"vanitas" poems
All the flowers of the spring
Meet to perfume our burying;
These have but their growing prime,
And man does flourish but his time:
Survey our progress from our birth—
We are set, we grow, we turn to earth.
Courts adieu, and all delights,
All bewitching appetites!
Sweetest breath and clearest eye
Like perfumes go out and die;
And consequently this is done
As shadows wait upon the sun.
Vain the ambition of kings
Who seek by trophies and dead things
To leave a living name behind,
And weave but nets to catch the wind.
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I love you, as a saint
with an aureole of gleaming autumn-burnt hair
an ecstatic shining and bright as the sun,
spilling forth with holy oil
with the face of a white-rose angel from Botticelli's brush,
with the heart of a tar-black demon, a serpent in the fiery bush,
a heavy pink blossom all dripping with honey
a sinuous and serpentine moth-silk scarf, fluttering in the summer air.
and I love you, loving and knowing that
I love you, as a painter
loves a streaked and bright tempura paint
here, sun-kissed as a yellow flower today,
revealing its thin translucent colours the next
and I love you, as one can only love
another who can only love a mirror
whether one made from moon-struck volcanic glass
or drawn from the lips of another.
Jan 2, 2013
Jan 2, 2013 at 7:25 PM UTC
What is so powerful
As to chain man’s heart to earth
Chasing after fleeting things
Yet as man chases
His hearts desires
Trying
To break the mesh
Stubbornly holding on
To that which forms his life
All he suceeds in doing
Is destroying his flesh
‘Vanitus vanitatum et omnia vanitas’
Jan 13, 2014
Jan 13, 2014 at 11:41 PM UTC
smear a smile on for me, doll
makeup those pretty
crimson lips and stars
bleeding mascara
skeletal grin.
-r0
Apr 23, 2014
Apr 23, 2014 at 12:15 AM UTC
Can you feel the empty?
It hangs thick in the air
palpable
tangible
Pressing; it feels like malevolent intention
in the eyes of a killer
Quietly stalking, biding time
preying upon those who are weak enough to submit
and stupid enough to venture alone
Jun 29, 2014
Jun 29, 2014 at 4:47 PM UTC
it is so easy to **** me unknown brother
carved Samaritan image
do yourself a favor I’m an undecided blotch of color
indigo reaching for purple
shut at once the book you read from
and I’ll become a butterfly with my wings crucified
on two pages
~~~
maybe because of the need to forget
I see death as a hindrance on the wheel of torture
a camphorated ointment for nervous fibers ends
I’m closer today to the tree for hanging the noose
from which God forbid you to taste
look vanitas vanitatum
Yorick’s head lies on your plate when you receive your alms
the candle the baked apple and the wheat porridge helping
~~~
I stand up facing the wall
my voice isn’t yet untied
I wonder what is stronger and if the heart tips the scales
my achy breaky heart
on the balance between life and death
there are a few extra grams of soul
we will need very tiny jewellery weights
psalm 103
Fibonacci’s series the golden ratio
~~~
look my child the soft carpet
my warm body upon which you step this sacred day
my soles are thin they stick to the red clay
I turn upon the potter’s wheel
my everlasting mentioning
like I was that’s how I’ll stay
a crumb of Eucharist bread on the lips
the first and the last
Aug 17, 2014
Aug 17, 2014 at 12:34 PM UTC
12/24/2016
to G.G.
*"When the sons of Princeton
Gather anywhere,
There’s a place they think of,
Longing to be there.
It’s the one and only
University,
Situated and celebrated
In New Jersey
-Traditional Princetonian song, "Going Back to Nassau Hall"*
You worried I
wouldn't contact you again
I laughed because it was funny.
I'd told you
my favorite beach boys song
was That's Not Me
He moves to the city and regrets it
I guess maybe the feeling of being in
over my head prevailed in my life.
Speaking of which–
we sat in the deserted
Prospect Garden
where Fitzgerald did once
And it was donated in 1879
people wrote of it:
"Its grounds, like eden"
I wondered if this was ephemeral
looked hard for the temptation.
I didn't see any fruit trees.
