolo, de sensorial Rubén,
y en fin... ¡hasta del Padre Víctor Hugo omniforme...!
¡Y tánta tierra inútil por escasez de músculos!
¡tánta industria novísima! ¡tánto almacén enorme...!
Pero es tan bello ver fugarse los crepúsculos... 2
1.5k
[Untukmu di Langkawi, 26 Jun 2018]
Beratus-ratus retakan kaca
tidakkan pernah imbang neraca
betapa berat hatiku menunggu
detik-detik tak berpenghujung
beribu-ribu detakan hati
takkan pernah akan ku lari
biar Bukowski dengan kebuntuan
biar Rimbaud dengan ketidaktentuan
akan hanya ada dirimu dalam
laci yang penuh dengan kepastian.
Berbatu-batu kau ke utara
begitulah rasa ini terawang-awang di udara.
Jun 27, 2018
Jun 27, 2018 at 7:21 AM UTC
Jim Morrison is alive and well
I found him in some juke joint cantina
Down in the deserts of southern America
He was sitting in a dimly lit
Booth in the corner of the room
Digging on some blues band blowing blues
And nursing a bottle of whiskey like a pro
Slowly channeling the shaman within his soul
As I approached in dumbstruck awe
He waved me to take a seat on the bench
Adjacent to where he himself sat
We ate from a plate of enchiladas and ten-cent tacos
And spoke of the poetry of Rimbaud and Baudelaire
He dreamed a dream where he and Kerouac
Took a trip from France to San Francisco
And read volumes of poetry books
From famous beat authors
And reminisced about their pasts as famous men
We continued to allow the whiskey
To slither like serpents down our throats
As ancient poems sauntered back up
Like lyrical word *****
I told him of a dream where he and I
Ate off a plate of enchiladas and ten-cent tacos
In some southern American juke joint cantina
Listening to joyously lamented blues
And discussing the great poets of the past
We laughed and had a great time
As the Doors of our perception
Bled poetic verses of imagination
When the night was over
And the dawn began to arrive
We parted ways with many thanks
And a hugging hand-shake
He went his way
Off into the the waiting sun
A Lizard King in celebration
And I went mine
Off into the depths of shadow
Taking a late moonlight drive
Oct 23, 2011
Oct 23, 2011 at 11:34 AM UTC
Why are we conscious?
Why life?
The universe
infinite flux
Epic Smashing parts together
Brains splattered by speeding bullets
Simple physics
Described in abstract numbers
Sublime
It’s so plain
So regular
How Life is extinguished without emotion
In an instant
Unseen and unremembered
Why did we even bother?
To become conscious at all
To perceive futilely the world
And despair in the flux
Anguish in the face
Of pure entropy
Absurdity is the only legitimate feeling
And yet there are so many more
Why? I want to know!
Why this fait?
Why could I not be a chair?
Simply sitting, never thinking the thoughts
My bane and my bone
My plagued thoughts
In pursuit of clarity
Like a sore that would go away
If you would
Just
Stop
Picking it
Jun 5, 2014
Jun 5, 2014 at 2:14 PM UTC
alas, i've heard it asked: how can we
write poetry after Auschwitz?
i don't know. and prose? i don't know: gone mad
the whole world implodes and dips its dove's foot into my purple brow:
in a dream, ink erupts from under my dirt encrusted fingernails
and it is the transubstantiation of my rainbow stained blood,
and the void was flooded:
what's a word? more than i—more than i can show.
how did they write poetry after colonialism?
after other slaves and other genocides?
i don't know. Rimbaud traded in slaves, and, before his fury,
wrote masterpieces... perhaps its obvious; a bad pun, to help us cope,
—he even left the path to his divinity,
but all this has nothing to do with anything—.
perhaps every genocide needs its herald poets.
and the rest, how did they write? i don't know.
perhaps it was not their concern;
they desired to write, and there, they did not give way, and so
were right.
and is it the same with us, as we write
through the screams of the however many millions coming from Congo
and from however many other scenes similar? i—
perhaps i do not need to know,
perhaps, in fact, i cannot write poetry.
if i'm to try, it pertains to me to be of use in case this comes to a fight.
and life, if life is drama,
then there will always be roles:
there will always be the part of the villain that needs playing,
an immortal space to be filled by actor after actor,
we cannot stop them, we cannot stop them;
our enemy is a hydra's head!
the task, then, is to re-write the script!
ad lib won't cut it!
cast away your hope, boredom and wonder:
we'll need fire and a pen mightier than a golden sword,
and softly spoken words that can split history asunder.