I stared straight ahead on the bench
into the piercing dark
English Yew
behind us
and the red gravel.
I said:
"I can't use thin spoons"
I didn't look at you when I did.
"When you say that,"
A pointedly deep breath
I turn to you.
You continue: "I feel like I love you."
I laughed, not because
it was funny
But I laughed in its simplest form-
Is it not an expression of human happiness?
You told me that you
didn't know why
I seemed to
Dislike the things
that made me great
I laughed because it was funny
And turned to kiss you
you were the first person to ever say
I was "absolutely" beautiful
What do you say to that? I
smiled and
tried to not look
At you in a way that
betrayed to you the feelings
I was trying so very hard to conceal–
they said this:
That I was starting to feel the affects
of a very deep fondness.
As time passes
my poetry, more
succinct.
i fear i am losing it
but does it
matter?
we'd talked about vanitas.
it was hard to say goodbye
and i
turned to you as you walked away
focused on the way you walk
watched you become smaller
and went out to the car.
in front of nassau hall
and i
thought of the next time.
Dec 24, 2016
Dec 24, 2016 at 4:11 PM UTC
Wallow, wallow, wallow
Until the first cracks
Show on your body.
Bees on lips
And whales in your woods
Make your life uneasy.
You manage to overdo the thinking
Which makes you unhappy
Deaf and blind
Yet even more beautiful.
The coffin of your closest relative
Never asked you anything
But you keep on justifying
Every little detail of your past.
Now you exhale yourself
On a wild bouquet of dandelions.
Keep still
For a moment.
You’re safe from questions in your own reflection
Another brain thinks for you,
VANITAS winks at you but you don’t give her attention,
Skulls and faded flowers smell like danger,
Nothing good can ever come out of that.
I may be saving your life,
I may stroke your neck but gently,
Leave your beauty intact
But with a bruise.
Dec 12, 2015
Dec 12, 2015 at 5:40 PM UTC
A westbound fog steadily showing its face,
as the sun hides its own.
On a bus bound for somewhere far from here,
an unknown destination far away from home.
Through every savanna, through every green field,
through every soggy
marshland with mud sticking to the heels.
It seems that everywhere I go,
whether it be high or low, far or near
time never seems to slow
and she’s never really here.
With every shrinking cigarette,
each separate dying ember,
with each slow wilting flower,
with each breath, I surrender.
Thoughts of the living traded in for the dead.
“Vanitas” or such, I believe men once said.
Mar 23, 2021
Mar 23, 2021 at 3:25 PM UTC
Awkward silence
Vanitas still-life
Remembering I must die
Thinking about afterlife
Still-life painting
Symbols of death or transience
The same old story
Unique true glory
Attention to one more fact
I know I'm into this
I'm a part of everything
Even without feeling it
Memento mori
Painted bended blind
A friendly reminder
Coming across my mind
The brevity of human life
A proper masterpiece
No one can escape
Let it rest in Peace
Nov 11, 2017
Nov 11, 2017 at 11:22 AM UTC
"THE BREAKDOWN COMES WHEN YOU STOP CONTROLLING YOURSELF / AND WANT THE RELEASE OF A BLOODBATH" - JENNY HOLZER
I. Vanitas Vanitatum
[The stage is set: a paper moon against a starless, greyscale sky. GINSBERG howls. He's nostalgic for all he'd assumed was forgotten; desperate to never recall it again. His numbered days are manufactured: ELIOT reclines, watching the world end.]
CHORUS OF PROPHETS:
In our own sins we trusted,
both in essence and in nature.
Hell was never an inferno:
it is an echo chamber.
We have nothing (-- we have nothing --)
but maxims and jumbled alphabets
and lightly-sparkling bitterness
when the cork pops feebly from the bottle;
(-- nothing! --) dripping saltine hate.
We've lived large and small, been tiny and tall;
always filling too much space in a too-big room
where our presence is ironically scarce.
There is nothing for you here,
bar vacant lungs and river water --
take a breath and join us
in sinking to
(sinking!) the
(sinking!) bottom
(sinking,) of
(sinking...) the
Styx.