Aug 14, 2015
Aug 14, 2015 at 9:29 PM UTC
tactile touching
a severed caress
a withered arrangement
the sort that belongs
to an abstract expressionist painting
suspended for all time
like a contemplated constrictor
who has asked
why he wishes to split
his personality in three
but has been denied an answer
instead gazes upon the
disunity of his vision
Feb 16, 2013
Feb 16, 2013 at 2:09 PM UTC
Unfettered falsehoods that lure by practice of pretense
Make subject to a tyranny of questionable inquisitions
That claim themselves both by treaty and inheritance
Pursue with a vigor blind narcoleptic dancers with a ferocity
That embalms the bones with the tears of a million fans
Who in such tragedy represent that image and behold him
His limb freshly bleeding reading his words in lamentation
Jul 25, 2012
Jul 25, 2012 at 6:07 PM UTC
Was Annabelle just a woman in Poe’s dream?
Was there really an angel on Janet Frame’s wooden table?
Did Emily Dickinson really wear white for the rest of her life?
Was Dante just a bitter ***** to tell people about a red man with horn’s on his head
Didn’t think it was Halloween too soon on the corner of his calendar
I resembled all the traits these writer’s made of their spoken lives just like Bukowski
If he did live in many rooms and lost his brain cells in bottles
Maybe in the afterlife Burroughs will give me pointers on drugs along with Thompson. Meeting Rimbaud ask him if he ever was in the closet. Took an eyeful of literature before high school, made friends with boozers, losers and psychopaths. Don’t quote me because I cherish them so much I know I’ll try to make it like them soon, dead yet my heroes they remain alive
WRITE ME OFF WRITE ME OFFF Write me down there’s no pen and papers around scrawl on the wall have a purpose to write them all
Jun 15, 2014
Jun 15, 2014 at 9:43 AM UTC
I often write my poems too fast
And the emotion gets passed by
In a rush to be finished
I gotta remember
I'm not Jack
I can't write on a continuous scroll
In a Benzedrine blur
I wish I could read my poems
With a jazz backing band
I keep a terrible rhythm alone
And when I'm in my car
Listening to Thelonious Monk,
The Jazz King of my heart,
My voice has this growl of feeling
But when I'm on that stage
With the mic staring back at me
I hesitate
It doesn't come out right
It doesn't sound like I rehearsed it
In my bed late at night
Or on those countless car trips
Oh I wish I could take that car
Gun it down an empty highway
Windows down
Air rushing in
And the Miles Davis trumpet
Screaming for me to go
Go
Go
I want to write about more
Than just how I'm feeling
My hero Woody Guthrie said
"All you can write
Is what you see"
But I've spent too much time
Looking in the mirror
When I should be looking out the window
But the window reveals my reflection all the same
I can never truly escape my self
But still I write
I know they are in me
The true holy poems
And maybe they won't be howling
And maybe they will never have been to Chicago
And maybe they don't know any Rimbaud or Garcia Lorca
And maybe they can't sing the blues
But when it is all said and done
No matter what they are
They're all I've got
And you can never hate something like that
Sep 21, 2015
Sep 21, 2015 at 11:28 PM UTC
~for Rimbaud
The same rules
you lived out
still apply:
Drink too much.
Take drugs.
Sleep with
too many women.
Drink too much.
Be irresponsible.
Squander
your money.
Drink too much.
Hurt those
who love you.
Drive them away.
Drink too much.
Overdose on silence.
Drown in solitude.
Drink too much.
Ignore consequences
Go quite mad.
Drink too much.