II. Et Omnia Vanitas
[Enter PLATH, SEXTON, WOOLF, BYRON, DICKINSON and VARIOUS PHARMACEUTICAL BRAND REPRESENTATIVES.]
You know not what you could be
but merely what you are
and that alone is traumatic enough.
Taste it, a slice at a time:
the disillusionment from having raised your hopes beyond rotting in the soil,
the anger upon realising this was your own fault and all you want to do is scream,
the bargaining, the denial, the scream (you were not born to live). The gradual processing. The scream!
Scream at the moon and scream at the walls and scream into pillows and howl and wail and hack away at the flesh and screech until plastic surroundings melt and it is only you and the void you willed upon yourself.
III. Epitaph (What Now?)
[A white-fur baby seal is camouflaged upon the ice
and, eyes closed, fools itself into thinking it survived.]
What happens next is no act of evil:
this is survival of the fittest.
We are bottom-rung of the food chain
and starving predators need to eat.
[We lick the ground and taste defeat.]
Ruby poppies reach heavenward --
small birds take their maiden flights.
I shrivel, putrid in the soil,
in the winter of my life.
Aug 29, 2019
Aug 29, 2019 at 7:44 PM UTC
Antonio Machado, Fernando Pessoa, Juan Gelman crearon de un plumazo sus heterónimos, unos señores que tuvieron la virtud de complementarlos, ampliarlos, hacer que de algún modo fueran más ellos mismos. También yo (vanitas vanitatum) quise tener el mío, pero la única vez que lo intenté resultó que mi joven heterónimo empezó a escribir desembozadamente sobre mis cataratas, mis espasmos asmáticos, mi ****** zoster, mi lumbago, mi hernia diafragmática y otras fallas de fábrica. Por si todo eso fuera poco se metía en mis insomnios para mortificar a mi pobre, valetudinaria conciencia. Fue precisamente ésta la que me pidió: por favor, colega, quítame de encima a este estorbo, ya bastante tenemos con la crítica.
Sin embargo, como los trámites para librarse de un heterónimo son más bien engorrosos, opté por una solución intermedia, que fue nombrarlo mi representante plenipotenciario en la isla de Pascua. Por cierto que desde allí acaba de enviarme un largo poema sobre la hipotética vida ****** de los moairs. Reconozco que no está nada mal. Se nota mi influencia.
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I gave up: Resigned
All attempt all force: one farce
- No use no effect...
So sad yet self-contained; per se
A universe of Glass
Glass-ice-Glace
An UNVERSE of Cold
Uncaring cold Solace
Solace in the Cool
Cool and icy Vanitas
And emptiness an emptiness
That soothes all Exertion
All Suffering All Joy
Soothed and Calmed
All Pleasure All Pain
A distant memory
Glass Cold Repose
Sep 16, 2024
Sep 16, 2024 at 5:24 PM UTC
Vanishing
vanities of life
eventually...
disappear
in the hands of those living
Skulls and roses
time and dice
and...
wilted flowers
all wry and dry
Feb 23, 2024
Feb 23, 2024 at 2:11 AM UTC
Truth told be : Afraid am I
It all a rather bizarre Thing, rather strange
Why worry - Why torture oneself So
So full of worry What is the Mind doing
How has it come to (This) Why has it come to (This)
Why What How The Eternal questions of the Mind
Why this How that From what
..., so useless this enforced Form
Rather empty; attempting to define the Fluid
Give Edges to a Ball Give Edges to the Earth
Idealize the Real Why not Realize the Ideal
I torture turn and churn Squaring and managing
No Soul to be found by that Only Breath
Breath and Hot air
Why so inauthentic Why not be a Poet not a poet
Why quality what quality How quality
Is it Ideal or Real nor any?
Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas
- Thou(gh) Art?
Sep 16, 2024
Sep 16, 2024 at 4:58 PM UTC
From Carpe dime, Tempos fugit, Vanitas to Yolo; humanity is entirely defined by its own death; and will continue to be so for ever and ever, amen.
Nov 9, 2019
Nov 9, 2019 at 4:47 PM UTC