And then,
of course,
die young.
- mce
Jan 6, 2016
Jan 6, 2016 at 6:59 AM UTC
Divinity of the Day lets me think I’m in the sky
But that’s alright, like to go about this blind
Exiled darling wandering in the summer blessedly long
Divinity of the Day, my whispered prayer through the dark
God, that enthralled
you read in a raindrop
before it hits the ground
sunset boulevard torch,
is up one of these bends,
waved in night
West Hollywood Rimbaud,
feathers falling into my hair,
dressed in invention’s favorite mood
with my roadhouse sheet music
written of my life’s inspiration adorned walls, slightly cold
I was lost but playing it off, until
my racing heart reached time future and
said, soul adored believe what’s in store
dose to help you forget and live
Harp in hand, each step how it rings
scammed and scorched
no lying that all this running leads to
hardly breathing
There’s smoke around you
drifting into an image faithful to the vast,
wild west
bravely standing despite the emptiness
as if guided, divinely guided
with my diamond focus on the garden path
of the muse, open, aware
just walking through, even confused, you mean
my images of paradise were drawn in too
permanent as the myths, placards of legends
Beaming with a strange and frightening beauty
from chasing the lights that ascent into the heavens
dreamy, daring, absurdly hoping, all the read claiming
Lord knows, enamored with you, so take these pretty copper arrows
good for aiming up beyond, that remind me, been on my own so long
Apr 24, 2019
Apr 24, 2019 at 5:01 PM UTC
You'd think Blake, Bosch
& Emanuel Swedenborg
read Pythagoras in the original
& walked with Christ & Newton;
E. A. Poe, the Horror-Poet;
influencing the Decadence of
Baudelaire, Wilde & Rimbaud;
Pinkham Ryder's influence on
Symbolism & Surrealism led,
oddly, to 20th century pop culture
depictions of Victorian monsters;
Frankenstein was the product
of the English Romantics;
German Romanticism to Sturm
& Drang led to Expressionism.
Beardsley [dead at 25], Gustave
Moreau, Van Gogh, Gauguin,
Egon Schiele [dead at 28]; ||| - -|
Klimt, Freud, Jung: Judaism;
Id, Superego, Ego, Shadow,
Anima & Animus, collective
psyche, Nietzsche's Superman,
eternal recurrence & will to
power; Wagner's Ring Cycle...
Jan 18, 2019
Jan 18, 2019 at 1:56 PM UTC
She takes the heart of Men
barley brave
slightly handsome and solemnly gay
the world is bare like the shaven private parts of **** stars
of
young women
young men
I am not the average white male
Kansas
Kansas
Chanting ridiculous church hymns
pray preach till we are dull
till the snow
till the rain
till the tornado is nothing
till the insects on the bathroom floor
are neither welcomed
or shouted at
but rather
acknowledged in a monk-like-state of unforgiving in-ability to think
The insects and the dishes and the plastic wrappers and the condoms and the heart beats that climb through broken television shop windows scratching their scalps with glass and tiny tear drop like rain drops from a cloud trickle like wet make up down faces
Folklore Folklore
Heavenly father
****** Texas Heat Indian Skin Father
oh Holy Father
Teaching the hairy poet the wooden antique poet the stolen gift from an Oklahoman fuel station poet
Oh How You Taught the poet
How to steal
How to envision the future
To trust the gut
To trust women too much
To wear nice clothes
To Drink cold night beer walking down a lightless road in a strange blue memory flash of either texas or Mars
Holy Father
Teacher
Monk
Addict
You had it right
You Coulda' been a great singer
or a poet or a dancer or a play writer or a guitar player or a piano builder
You had the self destruction well completed
You have me beat
Now I sit around listening to the scratched up Vinyls warping and turning like fine black women swing dancing
their dresses in a symmetrical spin
Now I sit around
Reading Rimbaud
analyzing the snow
digging up Deer bones and skulls
Now I sit around my pores ingesting the sounds of birds pianos and fast heart beats.
Mar 24, 2013
Mar 24, 2013 at 5:43 PM UTC